Birthday weekend

I hit 23 years this past Saturday (the 30th of Oct), and it was a good one. First of all, I had some delicious cheese cake with cherry topping, courtesy of my awesome wife.



And despite being 23, I can't keep in my excitement when I see a present that I've been looking for since getting married.



It's an ice cream spade! These things make scooping ice cream a pleasure, and this spade has anti-freeze in the handle, so it keeps the ice cream from sticking. It's awesome.



Look at this sweet pumpkin. I wonder what incredibly talented and clever people sculpted it. Oh wait....yeah... it was us. In all seriousness, it's a simple design, and took us about two hours.





We were going for spooky, and I think we nailed it.

Halloween weekend was fantastic. We were able to accomplish a good bit, and to finish off my birthday we went to outback! I love that place. We had some gift cards as well, so we ordered an appetizer, I got soup, and a full rack of ribs. Tack on the free bread and honey butter they gave us, and my free dessert for turning 23, and our table looked like there should have been another couple there. It was great. Operation: Super B-Day was a huge success.

Another great week ahead

This upcoming week has a lot in store. Most importantly could be the new job I'm starting. I've been working on campus since January (excluding the summer) and I've really enjoyed it. But, I've been feeling a change is in store, so I sent out a few resumes and had a few interviews, and ended up agreeing to go work for a company called Doba.

Who is Doba? Good question. They are a drop shipping company. What Doba does is offer a service to people who are trying to start online businesses with eBay or Amazon.com. The idea is to give access to 1.6 million products at wholesale price, which they in turn can sell on Amazon or eBay or whatever for a small profit. The cool thing is that they make it super duper easy to post products on eBay and other sites, and Doba doesn't require users to pay for products until the item has been sold. Then Doba will ship the product, the user pays Doba, and whatever is left after the wholesale price and shipping is the small profit that the user keeps. I hope that makes sense.

So how do I make money? I call people that have signed up for a free two week trial of Doba and offer them a membership for either 40 dollars each month, or 400 (or something like that) dollars each year. I do get a base pay, and then if I can get sales, it boosts my pay more. So there is potential to make a decent amount of money.

I'm excited if it all works out. The hours are better, the pay could be much better, and it's good experience. In the end, if I end up finding that it's a lame place to work, I can quit, and my boss on campus has told me there is a return policy, that they'll take me back. So I don't have a lot of pressure on me right now which is a definite plus.

At any rate, that's my new job and we hope it works out well. Also, we have quite a bit of school work due. I have 3 tests this week and a small paper due, and Becca seems to have quizzes or tests every other day. I've also got an ultimate frisbee game which will be fun.

In the end, I just wanted to get on here and say life isn't too shabby right now. Becca and I are enjoying BYU, we've got a sweet apartment, a great ward, a fun calling, and overall no complaints. I'm a lucky guy.

Six Months!

Ben and I hit our six month anniversary last Sunday. Pretty hard to believe if you ask me. We were trying to decide how long we'll be considered "newlyweds". I think a year is past the newlywed stage, so it has to be sometime between now and then, right?

We celebrated it on Monday, because on Sunday it's hard to do anything. Ben surprised me with these beautiful flowers, which I am still enjoying immensely. We hung out all day and went to Olive Garden for dinner that night. It was great.

I talked to Mom on our one month anniversary and she asked if we still liked each other. The answer was yes. And just so you know Mom, six months later...that answer is still yes. We still like each other a whooooole, whole lot. We couldn't be happier.

It's nice to have a little pick-me-up every so often...

My anatomy teacher emailed this video out to all of us today because it has been a particularly trying week for the class. I thought it was so good. Elder Holland is always able to speak so powerfully, and he gets his point across so beautifully.

It is so important to always remember to trust in the Lord. To remember that he is always there for you, and mindful of everything you're going through. He understands what you're feeling because he's felt it too. His hand is always outstretched for us to grab onto. No matter how small (like a very busy, stressful week of school) or how huge the issue may seem, he wants you to come unto him, and put your trust in him. He will never leave you comfortless.

catching up...again..

I hope to one day be a great blogger, where I don't have to cram six weeks into one post every single time. One day it will happen. But today is not that day. So here we go again!

It has been an excellent few weeks. Here are the highlights:

1) I FINALLY GOT A JOB!! WOOOOO!!! I am working in the X-Building (ASB, Administration Building, Abraham Smoot Building, whatever you prefer) in the assessment and analysis department. They are in charge of all the major surveys that have to do with BYU. My project is to input everyone's answers from the Alumni Survey into the computer. All 2000+ surveys. Sound a little bit on the boring side? That is because it is. But I tell you what, I have never been happier to have a job. I'm so excited.

2) We hiked the Y together for the first time.




3) We gave up on trying to decorate our house without using nails. So our apartment is slowly, but surely starting to look more like a home.


4) I got a haircut by a beginning student at the Paul Mitchell School. I was going to post a picture, but I don't think I'm quite ready for the world to see it just yet. Suffice it to say, I will not be returning to that sweet young lady for a haircut ever again.

5) We made caramel apples. p.s. - i love this picture of Ben.


6) Ben and I got a new calling. We are the Family Search and Temple Committee chairs. So we help the ward along with learning to use new family search, indexing, etc. We got to speak in Sacrament meeting on Sunday about temples, and I really think this is going to be a cool calling. We're both pretty excited for it.

Back in Provo

Well, I know we had been looking forward to getting back to Provo, and so far it has been pretty great. A few set backs here and there, but mostly it's been pretty sweet.

We started out in a cozy basement. You could easily see the whole place from the entrance. Not only that, but the ceilings were about 6 and a half feet high, so with any doorways, I would have to duck down. Also, the shower ceiling dropped down to six feet, so showering wasn't an easy task either. Apart from the indoor conditions, it was about 6 blocks from campus, so it took up to 20 minutes to get to classes. Seeing as how I have 8 o'clock classes, it wasn't very fun for me. To be honest, the place really wasn't that bad. It had a very nice feel to it, with granite counter tops, and a great sink. In addition, we had a washer and dryer (major convenience), and it was our first real place to live on our own. After having lived like kings in Arkansas though, with flat panel TV's and housekeeping, this was just a wake up call. And so it was our first real place where we lived as a married couple. We moved after 2 and a half weeks.



Now we live in what I would consider to be our first long term place. It's awesome! It's the perfect size for us, super close to campus (2 minutes and we're at the Smith Fieldhouse), reserved parking spot, and 8 foot high ceilings. And it only costs 35 bucks extra a month. So, needless to say, we're pretty happy. We'll post pictures soon.

One bittersweet aspect about moving was buying our own stuff. In our basement, he had dressers and a microwave for us. And besides, there wasn't any room for other stuff. But here, we had to buy a table, couch, chairs, microwave, desk, bookshelves, and some home decor stuff. It's been pretty fun, and KSL has really come in handy.

In other news, we are still studying at BYU. My classes aren't all that great, and Becca is studying like mad in Anatomy. It's fun to learn though, I suppose. I'm excited to be done, even though it's at least two years away.

Even though our summer was spent working and trying to save money, we're glad we made it back in time for the fall. It's completely gorgeous, and we decided to take some time to go hiking. We were told of some nice, easy hikes we could do, and we went to Payson, Utah (a bit south of Provo) to walk on a trail called "The Grotto". It wasn't too tough, and it ended with a little waterfall. It was incredibly pretty though, with leaves turning colors, and trees everywhere, with little streams along the trail. It was a great time. We even made Becca's day by finding a few lost cattle in the middle of the road. If one could have fit in the trunk, we probably would have taken it with us. It was followed up by watching some football. The fall rocks.

Tender Mercies

You know how sometimes things happen and you just know without a doubt that you are being watched out for? That's how I'm feeling right now. Here's just a few of the latest examples:

1. Ben already wrote about the two car accidents that he was so close to last week. It was really scary. In fact,when one of them happened, I actually thought he had been involved in it. I didn't have a phone at the time, but I figured out how to send him text messages from the computer. So he “texts” me and tells me that there had just been a really bad car accident and that someone had died. Then... he didn't give me any other information for at least another half hour. Of course, that half hour felt like six hours, and you can imagine my relief when he walked in the door a little later. Relief, and immense gratitude. That's how I'd describe it.

2. There's been some sort of stomach bug in our house the past couple days. While this may not seem like much of a blessing at all, it's darn easy for me to view it as one. See, Ben works pretty much all day, everyday, and I sit around at home by myself doing, basically, nothing. After a while, that starts to wear on you a little bit. So while it's probably really selfish of me to be grateful for sickness, I gotta admit, it was real nice to be able to see my husband for a couple days.

3. We have been searching desperately, and for a long time, for a place to live in Provo when we move back at the end of this month. It has been quite a stressful experience, especially living so far away. We find one we like, and either the people won't return our calls, or the rent has gone way up in the past few weeks, or it's already been rented out... there was always something. We finally found a place that would work for us. We called the guy to tell him our decision, and he told us he had just promised it to someone else. They'd be making their final decision that night, and if it didn't work out for them, it was ours. We tried to think positively, but let's be honest, it was a real bummer. Then, by some miracle, the next morning, we gave him a call and he told us the other people had passed up the offer and the place was ours!

4. After months and months of waiting (seriously, we started this process the week after we got married) we were finally told today that we are eligible to receive some money from federal grants! Hallelujah!

5. Ben made a sale today. He is awesome. And very humble. Every time he makes a sale I shower him with praise and he immediately tells me that we need to give credit where credit is due and say a prayer of thanksgiving for the tender mercy we were just blessed with. As I said before, he is awesome.

There are countless more of these little tender mercies happening in our lives every minute, but I am well aware of the fact that our blog posts are always a little bit on the long side, so I'll spare you. But let it be known that we are a very blessed little family.

More about Arkansas life

Arkansas is a great place. That is, if you don't take into account the weather, people, and number of bugs that inhabit the state. I've been knocking doors for a few months now, and I'm pretty sure I can say that I never want to live in Arkansas again. Ever. They even have 10% sales tax! That's crazy. It's sad to go to walmart and get groceries and pay an extra 10 bucks because of tax. Why people stay here, I'm not really sure.

All in all though, it's been a good summer. I've enjoyed getting to live in Arkansas merely for the experience if nothing else. Becca mentioned earlier that there was a guy at our Ohio reception who said one benefit of living in Arkansas would be the opportunity to learn first hand that this is the place we don't want to end up in. I laughed at the time, but I now see how right he was. This place has very little going for it.

Arkansas does have some characteristics that save it though. One thing that it has going for it are the sunsets. They are beautiful. I've tried to take a few pictures with my iphone, but it doesn't come close to capturing how awesome it is. Around 8 o' clock each day has become a great time for me, because the sunsets are so colorful and vibrant. There have been numerous times when I wish my Dad was there with me to enjoy how gorgeous nature can be. It almost makes up for the unrealistic amount of bugs.

I was going to talk about a few other redeeming qualities of Arkansas... but I couldn't think of any. Just kidding. But a few things happened this week that I just remembered and I wanted to write them down this week.

Item #1. I was in an area, and having a little difficulty selling. Then a lady comes out and loudly asks what I was doing. I explained, and she immediately became very interested. The weird thing was, I simply didn't think she could afford it, so I was very blunt with her about any sort of costs (pretty much $50 a month. Nothing huge, but not exactly something that anyone can afford). She surprised me by saying that her son was murdered two years prior, and she had received a hefty sum of money from the government. So $50 was nothing to her. That shocked me pretty good, especially since she said it so indifferently. But, what was really odd to me was the woman. First of all, she had a beard, and I'm pretty sure she was oblivious that she had it. I say that because each hair was well over an inch long, and they weren't really too scattered. It was about as thick as a balding man's hair, on her chin. Only it was long, and black. It was gross. And she had zero teeth. Zero. It was crazy. She was really a unique character, but I'm glad that I met her.

Item#2. As some of you may know, in Guatemala I saw two pretty bad car accidents. They were both pretty bad, and since then I haven't taken well to hearing the screeching of brakes. I really really hate hearing it, because it usually leads to worse things, and it reminds me of those accidents. That said, I was driving with a guy named Marty to Fort Smith, Arkansas. Marty is a bad driver. Possibly worse than John. But we were following a white truck about 40 yards back. We were going about 60 on the highway, with a small ditch to the right, and beyond the ditch was a line of little trees. Well, all of a sudden the white truck turned off the highway. I thought he was taking an exit because once he turned off he never tried to turn back. He turned off and just went straight off. He went into the ditch, continued off and hit the trees, which acted as a nice barrier, seeing as how they bent a little bit. It turns out that there was an old woman in front of him who saw a tire, and she slammed on the brakes. He couldn't stop fast enough so he just turned off and took his chances in his truck. He was just fine though, so that was a miracle. If it had happened about 200 yards later he wouldn't have had any trees, and would have gone off into another highway. So that spooked us pretty bad, which brings us to...

Item #3. We were going home fast because we had a long day. We were listening to music, and flying up the highway, when we saw a stopped semi with his hazards going. We slowed down to see what happened, and as we passed the semi I saw a black Chevy avalanche (pickup truck), scratched up, squished, with no bumper and the driver side door was missing. We stopped and got out to see what was happening, and we learned that the truck was on the highway going the other direction, and somehow went off the road and went over the grass median. That's crazy because the median was about 40 yards wide. Well, it gets worse because when he got to our side of the highway, a van hit the truck, despite trying to stop. It continues to get worse because we asked where the driver of the truck was, and no one knew. Not only was the driver side door gone, but the driver as well. So the other guys in our APX group went out in the median to look for the guy, and I made sure 911 was called. It took about 20 minutes to find the guy, who had passed away, and the rest of our ride was very very somber. The driver was only 25 years old, and driving at about 10:50 at night. We were lucky as well though, because we learned quickly that the accident had only happened about one minute before we showed up. Had the timing been a little worse, we could have been in trouble.

So, in a nut shell - Arkansas isn't exactly the greatest place to live. But there are always tender mercies and the summer has been quite a learning experience for both Becca and myself.

The Big 2-0

As of yesterday, I am officially a grown-up. A mature, sophisticated grown woman. That's right, folks, I am no longer a teenager. I'm twenty.

I was woken up yesterday by my sweet husband kissing my forehead and placing a large plate of extra cinnamony french toast in my lap. My favorite. After he did the dishes, we took a three hour nap, and then he surprised me by staying home from work for the day. It was awesome. We hung out together all day long, watched a couple movies, ate a ton of food, and just relaxed. He baked me a delicious cake and only made fun of me for a few minutes when I soaked it in milk before eating. This is it:

BG - Birthday Girl / Becca Griffioen. Ben's own handy work. Clever, eh?

All in all, it was the perfect birthday.

spoiled rotten.

Sharing the news with people that we'd be spending the very first few months of our marriage in the state of Arkansas, of all places, was one of my favorite things ever. You never knew quite how people would react. Usually it was an incredulous face that said "why the heck would any sane person EVER choose to live in such an uncivilized, god forsaken place out in the middle of nowhere?", while their mouth said something like, "Oh, how nice!" My favorite reaction was given by a guy at the open house in Ohio. It went something along the lines of "That's great guys! You'll have first hand experience in knowing exactly where you do NOT want to live later on!"

We were pretty thrilled about it though. We actually were really looking forward to the time we'd spend in "the Natural State," completely on our own for the first time. And to be honest, I'm only slightly ashamed to admit that I've grown a bit fond of the place.

It was really exciting when we first stepped into our apartment in North Little Rock. Washer, dryer, dishwasher, huge bay window in a spacious living room...it was more than we had hoped for, that's for sure. Sadly, I didn't get around to taking many pictures of that place, but we definitely enjoyed our time there. It was a nice area with a great ward, mall less than a mile away, Wal-Mart less than a mile, every restaurant you could want within five miles of our apartment. There was even a McDonalds down the road that we could steal wi-fi from if we could snag the right parking space. It was awesome. Ben worked his tail off doing door-to-door sales, and I managed to find a job at Outback within a week of living there (not as glamorous a job as you might think).

Boy, we were livin' the life in that place. Or so we thought. Until our arrival to our new apartment in Fayetteville, AR, where the first thing we saw when we walked in the door was this lovely sight:



After no TV whatsoever at the old place, imagine our excitement at finding not one, but THREE of these babies in our apartment. (The other ones are like an eighth of this size, but that is beside the point).

As we continued our tour through our new home, we discovered that we had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, washer, dryer, free internet, two huge closets, fancy artwork on every wall, balcony out back with a view of the golf course and two ponds, and a fully stocked kitchen. And when I say fully stocked, I mean, we pretty much had nothing to unpack. It came with silverware, pots, pans, cookie sheets, can opener, measuring cups, everything. It even came with a microwave! (didn't have one at the old place - quite a learning experience) Here's the proof:











AND, the first morning we were there, Wednesday, we got a knock on the door:
HOUSE KEEPING.

All I can say is we are are in big trouble when we head back to Provo, because currently, we are being spoiled rotten.

Hurrah for the first post!

Well, it appears that Mom has been getting on Beck's lazy bum for a few days to get us to update a blog. So today we had family night and after a riveting lesson from Becca on record keeping, we decided to change our ways. Initially we were trying to write in our journals at least once a week, but to be frank, we have failed miserably. So she gave the lesson with the intent on getting me to do a blog with her. That way, we could not only keep "records" for ourselves, but you guys could also keep tabs on us and see what's going on in the lives of the affable Ben and Rebecca Griffioen. Needless to say, the lesson clearly struck me to the core, and less than a few hours later we already have created a blog account and off we go.

So, this is Ben doing the first part of the blog, and I'll start out with a little story to get the ball rolling. As most of you know, I'm doing the adventurous job of a door to door salesman. It's fun, but at the same time can get a tad monotonous. It is rare to come home without a story of some sort whether about a nutjob man threatening me with a gun or a lady who has no social interaction except with her many cats. This week was no exception.

On Wednesday, our first day back from the family gathering in Georgia, I went out a-knocking. First, it rained. Then it poured. So I found refuge and waited for about an hour until it calmed down a bit. As I started walking again, I must have been too eager to sell some systems, and was looking too far ahead rather than right ahead of me, and I stepped in a puddle of water. My right foot got pretty wet. As I'm sure all of you would agree, walking around with wet feet is just annoying. Not a big deal though. I just counted my blessings, and kept truckin' on.

One of the first people I spoke to after the rain was a man about 40 years old. He was as bald as can be on the top of his head, but apparently tried to compensate by having a foot long (at least) pony tail in the back of his head. He had just left his front door to go outside, and I decided to try my luck with the fellow. I walked to him and I said confidently, "Howdy sir...". But before I could even continue on with my pitch, the guy whirled around and looked at me, said an inappropriate word, and looked at his open front door. When I looked at the door, I quickly realized why he was worried: A big black pitbull bolted out of the front door, gnashing its teeth and snarling like crazy. Immediately I felt the fight or flight reaction work in me, and before I knew it I was running for my life from a dog that wanted me dead. I'm pretty out of shape, but I'm pretty sure I was running just as fast then as I had in any year of my time running track or cross country.

The dog chased me for about two blocks, then gave up. I'm glad it did, because I'm not sure how much longer I could have gone. The adrenaline got me pretty good though, because I remember being shocked at how I was not out of breath at all.

I wasn't a happy camper though. I was angry at the guy, furious at the dog, and I didn't have a good attitude for the rest of the day. I think my attitude ruined me for the day, because I also ended up with zero sales.

Well, Becca fell asleep as I was writing this. Sorry guys. Looks like you just have that one story to hold you over for a while. We'll see if we can get some pictures up of the apartment of something. We're living in a pretty nice place now, so we're loving life. No complaints.