What's Been Happening...

Ben and I met in the Spring and were married October 14, 2011. He has been such a wonderful blessing in my life. He is always with me every step of the way. I couldn't ask for a more supportive, righteous, loving, and fun husband. He even survived our engagement through my student teaching (yes, we got married in the middle of my student teaching--we were that in love :) Speaking of, I loved student teaching. I loved my students, my cooperating teacher, discussing literature, hearing their comments-- everything! The only thing I did not like was the constant stress and time constraints, but I am sure if I taught for a few more years, I would get used to it (that's what all the veteran teachers kept telling me). I digress... Ben and I got married in the middle of my student teaching. I student taught until the middle of November when, for the first time in a long time, I was not involved in any education. Since then, I have been trying to accept the fact that I am done with my bachelors, masters, and teaching certificate and I can move on from the phase of education (in the formal sense, of course). It's been nice not having "homework" and "studying", but I miss the satisfying feeling you have after turning in a 30 page paper in a weird, partially insincere way.

Since student teaching, Ben goes to work every day at the bank as a Lending Operations Analyst (he's been doing this for a few years), and I have been finally able to concentrate on making our house a home. We are living in North Ogden, UT, which has a charm about it that I just love! It is nestled at the base/bottom of the mountains, has a great view, wonderful hard-working people with great values, and my favorite community grocery store! Note to everyone: North Ogden is much different than Ogden, even though the only addition is "North," it's totally different than you would imagine Ogden. In fact, we live twenty minutes away from Ogden. We have loved the opportunity to be in our home:

My favorite features are: the kitchen, the big family room, and the fact that Ben and I get to start married life here. Some things that we are going to work on, eventually, are the multi-colored walls, dings, dents etc. Almost every room is a different color. We have a hot pink room, a mustard yellow living room etc. Some of the colors we like and some...not so much. However, the view we have from the back of the house/our back yard makes up for any "color"ing.
Even more than the view, we love the people who surround us. We have amazing neighbors and love our ward. With the last snow storm, we had so many people come snowblow our driveway for us (we haven't gotten one yet...we forgot that we live on the side of a mountain :) We plan to get one soon. These people are so kind, and we are so grateful for their examples. I am in the Young Women organization right now as the Laurels Advisor. I am loving the people I serve with: the leaders and the girls (who happen to be many of my former students from student teaching). Ben and I feel like this is the place where we are supposed to be right now, which is why we came here in the first place. We are so grateful that we are living here, have found each other (after a very long search--at least, that's what it felt like), and have been making so many friends. This was a super long post, but how can you catch up on a few months?! I know--you can't!