Human Race

The human race is the most stupid and unfair kind of race. A lot of runners don't even get decent sneakers or clean drinking water.
Some runners are born with a massive head start, every possible help along the way and still the referees seem to be on their side.
It's not surprising a lot of people have given up competing altogether and gone to sit in the grandstand, eat junk and shout abuse.
What the human race needs is a lot more streakers.
-Banksy

Sleep Aid

So those of you that know me well, know how much I love Nyquil. I love taking it and being asleep before I even get to my bedroom. It's the best part about being sick.
Benny has been feeling under the weather the last few days. His schedule is so busy, I don't think he can afford to be sick. Here's the problem, he never takes medicine, ever. I try to give him ibuprofen and he looks at me like I'm the devil. So last night I asked him to take Nyquil and get to bed early so he could get a good nights sleep and hopefully start feeling better. Now I don't know if he's ever taken Nyquil before, or how long it had been since he had....but it's never happening again. I said good night to him at nine pm last night, nine. Guess when he woke up? Twelve. Twelve in the afternoon. Benjamin slept for fifteen hours. He took that medicine and went into hibernation.

In other news.... I have purchased my ticket to see Hunger Games! I cannot believe the day is finally here. I remember a year ago reading about the movie coming out and it's FINALLY HERE!

-Lindsey

Work

Its been awhile since I've posted, I apologize.

I would like to start out by just saying that I am freaking excited to marry Lindsey, I am so lucky to be marrying the most amazing woman in the whole world.
So just an update, I didn't know what to write about because all I do is go to school and work, so Linds suggested that I write about work...
For 3 weeks now I have been working for a company called Progrexion, and we sell credit repair to people who need it, and to people who just plainly want to raise their credit score. It is a sales job, but we work with warm leads, which means, we call people who have been referred to us, and people who have filled out applications online asking for help with their credit. Now let me just tell you, before I got this job, I had NO idea what a good credit score was, or how to build credit. Simply, I knew what a credit card was, I knew you needed good credit to get a car loan, or a house, etc. but I had no idea how the system worked.
So when I got hired on it was a good thing that I had a week straight of an 8 hour class pounding credit and legal info into my head, I am now a paralegal with lexington law firm and I know a lot about credit. Progrexion and Lexington Law are partner companies and work together to repair peoples credit. Now, I'm not trying to pitch you our company, or try and get you to sign up, but Lexington Law firm is the #1 credit repair company in the nation, and the product we sell is legit and people with bad credit, and need help improving it can really use our service. So having warm leads, and knowing the product is legit, its easy to sell people our product.
Now I didn't write this post to bore you with company info, or legal crap. There is a comedic side to this job. We sit in cubicles and we are on the phones with people all day, and you can assume that not everyone is a charm on the phone, not us because that is our job to be charming, but the customers on the other end. I get several phone calls a day from people cussing me out and then hanging up. Now its one thing to get a call from a company and you're not wanting their service so you hang up on them, but its another thing to be the one calling the people and being hung up on. Another thing is, is these people filled out info, or requested a call from us, we do not cold call anyone, so its funny to get on a phone call with someone and they yell at you, "You need to quit calling me!! I do not need credit repair!!" and then you just sit there and laugh(not really because we need to be somewhat nice) and you just say, "well then why did you fill out info on the computer requesting a call from us?" the responses to that are funny, they either hang up on you, choke on their words and then say, "well my credit is bad, but I don't want you guys to call me anymore." Whatever the excuse is, its pretty lame, and you can call them out on it, and some people you can switch around and sign them up for the service. haha
I love my job, Its different everyday, in its own way. But for the first time, in a long time, I can say that I enjoy having to go to work. Don't get me wrong, I can't wait to get my degree in exercise science and have an actual career, but for right now, this job pays the bills and will soon put dinner on the table.

-Ben

Giddy

I am so excited to marry Ben.
I had to create a count down to help with the excitement.
Everyday I take one M&M. I'm pretty sure I got this idea from my roommate Jessica last year, when she was counting down the days til she married her Ben.

 

Only 169 more days!

-Lindsey

Ben's Application

My Dad sent this to Ben the other day:

Enganged!

I wanted to take a brief moment and tell the story about how I asked the most amazing, beautiful, fun, outgoing, gorgeous woman to marry me. It goes like this....

Linds and I have been dating pretty seriously for about a year, and the subject of marriage had been brought up a few times and we figured we should get engaged soon, because you know, we are madly in love with each other. But the question was, when? When would be a good time, we knew we wanted an august wedding and so we wanted to plan it out around that time frame. Linds and I figured April would be a good month, its about 4 months from the time we wanted to get married, plenty of time to plan and organize what needed to be done to be married. Pretty much at that point she left it up to me to plan out when I could afford the ring, and try and surprise here. "TRY and surprise her?" you're probably saying right now, well let me explain. I cannot surprise lindsey, she either calls me out on it right before the surprise, or I get SO excited to tell her or show her that I spill the beans several days before the actual surprise. I have only been able to surprise her successfully on 2 occasions, the time I came down to St. George for her birthday, and asking her to marry me, which I am telling you about now. So back to my story, we had found the ring she wanted online a couple of months before, and had found the actual ring at zales in Salt Lake. I took my parents into the store here in orem on friday one week to kind of show them what linds and I were looking for and to work out financing the ring. As we got talking to one of the ladies in the store, she mentioned that we could have that ring shipped from Salt Lake down here to the orem store, so that is exactly what we did. The ring got there early and I was able to take my parents in to show them on monday the next week, and we actually got everything worked out to where the ring would be resized and done THAT WEEKEND!! Holy crap I was freaking out, I hadn't planned on getting the ring that early!!! In the meantime, Lindsey was coming up that weekend so that our parents could meet, so it worked out perfectly! I was going to pick up the ring on saturday when it was supposed to be done and propose later that night. Can you say excited?!! Now you see my predicament when I say that I can't keep surprises held in long. That was THE longest week of my life. Half way through the week I texted Lindsey's dad, asked him if I could come over wednesday night to talk to him about the engagement, and asking for his daughter's hand in marriage. I think I was more nervous about that than the actual engagement.  Wednesday came along and I arrived at their house, and I actually got to talk to both her dad and mom, it was very nice, we had a good talk, and the only demand her dad had was that I pay him 8 cows for his daughter... I am still in debt to him. After I got their permission, and I got even MORE excited to be asking the love of my life to marry me, the week dragged on even longer and I couldn't take it anymore, I wanted it to be Saturday already!! One part I skipped over, and this added to the surprise was on tuesday that week, the day after I had bought the ring, Lindsey texted me asking if it was a bad thing that the ring had been taken offline. I asked her what she meant and she said that she was looking at zales online and couldn't find the ring she wanted on there. I went on and looked for myself, and it was true, the ring was gone... I bought the LAST one!!!!!! Holy crap, I couldn't contain myself!!!! I was like, could this get anymore surprising for her?!!! I of course tried to play it off, like I was sad and that we would find another ring that she would love just as much, but she was SUPER sad that, that ring was gone. I did feel bad, but I just kept trying to picture her face when she saw that I had the ring she wanted. Ok, so its thursday now, and zales had said the ring would be done on saturday, but I called to see if it was going to be done early, and they said that it would actually be done on friday now!! In case you forgot, Lindsey was coming down on friday, I thought perfect, I can surprise her on friday now and not have to wait until saturday and we could be an engaged couple ALL weekend long. The funny thing is, is zales called 2 hours later saying that the ring was done and I could pick it up that night! I'm sure you can guess that I did just that! haha I got the ring on thursday and my excitement was unbearable! I had the ring in hand, but the only problem was, was I had no idea of how to ask Lindsey to marry me! I asked everyone I could, and that was the hardest thing to settle on, there were so many ideas!!!! And can you imagine, I could NOT sleep that night, I was so freakin excited!!!!!! Friday FINALLY came, and I had school, which took FOREVER, and all this time I'm trying to keep my cool while texting linds this whole week. She finally got here at about 6:30, and I finally got to see that gorgeous face! Again, back to me not being able to keep surprises a secret, I almost did it right as soon as I walked through the door, it took everything I had to hold back what I was about to do later that night. We both were hungry, so I took linds to her favorite place to eat... Cafe Rio. We had a marvelous dinner together, and after she thought we were just planning on going back to her place to watch a movie, but I insisted on taking her to this lookout that looked over the all of utah county. A little background on why I picked that lookout.... Over the summer and into the fall, linds and I regularly took sunday drives up to this lookout, where we would get a drink and go up there and talk. So that place was special to us. I started driving up there, and as soon as we got close she knew where we were going, but still she did not know what we were doing up there.... be proud of me. When we got up there, I had planned that there were going to be cars, so earlier that day I had gone up there and found this hill just off the road that had an even BETTER view of the valley. So it took SO much convincing to get her out of my truck, it was a little cold, but I promised it would be worth it.... I kept that promise. We started hiking up this hill, and the whole time all she could say was, "it's cold!" "I don't want to hike up there!" but I kept reassuring her that it would be worth it. Finally we got up there, and I started to hold her, the view was AMAZING! I started to tell her how much she meant to me, how much I loved her, and talked about other romantic things, all while she STILL had no idea what I had planned. I finally said I had a question for her, and I got down on one knee and proposed to Lindsey. Her face was priceless! All she could see was the ring sparkling in the moonlight, and she was of course VERY surprised. The only problem was, when I asked her, she backed up a bit so I couldn't put the ring on her finger when she said... YES! It was amazing, we hugged, we kissed, then we got out of the cold and started to spread the good news! Oh yes, did I mention that Lindsey's parents still thought I was proposing on saturday. haha so when we got to her house to tell them the good news, they were getting into bed, so linds ran into their room and from the closed door, all I could hear from Shonagh was, "BEN!!!!" Hahaha it was great. Such an amazing night, and moment. I could not be any happier to be engaged to Lindsey, she is the love of my life, she is my Best Friend, and she is my whole world!

-Ben

Love Day

This is Ben and I's second Vday together. The first one was way back in 2010, when we were just good friends. We both had to work that night and neither of us had a Valentine so he asked me if I would be his, jokingly of course. I  laughed then I told him yes. That night, when he got off work, he asked if he could come see "his Valentine". He showed up at my house with a card and two of my favorite candies. That is one of my favorite memories of him, such a sweet boy.

This Valentines was so fun. I was able to go up north for a few days over the weekend, and since one of my classes was cancelled, I was able to stay until Tuesday! I was so glad to be spending love day with Ben. We got up bright at early on Tuesday to go look at venues for the wedding. After that we spent the afternoon at the dentist office, Benners had to get his teeth cleaned.

After Ben went to school and work, he came over to my house for a quite night at home. We weren't expecting to be together for the holiday so we never really planned anything. It was perfect though. We got ourselves some pizza, bread sticks and cranberry juice! I made Ben a little Valentines package that I was planning on sending in the mail, but I let him open it that night. I told him that his present to me was this gorgeous ring on my finger....nope, he out did himself once again. First he wrote me the cutest letter, got me a movie I've been wanting to see for ages, chapstick (that kind where you "mix" them and they make a new flavor), SOCKS! and of course, my two favorite candies. He did so good, always full of surprises. I love him to death.

We made cuppin cakes! VALENTINES cuppin cakes. They turned out super delicious, as always. You can tell which one of us frosted which cup cake.

I love spending time with Ben, even if it's making a mess of the kitchen. I was sad to have to drive back to St. George the next morning. I think we had a fun Valentines, it's probably always going to be a fun holiday that we're going to love celebrating. Here's to two great Valentines with Ben and many more to come! 

Happy Valentines everyone, I hope yours was amazing. Valentines isn't just about being in a relationship, it's purely about caring for someone. I used to get little gifts from my parents on Vday, and it meant the world to me. So whether you've got yourself a man/woman, parents, a best friend, children, enjoy it! So share the love and make next year even better. 

-Lindsey

Our Story

To begin, I think we should start...at the beginning.

Lindsey's Side: Ben and I have known each other for almost 4 years now. It's hard to believe it was that long ago that we met for the first time. It was in May of 2009, me and three of my best friends went into Outback to see our beloved Young Womens Prez who happened to be the bartender there. We sat down in a booth and instantly my three friends started talking about this "cute bus boy" that was working there. The entire time we were there visiting I was straining my neck, trying to catch a glimpse of this dapper young man. When it came time to leave, they wanted to leave their numbers on a piece of paper so we could possibly see him in the future. I decided "why not" and put my name and number down, never actually seeing what this boy looked like. We left, and later that night we all heard from him and he told us his name was Ben Jenkins. (My favorite part? He still has the paper with our numbers on it) Ben started hanging out with us every once in awhile until he became one of my very best friends. We dated for a few months that next summer until I went away to school in St. George, and began dating again this past fall. It didn't take long for us to decide we couldn't live without each other and that's when he asked me to marry him, but we'll save that for a different post.

Ben's Side: Well, my side of the story... That night I had work, as usual, but what I didn't know was that very day I would be meeting the love of my life, my future wife. I was actually training another new employee that happened to be my friend, and when these superlative young women came in to eat, we both acknowledged how beautiful these 4 women were. The only problem was, when they left their numbers for me, I had to fight my friend off from taking them from me. I did win that fight, and I began to hang out with these girls. Linds and I became very good friends, and eventually fell deeply in love with each other, and we continue to strengthen and build that friendship and love as we are now engaged to be married this fall... but more on that story soon.