Finally, another update!

Hey all!

So I know that we totally are so busy that we never update this, but I'm going to try to get it started again. Haha

Tasha Updates:

Tasha is still studying music at UVU. She's been working really hard and UVU decided to reward her work with a half scholarship for next year! Yay Tasha! She's definitely keeping busy and working hard!

Ben Updates:

I'm still at BYU and loving being a music ed major. I've had the chance to help with a music preschool that BYU runs and it has been so much fun! I'm working at OIT and having a good time climbing in ceilings and going in the tunnels underneath campus. Of course, I spend most days cleaning out projectors...

Updates for the both of us:

We had a really busy end of the year and it was spent both here in Utah and in Oregon with the Johnsons. My brother Jon and his wife Marti came and so we spent the week of Christmas with my family at my parent's house. It was a lot of fun and it was good to have the whole family back together for the first time since I left on my mission in 2007 since Sam got back this past May. We had a very good Christmas and were very blessed with the gifts we received.

We flew out to Oregon Christmas evening and spent the next week with Tasha's family.

But first, a fun little video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzG96HRN3_E

Where was I? ...oh yes! Oregon!

We got to Oregon and the next day set out for the coast where we hung out with the Romrell clan. It was a lot of fun and we enjoyed being with everyone. You can see a bunch of pictures of what we did on some other family blogs so we'll call that good for now. After the coast we came back to the Johnson's and stayed there through New Year's.

Life has been pretty good here. Hopefully we can update this more often. It'll be good for us to keep track of what happens in our lives.

May the Slacker-ness Continue...

Yes. We are still complete and total slackers. Remember that time when we said we were going to post all the time and be consistent about it?
Well, here's the deal. We lied...

Basically here's the skinny on our lives right now:

Ben is at BYU doing his music thing. He's studying Music Education band style (mainly bari saxophone). Right now his teacher has him playing Alto for his lessons which is different, but he's getting LOADS better! It's fun to watch and listen :) He plays alto for his lessons, bari in band, and tenor in marching band. It's a little bit crazy! He also is taking a class where he goes and observes different music teachers in the area and gets to play with one of their bands. He learned trombone for the first half of that class, and I think (and hope) that he enjoyed it. Not only did he get to play with the band, but he also got to teach some small lessons, which is great experience!
He is taking another class called String Workshop where they learn the basics of all the string instruments (not either of our favorites....). He started on Viola and just passed his exam to finish that, which we're super excited about! Now he's playing Violin. I can't wait for next semester when he gets to learn Bass and Cello. It's so fun to watch Ben get better at his music :) Ben also plays in the BYU Marching Band. He's the section leader for the tenor saxophone section. He loves every minute of it. Lately the saxophones have gone out for burgers after the games and I usually join them which is really fun for me, since I get to meet and hang out with the people he spends all his time with ;).

I'm studying Music Education choral style at UVU and also loving it. I love spending time with nerds who are as obsessed with music as I am. Right now I'm taking voice lessons and singing some super fun songs! My voice teacher has some crazy plans for me this year. She wants me to audition for an "evening of concertos" that UVU puts on in February where I would sing my crazy french song in a concert with a live orchestra. We'll see how the audition goes. She also wants me to take 3 songs to a NATS competition in March. In choir we just finished Carmina Burana with the school orchestra as well as 3 high school choirs and the Utah Ballet Company was dancing with us. It was a huge production, but it's been so fun to learn. Now that we're done with that, we're working on Handel's Messiah. We're putting on a Messiah Sing-a-long December 5th, which gives us less than a month to learn almost the whole thing. Gah! I'm really excited though.

Ok...so that part where I said this was the "skinny" on our lives right now? Really, the "skinny" is a big fat novel. I apologize. So for a brief intermission...Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3nIScO592Y

Anyways...

Ben and I didn't really have a ton of time to get ready for Halloween this year. We knew we were going to a Dr. Who themed party, but until the day of the party (the Saturday before Halloween), we hadn't thought about costumes at all. We thought of a few cool ideas to try. We went to the Army surplus store to look at gas masks to be empty children, but they didn't have anything that looked right. Plus they were expensive and smelled funny...Then we went on an adventure to find Ben a fully leather outfit so I could be a plasma-vore and he could be my leather-man protector guy. But no success there, so Ben busted out one of his mission suits and we got him a pair of sneakers and messed up his hair a little bit, and he was the 10th Doctor. We tried to spray paint his hair brown, but it didn't go so well...mostly his hair ended up a scary purple-ish color. So he washed it out and remained blonde. I still didn't have a good idea for what I could be. We thought about a couple different ideas that I didn't love, but decided on something ridiculous, epic, and awesome. I was Donna. For those of you who haven't seen Dr. Who, Donna is a Bride that gets sucked into the Tardis as she's walking down the isle at her wedding. So I pulled out my wedding dress and wore it. It still fits! Not as comfortably as it did then...but it fits! Heck yeah! For Halloween itself, I house hopped as a plasma-vore because it was easier. It was so fun to see and hear about the awesome things our friends and family dressed up as.

Almost done!

Ben and I are helping teach a 5th and 6th grade band in Eagle Mountain this year which has been so fun! He has 15 clarinets and I have 24 flutes and an oboe. It's totally insane and loads of fun. Right now they're getting ready for their first concert. I'm not sure what the clarinets or brass know, but the flutes know 5 notes :) F, Eb, D, C, and Bb. They just had their first practice with the whole band together (there are about 60 kids total) and they sound way better than I thought they would! The kids are hilarious (I'm pretty sure I was never that funny as a kid), and it's amazing how fast some of them have learned. The flutes are crazy, but they're pretty well behaved for the most part. My oboe player reminds me so much of myself that I have to laugh almost every time I talk to her. She even looks a little like me. The difference is that she practices. Anyways, we're really excited for their concert, and we're so proud of them! It's been a great learning experience. And I have a ton more to learn before I become a teacher.

Just a few things that are coming up. (If I don't say them now, they won't get put up here till next year).

Ben and I are celebrating our first anniversary this month (on the 26th)! To celebrate it, we're spending Thanksgiving weekend with my sister and her family in Idaho, and then we're going to see THE MUPPET MOVIE! :) Can you tell I'm excited! Bahaha. We may also rock some Black Friday shopping. Who knows. We're also spending Christmas with Ben's family. I'm really excited to learn some of their traditions. Since my whole family is getting together this year for Christmas, we're flying to Oregon Christmas night to frolic with them and spend some time at the coast. The whole shibang. Anyways, that's it. You survived! Congratulations :)

Before we leave, just a thought... Is it just me or were laffy taffy jokes way funnier 15 years ago?

-Tasha

Huge Update...

Sorry everyone! Here at our house, we are total blog slackers! It's not that we don't try... Here's what usually happens. I look at other peoples' blogs and realize it's way past time for us to update ours. So I open a new post and start to type our adventures. Then I get to the picture part.... (this is the part where you cringe) You see, I'm mostly technologically inept. I can handle typing. I can search the web. For the most part I'm ok. But as soon as I try anything fancy-shmancy (like pictures), technology laughs in my face....

I put the pictures into the blog and they're upside down. So I take them out and try again, and then the text is gone! So I type it all again and try again and all the sudden the pictures won't upload (facebook does the same thing). So then I give up and tell Ben it's his job. Only Ben is a little busy. At some point we'll get better at it, but apparently now is not that time. So here's a picture-less rundown of what we've been up to. As soon as Ben has time, I'll have him throw some pictures on.

Hawaii was FABULOUS! I got fried about 3 times, but it was beautiful. We went to the Polynesian Cultural Center and it was amazing! I love learning about other peoples' cultures and it was so fun to see their dances and eat their food. By the way, Polynesians make amazing food...

I also gained about 5 pounds while we were there haha.

We did so many crazy fun things though! We learned to surf, ate at a kajilion fabulous places, went to the Laie temple which was beautiful, went to a HUGE open-air mall (and yes, I bought an orange muumuu and wear it all the time), took a helicopter ride with the doors off (so cool!),and we met a bunch of Sam's (Ben's brother) mission buddies. It was so fun, and the weather was crazy. One minute it would be gorgeous and sunny, and the next it's a torrential downpour. So cool.

Twin Lakes was also super fun. Ben wasn't able to come because of school, which was really sad, but we both survived. He also cleaned the entire house as a surprise for me while I was gone! What a great husband!! :) I went water skiing every day, sometimes more than once! I'm quite proud of that. It definitely showed me that I need to get back in shape. It was a lot harder to ski this year than in years past, but for anyone who maybe isn't quite so familiar with my stubborn attitude, that wasn't going to stop me! I promised my older sister Emily that in her honor, I would go on one morning ski (which means getting up by 6:30) and 'woohoo' loud enough to wake up grandma when I got in the water. I'm not exactly a morning person, but I did it anyways. And grandma cheated. She was taking sleeping pills so I didn't wake her up, but my aunt Dalita said my 'woohooing' was sufficiently loud.

It was really fun to spend time with my sisters and cousins and play with all their cute babies! We played really fun games almost every night, and stayed up WAY later than we should have. But that's one of the joys of Twin Lakes. We all get to be kids again :D This was the first year that I haven't either led or helped with Kid's Night, but I couldn't help but at least stop by. Zach did such a great job! The crafts were fun, the song was super cute and all the kids had a great time :) Way to go Z!

Unfortunately, I don't really know how to work our camera (it has buttons...) so I didn't get many pictures at the lakes. Hopefully next year Ben will be able to come too and he can work the camera.

Right before Twin Lakes, we had Ben's golden birthday. This was my first time being here for Ben's birthday since I missed it last year, So I decided to go all out. (Probably not the best Idea since I flew to Twin Lakes the next morning...) It was super fun. We had J-Dawgs (the greatest hot dogs I've ever had) 'cater' the party, and I made a cake that looked like Link's shield from the Legend of Zelda. I'll put pictures of that up when I figure out how... It took about 4 days to make because I could only work on it between 10 at night and 1 in the morning. But I learned some super...fun...lessons:

#1. Tasha + Kitchen + sleep deprivation = Really Bad

#2. Fondant hates me (probably because I'm not a huge fan of it either)

#3. It takes at least 3 days to get food coloring out of your cuticles and out from under your fingernails

#4. All rules about what color combinations go out the window when you work with fondant. Purple+a little black+red=Red. Red=Pink. Blue+Black=Blue. Doh!

#5. Cake decorating is a TON of fun, but I am way too much of a perfectionist to do it very often.

#6. If you frost the bottom layer of your cake and then put the second later on it when it's not totally frozen, all your frosting will smoosh out the sides of your cake, and there isn't a dang thing you can do about it!

#7. If you take a recipe for a 9x13 pan and try and double it for a 14x14 pan, bad things happen...namely cake exploding over the edge of the pan all over the inside of your oven

Before I went to Twin Lakes I also went to the doctor to figure out why my body isn't happy with me and hasn't been since High School. And I got some real answers! I'm taking some natural supplements and a couple medications, and we've totally revamped my diet. I don't digest wheat very well, so I've stopped eating it. It's not my favorite thing, but it's made a huge difference! I have way more energy, and Ben says I'm less grumpy too (poor guy...)! We've also decided that the two of us could be a lot healthier, so we're cutting a lot of sugar out of our diet as well. And now that I've put it on the blog, we actually have to do it! :) It's been so nice to have energy and feel healthier. Who knows, maybe I'll even start running! Or probably not...

School starts on Monday. I am far from ready, but I'm super excited. Ben has been at Marching Band all week which is kind of crazy, but he loves every minute of it. And he has the greatest farmers tan/burn ever :) He's the squad leader for the Tenor Saxophones, as well as the band technician. He loves playing with electronics, especially when someone pays him to do it.

Ben is taking 14 credits and doing marching band this fall, so he's spending a lot of time at school. He can't work with the marching band schedule, but his job has been wonderful and they're holding his position for him this semester! He got accepted into the Music Education program at the end of spring semester, so he had to take classes this summer to catch up, but we're so glad he made it, and that taking a few classes this summer saved him a whole year of school!

We ran into his high school marching band director a few months ago, and learned about a great opportunity. We're going to be team-teaching a 'pony band' of fifth grade students. It's a prep band to get them used to their instruments etc. before junior high, since the school doesn't start band till then. It's up in Saratoga Springs after school twice a week, but the experience will be so worth it! I can't wait to start :) I'm taking 17 credits this fall and working part time which will be pretty crazy, but I really want to get my school done as soon as I can. Needless to say, our blogging is not going to be any more consistent once school starts....

Anyways, that was probably way more of an update than was really necessary, but I've learned that blogging is how I remember all the fun things I've done, and all the crazy things I'm going to do! :) Wish us luck!

-Tasha

Cooking Mishaps

A few weeks ago, Ben and I went to his uncle's house in Paradise, UT for the weekend so I could complete the 'Uncle Dale Test'. It consisted of a huge rope swing (which I almost hit a tree on...), horseback riding (which I loved), and a barn dance! I haven't been to a barn dance in forever. Anyways, at some point when I can figure out why my camera hates me, I'll put some pictures up, but not now.

Anyways, Ben's Aunt Donna made pancakes for breakfast on Sunday morning and she had fantastic homemade syrup that we all ate way more of than we should have...So I asked her for the recipe, which is absurdly simple. Being my overconfident self, I thought it would be a piece of cake to make, so I tried it this morning. For those of you that know how we cook in our family, 1t of vanilla usually translates to about 2 or 3 t. So of course I did that with the vanilla. But Mapleine is a totally different story. You should NOT put more than the recipe says....

We ended up with about twice as much syrup as I intended to make, due to the extra sugar and water I had to add to balance the Mapleine. But we have a life-time of syrup, and I don't think Ben will complain if we eat waffles more often to make up for it.

Also, we did just go to Hawaii, and it was fabulous, but I want to get the pictures before I post about all of those adventures. Hopefully they'll be up soon.

-Tasha

Hawaii

Ben and I are back from Hawaii. I can't tell you how bummed we were that we had to come back early for Ben's school, but hopefully we'll be able to go back sometime and see some of the things we missed. I don't have any pictures yet, since my camera is possessed and didn't function on our trip...but as soon as I get them, you'll get a detailed run-down of our trip.

Anyways, we're back. And burnt. Badly. We have discovered that I have a gift for getting sunburnt...I got burnt a little one day, and then became obsessed and paranoid about always having 50 sunscreen on. And then I got destroyed by the sun on Monday. I put sunscreen on repeatedly and the sun laughed at it apparently. But with all the awesome things we got to do, I have to say it's worth it :) We'll give a good report soon, but for now I'm going back to bed.... Goodnight!

-Tasha

More Birthday Joys

After getting my beautiful piano (which I love!) I thought that there was no way my birthday could possibly get any better. FALSE! We went over to Ben's parents' house a week ago or so and they had a belated gift for me. Now I want you to think momentarily...what could you add to this birthday to make it even more epic?

....Hmm...

How about an orange pots and pans set!!!!! Yup. That definitely does it. Best birthday ever! And Ben loves it too, since it has inspired me to cook a lot more than I have in the past. I'm sure we'll post many pictures in the future of the cooking experiments and disasters that are bound to happen in those pots, but for now, just be jealous... :D

-Tasha

Cooking Mishaps

Recently Ben and I decided to eat out less. Much less. So last night I made 'Brinner' (Ref. Scrubs). I made breakfast wraps full of eggs, potatoes, sausage, cheese, and salsa. With bacon on the side. I thought it would be a quick and easy meal. Which it was...until I caught the bacon on fire. Just so you all know, if you have an open flame stove, don't put you're plate covered in bacon-soaked paper towels too close. It WILL catch fire. Fortunately while I was rummaging through the cupboard looking for the baking soda, Ben stomped the fire out, without burning our wood floor. And the bacon was saved! Yay Ben!

-Tasha