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.