Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Death Star, Wet Sponges, and Long (Short) Books

Apparently last week's blog post was a cop out. Our apologies to everyone who was waiting with baited breath for an enthralling post about the excitements of our lives. Unfortunately, not every week is as exciting as the Death Star trench run.

Stay on target...

Anyway, since school started Jill has been working her night job while still having early class because I, in my inability to be legal, could not work. So the poor girl has been working late into the night (morning?) and then waking up early to be a good student. I'd tell the whole story of why I wasn't legal to work, but it's boring and, quite frankly, I don't think I even understand it fully. Suffice it to say, I would be shipped back to Canada if I had started working before being authorized.

Fortunately, my employment card finally showed up last week and I was able to get my job back with the MTC doing all their video needs. This means that Jill was finally able to quit her job and get all the sleep she needs! At least, she gets a lot more sleep now than she used to.

I got back to work just in time because last night at devotional Mr. Ballard spoke (M. Russell... Mr...get it? Ok...). Church AV brought their super-nice broadcast truck so we can broadcast to the international MTCs, since our current camera/broadcast situation in our facilities are being upgraded. Funny how "upgraded" means "doesn't quite work yet."

Working with Church AV has some great perks. One such perk is we actually get fed dinner before the devotional. Otherwise we'd have to fend for ourselves.

The second perk is the equipment. This is the cameras they have and we get to use:

Drool...

The lens itself is worth over $25,000. I've absolutely loved all the time we've had working with Church AV. Knowing how to put together and use these crazy-nice broadcast cameras has been amazing. Nerd alert.

But like I said, last night Elder Ballard spoke, and although it's sometimes hard to actually listen to the talk (since I have to focus on getting shots and listen to voices in my head - ie. the director), it's still a huge blessing to just be in the same room as him.

Moving on to this past Monday, Jill had to volunteer at some teacher/parent carnival/party/thing at an elementary school. I was a little nervous, because the last time I was at a carnival-type event I ended up with sopping-wet sponges thrown into my face.

Anything for the kids...

But I digress.

We were assigned to help at the fishing pond booth where kids fished for fish (derp), and when they caught one (ie. when the person hiding behind the blue sheet clipped a laminated paper fish to the paper clip at the end of the child's rod), they could trade it in for a free book! How awesome is that!? Pretty dang awesome. Except that the Iron Man and Captain America books were all in Spanish. But that didn't stop some of the kids from running off with them. The first kid to win a book held up and Iron Man book and asked if we had one in English, since he didn't know Spanish. I said no, but told him he could use the book to learn Spanish! As a joke. Well, I'm not used to interacting with younglings of that age, and so he decided to go with it. Before I could tell him I was joking he had run off with the book, excited as ever.

At least it has fun pictures in it.

Anyway, we had fun helping out and giving out free books.

Speaking of books...

Today I just finished reading J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion. WOWDEEWOWWOW that was a tough one to get through. If you thought the actual Lord of the Rings books were difficult, you should try reading the history of Middle-earth. It's a doosey. But at the same time, it's rather quite interesting (if you're in to histories of fictitious places). Just thought I'd share that with the world. I felt like it was a big enough accomplishment that I deserve to. It's weird, because that book is 304 pages and it took me forever to read it, whereas I can read a book that is gigantic (say, for instance, A Memory of Light by Robert Jordan) in just two days.


4 weeks

2 days

Something's wrong with me. But we already knew that.

So that's enough about me and my reading habits. Jill and I will do better at updating this thing and making it interesting for everyone. Have a nice day, and wake me up when September ends.

Monday, September 15, 2014

Today's Blog is a Vlog

In light of nothing terribly exciting happening for us to write about, we decided to leave with all you wonderful people the latest vlog post from my YouTube channel. If you ever had that uncanny desire to snoop around our apartment, now's your chance.

Enjoy.





Also if you haven't yet subscribed to this blog I highly recommend it. Also the YouTube channel (shameless plug).

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Ducks, Date Night, and Domestic Abuse

With the start of school this past week we decided to revert back to our childish ways to celebrate. And there is nothing that says "Hey look I'm 5!" like feeding the ducks on campus. Luckily we had some left over hot dog buns to spare so we made a trip over to the duck pond. We were originally sitting on the bottom bench of the amphitheater when Ben had the great idea to move up a few rows, just in case the ducks got close. So Ben took the first chunk of bread and chucked it at a nearby duck. Apparently bread makes a sound when it hits the grass because about 7 ducks turned their head when he threw it started to waddle towards us. Then they all started to invade. They were dropping poop bombs like crazy as they infested the feeding ground. But don't worry we warded them off with crumbs of bread. Only then did I look up to the sidewalk where this girl was standing there, just beaming. I'm pretty sure we made her day. :)


Only after feeding the ducks did we realize how fun it was to be 5 again so we decided to continue to live in the past. For date night we colored from a Star Wars coloring book and built a blanket fort! Oh my gosh is was my favorite. It was an improved coloring experience because both of us can now color in the lines. The drawing even made it to our fridge where it'll probably stay for a while. And the blanket fort lasted two days. It would have lasted longer except our bishopric decided to come for a visit and we decided to destroy the thing. But it was great for when we needed it to watch Doctor Who and eat popcorn. Maybe I did homework in it the next day. Maybe it was the best experience of my life. Why do adult choose to grow up again? 


Now don't forget the domestic abuse! Ok not really but it made for a good alliteration for the title. But really Ben is HiLaRiOuS  when he sleeps. We always try to pray before I go to work at night but we forgot on Sunday. So he told me to just wake him up when I got home (at 2 am) and we (I) would pray. Well I snuck into our room that night and tried to gently wake him. The next think I knew he was flailing and yelling "No! What?! No!" Luckily I had taken a step back because he starting slapping the air around him. I couldn't help but laugh as he was still trying to process what was going on. I'd hate to have an intruder come in at night because they might get slapped to death. But I guess as pay back for scaring him he head butted me in the night in his sleep. It's all fair I guess. :) 

It's been nothing but fun this week. I even tried making some homemade bread in a bread machine  and then I made bread dough in our fancy blender. Both turned out so good that we even took some to our neighbor and got to know him. We even invited him to our ward luau this week. We're just lovin' life and spreading the joy. We love you all!!

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Kentucky!

Do you remember that scene in Home Alone where Kevin is at home with all of his family, there are people everywhere, and it's just absolute bonkers? Well, that's kind of what it felt like last week at Jill's house in Kentucky (but in a very good way).


Let's be honest, I (Ben) am the second child of three. There aren't a lot of us. And so being in an environment where there is family everywhere is just...different. As busy and full of people as it was, it was awesome. I had a ton of fun with all of Jill's family (er, my family now, too, I suppose). You think I'm obligated to say that because it's mostly her family reading this. Folks, if I didn't enjoy it, I just wouldn't have mentioned it in the first place :)

For a video blog version of how our week went, check it out here (or just go to the bottom of this post where I gave in and just posted the video on to here). For you readers out there, let's get to it.

We started off the week by waking up at 5 o' stinking clock in the morning on Tuesday. Follow that up with a flight to Texas, mixed with a layover, and continued on with our last flight to Cincinnati, and it sure as heck beats driving.

Day 1 was travel. 'Nuff said.

Day 2 involved driving even more hours to get to Mammoth Cave. For those who don't know what Mammoth Cave is, it's a cave. And it's big. Really big. Mammoth, even.

That's not the cave.

Unfortunately we had to pay to see the cave (unlike some people...). Anyway, we began our three-mile lantern-lit tour by descending into the depths of despair...er, darkness, rather, and from then on out continued in lantern light. It was a really interesting tour, because as we went deeper and deeper into the cave, there was less and less touristy stuff from the old days (old as in 1800's days), and more and more...empty cave. We saw some old writing/images on rocks and walls that, according to Mr. Tour Guide, dated back about 2,300 years ago. Some chump Nephite making his mark on the world.

Our tour guide.

Following the cave we saw where good ol' Abe Lincoln came from. That was also worthy of a picture (mostly as proof that we actually went).


Friday was the day. That is, the day we had the Kentucky version of our wedding reception. It involved lots and lots of lemon-flavored food (which was so good), and a lot of standing and seeing old friends. Well, Jill saw all the friends. I just stood there and looked good. I guess that makes me the trophy husband, amIright!?

Yes, I am.

But it was fun. Jill knows a lot of very nice people. Some were even Irish! And Canadian. And there were some Americans there, too, I think.

But lucky us, we got lots more free stuff! And money. We always need more money. We are so blessed to have been the recipients of such great generosity!

Especially the Star Wars gift. That one wins (obviously).

Look, Star Wars!
We went swimming on Saturday and we all tried to slide the fastest down the slide and yeah anyway, that was the week in a very small nutshell. Basically I love Kentucky. It was a little humid, but nothing worse than the Philippines, so it's all good. And green. Lots of green. But the best part was the people. Sure the house was full and the people were crazy (you know it's true), but that was by far what made the trip as awesome as it was. I'm grateful to be part of that large and crazy family. People apologized to me a lot throughout the week for the chaos and what was said and what people did but don't worry folks! It didn't phase me. I loved every minute of it.

But that doesn't mean we're not moving to Canada :)

__________________

Here's the video I mentioned earlier. It's different content (sort of), so enjoy!