SURPRISE!!

We've had a few surprises lately. Thursday night Monica accused me of never planning anything, & that was the reason she planned her own birthday party. The only problem was I had planned a surprise party for her Friday night. Me planning it actually meant calling Matt Thomas & telling him I would like to do a surprise party for Monica, & he threw an awesome Hawaiian themed party! The point is, though, that I played a part in it all.
The second surprise came today at 2PM when I locked the keys in the car. I haven't done that in forever, so I thought it would be fun. This leads us to surprise #3--our car is WAY too easy to break into, so I won't tell you how we did it but it involved a stick & Monica's small arms.


Surprise #4 came after dinner when I got a call from Wellston Church of Christ saying they needed a preacher/Bible class teacher for tomorrow morning. I quickly pulled some resources together & agreed to do it.
What a weekend of surprises! We are excited & a little scared to see what will spring up tomorrow.

The BIG 24!

As many of you already know, today is my 24th birthday! It has been a fabulous day so far filled with lots of birthday surprises: lunch with the office @ Mazzios, flowers delivered to my office from my perfect husband, phone calls from friends/family & fun cards that made me laugh. I also had a wonderful birthday family dinner last night @ Ben's house. We had enchiladas, strawberry pie & I got a lot of really nice gifts!


My favorite thing about my birthday is that it's on the other side of the year from Christmas, so I get extra presents & extra attention! I also really like hearing stories from my parents & grandparents about the day I was born & how they all remember it.
For instance, I don't know how many times I've heard how hot it was that summer & all my mom did the last few weeks of her pregnancy was lie on the couch with her legs propped up & a fan blowing full blast on her.

Skip Church & Move

I looked up the rate for a 5X8 U-Haul trailer to pull behind my faithful green pickup to Memphis (keep reading, it gets better). My dad & I think that a trailer of this size will fit a lot of things, but Monica isn't so sure... we'll see who's right & hopefully it won't be her again (I think the score is 1000-237).
Anyway, I was looking to rent it on Thursday one-way to Memphis & the price was $252. I thought, "Wow, that's a lot of money, I guess Monica will have to find another job." Then, I read an article on another site that said to move earlier in the week instead of the weekend like everyone else, & you know how we feel about being like everyone else.


About a week later, it finally clicked that I should see what the rental price for the trailer is if I rent it on Wednesday. I checked & the price dropped to $124. What a difference a day makes! Moral of the story: Don't wait until the weekend to rent a U-Haul, rent on the half-Sabbath (Wednesday) & it will be half price. Another moral of the story: Try to use your common sense a lot faster than I do.
Oh by the way, thanks for all your support on the grammar blog a few weeks ago... but then again, you probably think President Bush speaks real good. As you can tell, I have no hard feelings towards you or the President.

We're no better than anybody else

We did it, & we did it bad. I am talking about fighting about money. Yep, the numero uno of all things that causes fights among married couples. I believe that being personal & revealing on this blog makes us more interesting, so here goes...
I worry my rear end off about money. Yes, I even know all the scriptures about it, but I still worry. I worry about where to come up with $900 in closing costs by next week. I worry about how we are financially going to make it when we move to Memphis. It drives me nuts, & now that we are about to give our lives to a mortgage company... I'll stop for the sake of your sanity.

I need to stop for the sake of Monica's sanity! She hates worry. She can hardly stand it when I get going on a money kick. I had to stop her from cutting her ears off tonight. Somehow, she knows we will be fine & she has that confidence; however, I am in constant fear that the world will end tomorrow. So we fight...
And like every good fight, no one wins & everybody gets frustrated. I was trying to make the point that we will barely have enough to make closing costs (especially since they want all this money at the end of the month), & she was making the point that we will be fine & worrying will be no good. Finally, in our heated argument we came to an overly emotionally decision to not buy anything for the next month & not to go to any garage sales. We also agreed that we became like every other couple--we fight about money. One thing we never do, though, is make personal attacks at each other, & that is good.


By the way, whenever we write a blog & it sounds super serious & you don't want to comment on it for fear of our wrath... well, that is all the more reason to respond. We love any feedback we get, except for the person who spams us & leaves bad URLs, for thou shall experience our wrath someday.

Lists, lists, lists...

Some of you probably know about a crazy little habit I have which goes along with my obsessive-compulsive tendencies... making lists. Apparently, last night I started talking in my sleep (which happens quite frequently) & said "Ben, did you remember the cups & coffee table & dishes..." Ben said that I went on & on listing out a bunch of different things & talking really fast. So besides freaking my husband out I definitely showed my true colors through my subconscious.


Ben makes lists too, only he never uses them & usually throws them away several weeks/months after the fact. When I make lists, I LOVE putting boxes by all the things I need to do & check them off as I do them (I know, I'm sick). I'm pretty sure I get this nifty little habit from my dad who sits down & plans out his daily schedule the night before. We're talking detailed schedule...
5:45 am get up & take shower

6:00 am get dressed & read Bible
6:15 am eat breakfast etc.

Domesticated Smomesticated

Some might say that Ben & I are becoming the typical American family with a house, 2.5 kids, a dog & a white picket fence, but we are defying the odds! Our friend Austin would beg to differ & tell you that the next thing you know we'll be buying a mini-van. Our friend Ann would tell you that Ben should be opening that hole in the wall pizza shop on Manly Beach in Australia instead of signing mortgage papers.


We're actually pursuing our dreams even though it may appear that we're becoming, dare I say it, "domesticated". Ben truly wants to go to graduate school & to pursue either preaching or teaching or carpentry - he hasn't decided yet (whichever way he goes he'll be following in Jesus' footsteps). Yes, we could waste several thousands of dollars on rent in the next few years & not join the 'home buyers band wagon', but honestly who wants to live in the world of loud neighbors, white walls that you can't paint & no backyard?! Not us.
I have decided to accompany my husband on this journey to Memphis & pursue my dreams as well of finding out what I want to be when I grow up. I am truly excited about my new job as a travel agent & hope that I am great @ it! It works out perfectly because Ben likes to go to school & I like to work, so we make a great team.


I hope this blog entry has cleared up a few things for all of our single friends out there. We may end up doing something even crazier than you someday like move to the east coast so Ben can go to Princeton or being missionaries in Brazil. Your life is what you make of it & we intend to pursue our dreams with God's guidance & we can't go wrong.

Me and Ben.

Last night I was informed by my husband who always tells me how PERFECT I am that I don't speak correctly. Apparently, even though I have tried to be extremely self-conscious about the 'Me and Ben vs. Ben and I' thing I still do it all the time. I wonder how many other people in this world also don't 'talk right'.
Since I have married into a well educated family I'm pretty sure that speaking incorrectly rates right up there with murder. I was born a female so I tend to give a few more details in the stories I tell & the thoughts that come out of my mouth, so maybe while trying to get everything out I may say things a little differently.


We went to a marriage seminar a few months ago & the biggest quote that they kept saying over & over was "not right, not wrong, just different" when referring to the differences in spouses. Ben would of course argue that speech isn't a 'however you feel like doing it' kind of thing since there are dictionaries & we have rules about every silly little thing so as to have a universal way of speaking. I would argue that he shouldn't be SO concerned about the words I say as he should be with what feelings & emotions I'm trying to convey. Ahhh, the wonders of marriage.

House Hunting is fun.

Ok, so maybe it's not necessarily 'fun', but it is exciting - especially when it's your first house! We made the trip to Memphis this weekend with Ben's parents to look for a house for us to live in for the next 3 years while Ben is in grad school. This picture is of Ben & his parents in front of Harding Graduate School.


A funny thing happened right when we got there... our realtor took us to the first house to look at & we absolutely fell in love with it! We almost saw no reason in even looking @ any other houses, but we went ahead & saw the other 5 houses she had planned for us to see. Of course we compared them all to the first one & went back one more time to look @ it again. It was perfect!
We went back to the realtor's office to put in a bid. Our realtor came back into the room with a pale look on her face & asked us if she was drunk because when she printed out the spec sheet it said that the house was about $16,000 more than what it was the day before!! Come to find out, she had accidentally showed us the wrong house... the house within our budget was 4 houses down from that one & didn't have a sign in the yard.


We decided to go see the house that we were originally supposed to see & ended up really liking it. It was very similar to the other one, just with less space & a few other things. Whew! It has a beautiful yard, hardwood floors, plenty of space for me, Ben & the puppy we plan to get & seems to be the perfect first house for us! The exciting news is that we did put a bid in on it & are waiting to see if the seller takes it. We were able to stay with some of our in-laws in Little Rock (thanks Scott!) & got to spend the weekend with family, which is always nice. Wish us luck on buying our first house, pics are below!


Front, Front2, Living Room, Dining Room, Bathroom, Guest Bedroom, Master Bedroom, Ben's Study, Kitchen, Back, Back2

Ring Pops for the girls!

Today, after watching a fabulous episode of Gilmore Girls, Mandy & I got the idea of buying all us girls in our office Ring Pops.

No, we're not trying to send hints to our significant others that we would like bigger rocks. We just thought it would be fun to take a walk down memory lane & remember how much fun it was to get Ring Pops when we were little girls. Does anyone else have a favorite childhood candy?

Nephews are great!

Here are our adorable nephews watching the fire trucks in the Edmond 4th of July parade. Why are nephews so great you may ask? Well... I had given up on the notion of ever being an aunt since my only sibling is 17 (love you Bubby!). So whenever I married into Ben's family it was so much fun automatically getting the title of 'Aunt Monica'! Weston just turned 6 & Garrett is 4. They are two of the craziest kids I've ever seen & so much fun to spend time with (a few times a year:)


We get to hear all the funny stories, buy them all the toys we really wanted when we were kids & the best part is @ the end of the day they are still Sarah & David's boys - not ours. Ben & I figure that we won't be pressured to have kids for awhile since there are already two little boys & Joel & Rachel can start their family soon. We'll just be in the background & by the time Mark has kids all the other grandkids will be in college (jk Mark;) For those of you that don't know, here's the line-up of Ben's siblings: Sarah-30, Joel-29, Mark-25, Ben-23.


On my side of the family it's just me & Bubby & my parents have made it perfectly clear that they're not ready to be grandma & grandpa yet - whew!

A Wedding Extravaganza

The wedding went wonderfully. Joel and Rachel are now part of the married club, or as we like to say, they have the 'marriage disease'. Basically, as we have experienced, the disease just makes you weird to single people. Anyway, the wedding was fun and it was really nice to see so much of our family.


Okay, I promised Monica to keep this short. We are going to Memphis for our first, and hopefully only, round of house shopping on Friday after work. Oh, by the way, I actually have a job in a warehouse unpacking old greasy food computer equipment, adding it to an inventory list, and putting it in pallets in the warehouse. And yes, it is as exciting as it sounds.
We'll try to write soon about watching The Notebook at the theater today, but we promise not to ruin it for you. We hope you have a great 4-day week. I think I will ask my boss if I can just switch to 4-day weeks every week.