Letter to Charly

Dear Charly,

How are you? I love starting letters off with that phrase. It's so overused that it makes it fun to use it more. This is a letter in a blog! Yay. Remember when I wrote you an actual letter? If that isn't true love than I don't know what is because you know how I hate stamps. The good news is that I don't have to buy stamps anymore to write you real letters. I can just write them and then hide them under your pillow or something.

You want to know what is fun? When we skip class together and watch movies. I really love spending time with you like that.

Also, can we make a green smoothie sometime soon? I feel like we haven't done that in a while and I miss them.

I hope you know how much I love you because... I love you. I'm so glad that I married you. I'm going to try my hardest to keep you happy your whole life because I love to see you smile.

I'll see you soon, really soon because I'm sitting right next to you right now.

Love, Ben.

P.S. This is the end of the letter.

Dear Benjamin,

I hope you know that you are my whole world; you mean everything to me. I am so glad to be married to you. 

Thank you for doing the dishes when I don't. 

Thank you for driving me to dance when I didn't have my glasses. 

Thank you for making such an effort to make date night special. 

Thank you for getting Subway for me that one day. 

Thank you for making me oatmeal in the mornings. 

I know I don't always do the best at showing you that I notice and appreciate the effort you put into our marriage. I want you to know that I do notice. I know that you are committed to us and I want to show you always that I am too. I will love you forever. 

Thank you for being so patient with me, all the time. You always treat me like I'm the best thing that ever happened to you. I love you so much for it. 

Love Eternally, 
Charly 

Burritos for the Homeless

On our honeymoon, Charly and I went to Ensenada Mexico.

While we were there we decided to get some food so we sat down at a little restaurant and ordered a couple burritos and a bottle of water to share. Little did we know, we should have ordered a couple bottles of water and a burrito to share... When they brought out the burritos I thought I was going to die. Charly and I shared a look. Each burrito was the size  of a loaf of bread! almost, maybe not quite that large but they were HUGE.

"I'm not going to be able to eat all of this," Charly said.

We started eating. Not only were the burritos huge but they were also very caliente and so the one bottle of water didn't seem like enough. I figure they were trying to get us to order more water.

When Charly and I both stopped eating we still had a half a burrito each and a little left over water.

We paid for our meals and left with the leftovers in a carryout bag. We soon ran into a homeless guy that only had one leg. We decided to give him our leftover burritos. It was cool because he thanked us and we felt good about our choice. We also had a passing Mexican tell us that they thought what we did was really cool. It made us feel even better.

Before we got to far away though we realized that that poor homeless guy was going to die of the super spicy burritos if we didn't give him our leftover water so we ran back and gave that too him as well.

Ben and I almost killed a homeless man.

For our honeymoon, Benjamin and I went on a cruise that stopped in Mexico for the day. To get the whole experience, we decided to stop for lunch. 

Our server was very eager to please and very eager to sell. "Can I bring you some beers?"

We declined, of course. 

"A coke? A rootbeer?" 

We declined again, asking for a bottle of water. Then we each ordered a burrito. 

It wasn't until they brought the burritos out that we realized we should have gotten one to share. The burrito was HUGE. It was seriously the size of four burritos put into one. 

We both managed to eat half of our burrito. It was probably the spiciest burrito I have ever eaten. We joked that they were trying to get us to buy more water from them, it was that hot. 

We wrapped up our left overs and left, but we knew we couldn't take it back on our cruise ship. We passed a homeless guy sitting on a bench and decided we would offer them to him. He was happy to take the extra food off our hands. 

As we started to walk away, I said to Ben, "Those burritos are really hot, we'd better give him our extra water too." 

Before we turned and ran back, Ben said to me, "Otherwise those burritos might kill him."

The Moment I Decided to Marry Charly

I remember exactly what I was doing the day I decided to marry Charly.

Charly and I had been talking again through Facebook, texting, and even Skype. She had sent me a book that told the story of the things she had been doing since our breakup.

I was at my sister Melissa's house and I was reading the book she sent me. Something about the book captivated me. I couldn't put it down. I read it from start to finish with almost no interruptions. The book made me realize how much I missed Charly and even how much she had grown. I felt the Spirit very strongly and I knew that I wanted to marry her.

That night I prayed about it.

"Dear Father in Heaven," I started, "I want to marry Charly. What do ya say?"

After asking the question I was filled with a sense of peace and I knew that Charly was a great choice for me and that God approved. I could almost imagine Him saying, "Go for it Ben!"

It was a special moment for me and I will never forget it. I know without a shadow of a doubt that Charly and I will have a happy marriage and that I made the right choice when I decided to marry her. It won't always be easy but it will always be worth it and I know that as long as we choose, God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost will help us in our lives and marriage.

The Moment I Decided to Marry my Husband

This one is tricky for me. Have you ever tried to pinpoint a moment that gradually grew into being?

I remember a couple months after we went on our first date, we were at my cousin's house together. I was sitting on the couch and he was rolling around on the floor with my seven-year-old cousin, playing some sort of game with her. As I sat watching, I knew that Benjamin was the sort of guy I could marry, the sort of man I wanted as the father of my children. 

It wasn't until later that I decided Benjamin was the one for me. I think it happened before we were officially dating; I knew that Ben had all the qualities that I was looking for in a spouse. 

I remember after we were dating, I was so sure Benjamin and I would end up together. We were in love and I knew that, so I didn't foresee anything coming between us. I would pray to Heavenly Father at night and say, "Heavenly Father, Benjamin is the one I want. I want to marry him." I felt so good afterwards, every time, I was sure that meant that I just had to be patient because eventually, my wish would come true.

Then we broke up. 

That put a damper in all my plans. It was hard for me because it had been a done deal in my mind. I felt that I was giving up on Benjamin and that it wasn't right to fall in love with someone else when I had been so in love with Ben before. 

Luckily for me, Benjamin later decided that I was the one he wanted to marry. 

Luckily for him, I hadn't changed my mind. 

Half an Angel Food Cake and Balloon Surfing

My favorite dessert? desert?.. is angel food cake. I usually ask for it for my birthday.

Charly has never made an angel food cake before and she decided to make it for me for my birthday. Now if you want to hear the more interesting side of this story you better go read Charly's blog because she had quite the adventure.

Now my side of the story is that when I got home from doing eight hours of physics homework there was angel food cake, and a super cute wife waiting for me.

The cake was a little interesting to look at. There was a little bit of candle wax melted into it, and the entire bottom half of the cake was... unique... BUT the top part of the cake tasted great and I loved it. It was perfect for me. I am super thankful to have a wife that thinks of me so much and works so hard to make me happy. I have so much to learn still and I have a good example to learn from.

One of the other things that I got to do was balloon surf. There were enough balloons to cover the entire floor and so I got on top of them. They held up my weight just fine. Charly thought I was crazy I'm sure but I loved it. Balloon surfing is fun.

Benjamin's Birthday Cake. Ahem. Sort of.

Every year for Ben's birthday, he has his mom make Angel Food Cake. It's his favorite cake. This last week, I was asking him what he wanted me to make for his birthday dinner. 

"I don't care what we have for dinner," Ben said. "But I do love Angel Food cake ..." It was not a subtle hint at all. If you have any background knowledge of my cooking skills, you'll know why I was more than a little nervous for that particular request. 

The morning of his birthday, we both had to leave for class around the same time. I got home around eleven in the morning, the house empty. I pulled out my mom's recipe for the first time and felt my stomach sink. 

I didn't have cake flour. 

Or cream of tartar. 

Or a tube pan. 

I thought maybe I could do it without those, but I wanted to wait and ask my mom. I decorated our kitchen with streamers and blew up 174 balloons (hours of entertainment for Benjamin) until my mom was home from work. I called her and told her my dilemma. 

"So, can I make it without those?" I asked. 

"Well, I'm afraid not," she said. "Definitely not without the right pan, or cream of tartar. You might be able to get away with using something other than cake flour, but it just won't work as well." 

"Okay," I said, my heart sinking. What was I going to do? I really wanted to make the cake, since it was Benjamin's favorite. Plus, I'd already bought candles for it. "I'll see what I can do." 

After my mom wished me luck, I hung up and decided to head to Wal Mart--despite my time limitations and the floods of rain that were coming down outside. 

I went to the pan section first. I found a round pan, with a bottom that came out. I wasn't sure if it was the right one, but I couldn't see any others that might work. Unfortunately, I had left my phone at home so I couldn't call my mom to make sure i was right. If you know anything about Angel Food cakes, you know how this is going to end. 

I finished my shopping and hurried home. I started mixing the cake, following the recipe exactly. I was very worried I was going to mess something up and was being very careful not to do so. There was one part of the recipe I wasn't quite sure of, so I called my mom. While I already had her on the phone, I told her the kind of pan I had gotten. 

"That'll work, right?" I said. I expected her to assure me it would. 

She told me it wouldn't. I guess because the cake batter is made up primarily of egg whites and sugar, the cake can't support itself in the middle while it's baking. That's why angel food cake pans have a smooth tube in the center and the batter cooks itself around it. 

Well, I was determined to make this cake, especially since I'd already started to. Realizing that Wal Mart hadn't had what I needed, I decided to go door to door on our street trying to find a pan I could borrow. We have plenty of older ladies in the ward and I figured somebody had to have them. I went to four different houses with no luck; the fourth house, though, the lady introduced herself as Shelby. She told me that she did not have one, but she knew her mother, the bishop's wife, had one. 

It was a miracle. Except that her mother wasn't home; she was at parent-teacher-conferences, as a teacher. Shelby took me over there and looked everywhere she could think. Her 8-year-old son was with us and was convinced that "Papa" would know where to look. He ran and got the Bishop, who had no idea what a tube pan even was. 

To make a long story short, I went home without a pan, my time before Benjamin got home dwindling. Still wondering what in the world I was going to do, I looked up online if there were ways to make an angel food cake in a different pan. And I found one! 

Following the instructions, I emptied a can of peaches and washed it out. Then I took some shortening and spread it on the bottom of the can to seal it to the middle of my pan. It made an interesting makeshift pan. I then poured the batter into the pan and put it in the oven with a sigh of relief. I thought my cake nightmare was over. 

THEN, about five minutes after putting it in the oven, I smell burning. I open the oven and the cake batter is DRIPPING OUT OF THE BOTTOM OF MY BRAND NEW PAN. I wanted to cry. I pulled the pan out and tried to scrape the burnt cake off the bottom of my oven. It was too late, of course, to stop the burnt smell from filling my entire house. 

I didn't really know how to fix the pan, so I set it on a cookie sheet and put the cake back into the oven to finish cooking. When it was done, I took it out and flipped the whole pan upside down (exactly how you are supposed to). As soon as it was upside down, the entire bottom of the pan decided to come apart from the rest of the pan and flop onto the counter, cake first. 

At this point, I was so done with the cake. I didn't even try to get the bottom (which, by the way, was covered in melted shortening from my "sealed can") of the cake off the pan. I set the entire pan bottom on a plate and stuck the candles in that. 

Ben got home and the first words out of my mouth were, "You do not know what I went through to make you this cake today."

It was worth it. We ate the entire top of the cake off. And it was delicious.