Benj is 24 today, happy birthday baby cakes!

Its Benj 24 birthday today. I thought I would share 24 reasons why I love this kid soo much.

One. He is always willing to help out around the house, and never complain when i ask him to take out the trash :D
Two. He works hard to support us and pay the bills, even though he sometimes gets discouraged because I bring home more money than him, he is always willing to pick more hours and work hard for his family.
Three. He can take me to the temple and loves the gospel just as much or more than I do.
Four. He is half Asian and I love that his family has a different culture than I'm used to, it opens my eyes on how the world really is, not just how it is in a little bubble town like Rexburg
Five. He loves to travel, which makes it a lot more fun because I love traveling too.
Six. He cares about his family and sisters and is always think about them,
Seven. He does not mind babysitting or changing diapers, and I know he will be an amazing dad someday.
Eight. He is intelligent and does well in school, and is looking to make our future easier by getting a good education.
Nine. He is an early riser, which is awesome because I'm not so at least one of us is happy in the mornings.
Ten: He takes me out on dates on a regular basis and always has something planned up his sleeve.
Eleven. He worries about money. I know that sounds retarded but I dont always worry about it so he helps me so I don't over spend on anything, unimportant or something we don't need.
Twelve. He loves my baking and cooking, I love to bake sweets I just don't like to eat much of them, but he loves them and eats my food even if I experimented that day and it doesn't taste all that good.
Thirteen. He is an amazing cuddler at night while we are falling asleep or in the morning when he wakes up, and when I wake up, I always need my cuddle time with him.
Fourteen. We never run out of things to talk about, but we are okay with silence too.
Fifteen. He loves music just as much as I do, we just have different taste in artists.
Sixteen. He is always willing to allow me to have girl time when i need it even though he doesn't have a ton of guy friend here at BYU- Idaho, (there all in provo for school) 
Seventeen. He is patient with my needs, and understand girls, ( he is the only boy in his family)
Eighteen. He is willing to look at both side of the situation even when I don't want to look at how the other person is feeling or I am one sided.
Nineteen. He is amazing with technology, 
Twenty. He never curses, well sometimes but once every new moon or something. Not that I have a cursing problem but I do do it more often than he does and its a nice reminder not to get so mad.
Twenty one. He is always reminding me to pray and read my scriptures when i forget too.
Twenty two. He listens to my complaining when i have a problem at work at school or at home. I know it gets annoying sometimes. but im thankful for it.
Twenty three. He loves doing service for others.
Twenty Four. He loves me unconditionally and looks past my flaws.

I could name so many more things that i love about him. He is such an amazing person and i dont know what i would do with out him.

I LOVE YOU BENJ!

another post, there are three, and i dont really know what im doing, so uh yeah.

Everyone week Benj and I try going on a date just because even though we knew each other for a full year we really didnt go out on a lot of dates. We mainly hung out in group settings until April of last year and then we started dating, its a good way to keep making sure you really know your spouse and to just really make time for each other. This week we invited some friends of ours to join in with us and do a double date, we made sloppy joes and stuck the meat in a crock pot on low so it wouldn't burn, and headed up to Green Canyon, this is where we took dinner up with us plugged it in on a table and went swimming, it was such a fun time!

I've been behind on my blogging, mostly because we have a pretty plain life. Three posts in a row, Keep reading.

Post number two. Three Days Grace Concert

Three Days Grace, has been one of my favorite bands, since high school, and when a friend of mine had mentioned told me they were coming to the Idaho Falls area I had to get tickets. So for my birthday i bought her an extra ticket. It was a pretty amazing concert, the band that sung before them was My Darkest Days and they were awesome.

This was right before the concert you can see how excited we were of this concert.

Anyways here are the rest of the pictures from the concert.

Also we stood in line for like a billon hours, just kidding, like three though, everyone was so excited that the line was super long when we got there and there were still three hours before the concert started.

I've been behind on my blogging, mostly because we have a pretty plain life. Three posts in a row, Keep reading.

Post number one. Boise 

A couple of weeks ago we went to Boise to visit my sister and her family. It was a fun little vacation, we love spending time with my sister because their family is so easy going.

We were there during St. Patrick's day, kiera made an awesome dinner, we had green pancakes, green eggs, and bacon. It we so yummy.

While we were there we did a ton of things...
Shopping

Kambri tryin on hats, such a cute little girl.

We did lots of playing with the little kids. While we were there we slept on an air mattress, and the kids loved playing dont touch the ground, because as Kambri put it the floor was lava.

They also loved Jumping on uncle Ben.

We did so many other things like going to eat at a sushi, and an awesome Mexican restaurant.
We loved visiting and hope to come back soon!!!

Pictures from the Sacramento Reception

I know this is like seven months old but I thought I would show you some pictures of what our reception in Sacramento looks like. We did a traditional Chinese theme for this reception. Benj's mom planned the whole thing since we were too busy honey mooning it up and going to school, She put a lot of hard work into it. We actually wanted an open house down there, we just thought it would have been easier on everyone if we did but Benj's mom wasn't familiar with that so she went the traditional route and we were okay with that too.

For both wedding receptions we had a table that had pictures of us through out our lives. I really wish you could see this closer there is a picture of Benj when we was a baby and he was such a budda baby, hope our kids look like him.

 Right before we got married Benj's family went to Taiwan. That's where all of his mom's family is from, and when they got back she had brought back a Chinese dress back for me to wear for the reception since they did the whole reception in Taiwanese form. Benj's grew up with this culture his whole life, he even had a Chinese shirt to wear that night. 

Here is a picture of the Whole family, unfortuantly my family couldn't be there but I know they were there in spirit! And Benj's family was awesome. 

A picture with my parent, did I ever mention that Asian dresses give you more curves because Asians don't usually have curves, yeah it gave me curves that I wasn't used to because I have never really had curves before this I was so nervous about it all.

We even had a live band playing at our reception. Chinese music and all! :D

We had a huge dinner buffet type of this so much good Chinese food!

Benj's has some awesome friends. This guy got up and sang a song for us at our reception. It was so sweet.

Benj's friends from work

San Fransisco Trip

While we were in Sacramento this Christmas we took the opportunity to go to San Fransisco. We woke up really early in the morning and drove to Pittsburg CA, yeah I never new of this place till we were driving and Benj finally told me about it. Then from Pittsburg we got on the BART, which stands for Bay Area Rail Transit. it was my first time riding something like in a while ( the last time I road anything near to that was when our family went to Europe my junior year and we road a subway.) 

When we got there we walked everywhere, but our first stop was China Town. It was awesome and there were so many stores to look around in, we even got hungry enough ans stopped at a small bakery and shared some yummy pastries. There were a lot of new things I have tried since marrying Benj, When you marry out side of your own culture (Benj being from Taiwan and all) you get new experiences you wouldnt have tried any where else. Some good some bad but... mostly good. 

 Sorry you will have to turn your head side ways for a couple of pictures, I'm still new at learning about blogging. We also stopped at the Grace Cathedral Hall, but didn't seem to get very good pictures of it. It was beautiful but the moment I walked in I new it couldn't be a church I ever attended, there just wasn't the same spirit there as we have in the LDS church. After walking around there we then walked to the Warf. I loved it there. By the time we walked around and looked at stuff we were starving so we stopped at some nice restaurant  and ate some calamari and nice big bowl of Clam Chowder. 

This was right before we went to dinner. The sun was setting and  it wasn't too cold out there. So beautiful!

Our trip was amazing and next time we are in California we plan to go again, there just wasn't enough time to do all the thing we wanted to do!

Christmas in Sacramento

I know this is a month late, but we forgot our camera in Sacramento ( where Ben's family is from). Anyways we spent this Christmas with Benj's family. It was really different for me because I'm used to having the snow, and well lets face it, it was my first Christmas away from home. We spent about two weeks there, and did many things. Christmas day we went to the Zoo with his family, and it was really fun. I love the zoo but I haven't been to a lot of them because lets face it Idaho doesn't have a lot of zoo's and the zoo's they have don't have a lot of animals in them.

I thought I would share a couple of pictures of the Zoo. Here is Benj with a Heina. See we don't have these in Idaho Zoo's.

I just had to share this photo because Giraffes are my favorite animal and they were so cute when we were at the zoo!

The zoo wasn't the only thing we did while we were there. Benj's family is all about food, so when the holiday come around that's all they really do. We ate so many good Asian food while we were there I even got to experience Benj favorite food called zhongzi. Its this steamed rice that has meat in side of the rice and then its wrapped in banana leaves. it looks something like this.

And then when it's open it looks like this.

Its actually really good, but you really have to be open to new ideas, and new tastes, because this is kinda of an acquired taste. 

For Christmas eve we had huo guo  which means hot pot. Basically what you do is get a portable stove top to put a pot on and then you throw a bunch or meats and veggies in there to cook, then you pull them out and eat what you want. There's also this Asian sauce its like a bbq sauce they make with peanut butter sauce almost.

Sorry its side ways for some reason I couldn't get it to turn.

We also went to San Fransisco but I think I'll save that for another post.