How it all began.....

  I have been wanting to start a blog for a while, and I've tried and failed many times, because I've been trying to make my blog look really neat, with a really cool title with pictures of Ben and me in behind, but I finally decided that I can just work on that as time goes by, so here goes another attempt!  My first post will take you back in time to how "Ben & Kailene"  began!
  Ben and I met in January of 2010 singing in a choir, Choralaires, at the Ogden Institute.  We became friends and went on our first date at the end of April.  We continued to go on dates throughout the summer and got to know each other better.  Toward the end of September we decided to start dating only each other, or as Ben put it, "I just want it to be you and me."  That fall we did a lot of fun things together.  
  Our relationship had some ups and downs, due to both of us being human.  During one of the downs, I turned in mission papers,  got a mission call to the Philippines, and did a study aboard/humanitarian trip to Ghana, West Africa.  Then on July 8, nineteen days before I was scheduled to enter the MTC, Ben drove up to Mantua and asked if I would considering staying home from my mission and consider marrying him (with the promise that we would go on lots of missions together when we were old and if I really wanted he would find a way for us to get married in the Manila Philippines Temple that was in my mission).  After a long weekend of prayers and tears, I decided that if he asked me to marry him I wouldn't go.  So on July 16th he proposed. 

This is us right after I said yes!  :)  We went on a little hike in the Mantua campground.  When we got down from the hike Ben had arranged fireworks to go over the lake in celebration!  (well maybe the fireworks were because of the Little Valley Days.....) 

This was the view from on top of the hill.  You can't tell in this picture but the Brigham City Temple is almost right in the center of the two Mountains coming together.  It was perfect!  I always thought that getting proposed to on a mountain would be wonderful.  Now whenever we visit Mantua, we pass our little "engagement hill."  








Before we got engaged we had talked a little bit about when we would get married.  We decided that it should be soon because if we were going to wait, then I might as well go on my mission.  Ben was started at BYU in the fall, so we decided we should probably get married before he started school, and we wanted to leave enough time for us to go on a honeymoon, so August 17th was decided with a "preception" the night before on August 16th.  Yes, only a month after our engagement.  Lucky my older sister Jeanette and my parents are amazing, and we pulled it off!  We celebrated our 7 month anniversary two days a ago on St. Patrick's Day, and it's been wonderful!