Favorite Quotes

“Mortality is a precious drop in the bucket of eternity. Why not make each minute pleasant and fulfilling? We must make our own happiness. As President Spencer W. Kimball once said, ‘HAPPINESS does not depend upon what happens outside of you, but on what happens inside of you. It is measured by the spirit with which you meet the problems of life.’ ”

~President James E. Faust, March 1996~

"Patience means active waiting and enduring. It means staying with something and doing all that we can—working, hoping, and exercising FAITH; bearing hardship with fortitude, even when the desires of our hearts are delayed. Patience is not simply enduring; it is enduring well!" 

~Dieter F. Uchtdorf, May 2010~

"'Be not faithless, but believing.' BELIEVE in yourselves. Believe in your capacity to do some good in this world. God sent us here for a purpose, and that was to improve the word in which we live. The wonderful thing is that we can do it."

~President Gordon B. Hinckley, March 1996~

"We KEEP MOVING FORWARD, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." 

~Walt Disney~

"Someone said once that true LOVE must include the idea of permanence. True love endures... Love makes us instinctively reach out to God and other people... Love comes with open hands and open heart..."

~Elder Jeffery R. Holland, April 2010~

“Those who bring SUNSHINE to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.”

~J.M. Barrie~

"To be offended is a CHOICE we make; it is not a condition inflicted or imposed upon us by someone or something else." 

~Elder Bednar, Nov 2006~

“If our lives and our faith are centered upon JESUS CHRIST and his restored gospel, nothing can ever go permanently wrong. On the other hand, if our lives are not centered on the Savior and his teachings, no other success can ever be permanently right.”

~President Hunter March 1989~

Hooray for Disneyland and One Year of Marriage!!!

Once upon a time Ben had never been to Disneyland.  Then one day he married Kailene who loves going to Disneyland.  Kailene was sad that Ben had never experienced the joy of Disneyland and wanted Ben to go with her.  When Ben and Kailene had been married a year they decided to celebrate their year of marriage by going to Disneyland!!!  Hooray!

 We left Sunday after church and stayed in St. George, then drove straight to the beach on Monday.

And on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.......

We went to Disneyland and California Adventures!  Whoot!

On our way home we took a detour and went to the San Diego Temple.  Wow!  It was so wonderful.  It was a great way to end our Anniversary Vacation. 

I really can't believe that it has been over a year since we were married.  It's strange to think we've really been married for a year because I feel like we got married yesterday but at the same time I feel like we've been married forever and it's hard to see my life without Ben in it.

I feel so blessed that we have been sealed for time and all eternity. 

p.s. to myself.  We left on August 19 and got back on the 25, just so I remember the days we were there.  We were also there on Ben's 24th Birthday.

The last few months....

Wow!  It's been a while since I've posted.  We've been really busy and having a lot of fun.  However the summer is not over yet and our summer adventures aren't done either, so a post of all our adventures will be coming soon......

I love many things.  To name a few random ones:

©Cheese

©Dancing with Ben

©My SonicCare toothbrush

©Harry Potter books

©The color purple

©Disneyland

©Ben playing his cello

©Singing

©And my recently discovered love: BAKING BREAD 

Regular Sandwich Bread

Russian Black Bread

French Bread

I remember back in Young Women's a sister in our ward came and taught us how to make this braided bread.  It was one of my favorite activities and after I learned I started asking my mom if I could make it all the time.  It was just so yummy. 

Since we've been married and I now have my own kitchen my love of baking bread has grown leaps and leaps.  I finally have learned how to make my moms incredible rolls that she makes for everything and thanks to pinterest and other sources, I've discovered so many awesome bread recipes!  I've made french bread, strawberry banana bread, Russian black bread (Ben's favorite and one he found!), regular sandwich bread, cheesy bread (yes!), and many more.  I love adding garlic salt and parmasan cheese to many of my recipes.  In my kitchen right now I have Artisan bread raising. A recipe that I got from one of my friends our ward here in Provo.  This same friend bakes with a stone and has offered to let me borrow one of hers to see if I like it.  I'm pretty excited to try it out!

I just bought unbleached flour to try and see if cooking with different flours makes a difference.  Many recipes I've tried call and highly recommend unbleached flour or bread flour, and so far I've only been using your regular all-purpose bleached flour (except on the Russian Black Bread, it uses regular flour and rye flour in it, and just f.y.i. I got the rye flour at WinCo in their bulk section, if you've never shopped at WinCo in their bulk section, you should, because it's awesome).  Also a big thanks to my parents for getting me a Bosch Mixer, it's my favorite kitchen appliance and it rocks at helping me make bread!

Well that just about does it for this post!  If anyone wants any of my recipes just let me know!  Oh and this is my first attempt at adding a video to the blog:

Cool/Interesting things about this video:
A- Ben is using an authentic Guatemalan machete that my parents got him in Guatemala
B- Yes, Ben's head is touching the ceiling because it's only 5' 10" in our kitchen in some places (it varies...)

Many miles later

July was a pretty crazy month for us.  We started out by going to Montana the first week of July for Ben's Family Reunion.  Ben's brother Matt lives up there and has a really nice house (with a pool :)  It was so relaxing and so fun to spend time with Ben's family.  I actually didn't take any pictures.... Kind of weird for me.

After Montana we went on a crazy road trip/vacation with my family.  I love family vacations with my family. My dad is the vacation planning master.  He plans everything out to the second almost.  He books hotels way in advance and some how finds the coolest/randomist places to visit.   I took lots of pictures so if you want to see more click here.

My family is awesome and we all made matching tie-die shirts to wear together :)  It helped so we didn't lose each other.  (since it's so hard to spot out a bunch of blonde girls walking around)  Don't worry we didn't wear them everyday.

Here is just a quick list of everything we did:

Mesa Verde National Park

Hiked up to a pretty waterfall somewhere

Saw a beautiful old cathedral

Went to a rattlesnake museum. I didn't know that there are many different kinds of rattlesnakes

Stopped by the Mormon Battalion Monument out in the middle of no where

Albuquerque New Mexico Temple

Rode a huge tram up the mountain

National Nuclear Science Museum 

Random Pistachio farm 

White Sands National Park







Went to Texas where my Uncle works as a dentist

Almost went to Mexico

Carlsbad Caverns National Park

Stopped to see my cousin Derek and his family in Arizona 

Saw the Grand Canyon. 

And to finish it off, since Ben had never been, we went to Bryce Canyon National Park

I feel so blessed to have come from such a great family that loves to do fun things together.  I hope that Ben and I will be able to carry on this tradition with our family.

Here is a rough map of our crazy vacation! :)

Zion National Park Trip

We have some friends that wanted to do a road trip down to Zion National Park to hike the narrows.  We loved the idea and got really excited about it, and then our friends ended up not being able to go, so we turned it into kind of a crazy hiking and biking adventure, that my body was not entirely prepared for but it was still awesome.

Click on this picture to see more pictures from our trip :)

We left Wednesday night and drove all the way to St. George and stayed at my grandparent's condo.  We left super late so we got to St. George super late, so we woke up really late the next day.  It ended up working out really well though because we had decided to hike the narrows that day.  For those of you that don't know too much about Zion National Park, the "narrows" is a narrow canyon that the Virgin River flows through that you hike through.  There are many different hikes you can take.  Some can get really technical and crazy and it takes more than one day so you have to pack camping gear with you.  We did the "easiest" one where you hike up the river for a few miles then back.  I didn't think it was going to be too bad.  It was only going to be about 5 miles round trip.  I didn't take into account that you are walking knee to thigh deep water upstream.  Let's just say it worked muscle groups that I hadn't worked in a while.  Which made me super sore for the rest of the trip :)











On our way out of the narrows we could hear TONS of frogs croaking :)

The next day we went mountain biking.  Ben was SO happy.  He loves mountain biking so much.  When he was a kid, he would go on bike trips to Southern Utah all the time.  One of his favorite places is Gooseberry Mesa right outside of Zion National Park.  We just did a simple trail called the Gem Trail, since I'm a beginner (and probably will always be...).  We went with Ben's brother Adam's brother-in-law Wade and his son and Wade's brother-in-law Mike.  It was a lot of fun.  There were only scary down hills at the beginning that Ben loved flying down.  The majority of the trail was just fun ups-and-downs.  The end was my favorite part.  We rode along side the dried up ravine, and all the colors were just so pretty!

We got back to the condo, cleaned up, and went to the St. George temple!

The next day we finished off our trip with going back to Zion National Park and hiking Angels Landing!  We also saw the weeping rock and then rode the shuttle up the canyon and then rode our bikes down.

Beautiful Sunrise!

The top of Angel's Landing

Weeping Rock

It was such a fun weekend.  I love that Ben and I both enjoy doing so many things together, especially outdoors!

Our Little Blue Cave

Welcome!  This is where we live:







Yes I know, it is a very cute little blue house, and doesn't look much like a cave, but here are the reasons it qualifies as a cave: We actually rent the basement apartment of this house, the ceilings are about 6'5" through most of the house and 5'10" in the kitchen, it's cold and damp most of the time, and the walls sweat (I'm serious about this),  Here is our entrance:

Side note to this picture. Notice the purple watering can in the bottom right-hand corner.  My mother-in-law gave it to me!  So wonderful!  She also gave us flowers to plant in our yard!  Here is a picture of one of the flowers.

What's it like living in a basement apartment of a cute little old house?  Well for starters it's not ideal, but we're beginning to love it all the same.  One thing we do like is that we do have a yard, and there is a little bit of garden space!  When we moved in last fall, the previous owners had planted some tomatoes (Ben was pretty excited about this and we need to buy more to plant for him), and some strawberries!





Also we have a beautiful apricot tree!  Talk about popcorn popping :)  Oh, and note the white picket fence that surrounds the yard as well.

Next, it's in a very convenient location, it's kitty-corner from our church, and is also within walking distance of BYU and Smiths.  We are also very blessed to have a washer and dryer inside our house, that's not coin-operated, works, and hasn't ruined any of our clothes  Also to my satisfaction, we have a gas stove, and it's actually pretty new.  I was spoiled learning to cook on a gas stove.  There is also a good amount of counter space so I can make bread, cookies, etc.

Living in this little apartment is teaching me a lot.  At a recent General Conference President Monson said, "I believe that among the greatest lessons we are to learn in this short sojourn upon the earth are lessons that help us distinguish between what is important and what is not."  By this I'm not saying that it's bad to have nice things (Ben and I actually were at Home Depot just a couple of days ago and walked around the kitchen section dreaming and planning out our future home), however, I'm just realizing that nice things, are still just things.  It is also helping me learn how to adjust to different circumstances.


Well I hope you enjoyed looking at our little apartment!  There are more pictures here and I will be uploading a couple pictures of the inside once they are straightened up :)

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!