Ah the good old days...

I had a pleasant surprise this week and a blast from my past. A twist of fate brought my old roommate Amy from my freshman year of college to my town.  I hadn't seen her in years!  Our apartment was the best apartment I had my entire single life, so you can imagine what a treat it was to spend time with her.

We did the math and it has been almost 10 years since we shared an apartment at BYUI....we had to count again to make sure...yep still 10...ugh!  How did we get so old??  After comparing aching bones and pace maker stories we got caught up on the old days.  I felt like I was 18 years old again I was tempted to come up with some diabolical plan to meet boys...but then I remembered that I was already married to that guy I had to kiss first.

Anyways, Amy was a fun roommate!  She was the sporty one that was always joking around and in a good mood.  She also was the one to pull back the reins on some of our more wild ideas.  Probably a good thing, since I always seemed to have some sort of shenanigan up my sleeve!  I really wish she would have talked me out of the dry ice idea though....

And the pixie hair cut that had a striking resemblance to Joseph Smith's....and that time I tried to bleach my hair and it turned out lemon yellow...

Well let me just say Just Dance 2 for wii was a great investment!

 Where did Amy's arm go? 

 Eeeeek!!!  Help!!!  Someone flattened my head!!!

Notice how Amy's sporting the BYUI shirt? Yeah I planned that.  "Amy, I have a shirt you can borrow"  Mwooohahahaha!

 It looks like the snow flakes are coming off of Amy's pants!

Yup.  That was fun.  Come back soon Amy! 

Kissing!

Melissa: You should tell your version of our first kiss.
Ben: Why you already prefaced your comments with how mine will be embellished? And by-the-way your story was wrong...it was in your apartment not the lounge.
Melissa: Please tell your version it is so much fun!
Ben: No I don't think so.
Melissa: Don't be mean!
Ben: How is not blogging being mean?
Melissa: PLEASE!
Ben: Fine I will get to it when I have time!
Melissa: Oh good! I love you!
Ben: I love you too!

OUR FIRST KISS

Hello world I am about to share our first kiss with you...I know you cant wait...how exciting you are saying to yourselves. Well if I run for President of the United States you will have material to slander me with...

It all started with a DTR (define the relationship). We had only been actually dating for around two weeks....years in BYU-I standards! I told Melissa that we needed to talk. She ignored me knowing what was coming. It took me two days until I could corral her into a discussion.

I explained that we had only been dating for about two weeks and that I wanted to make sure we took our time and really got to know each other. I was just back from Iraq and so I was still pretty bold. I laid it out for her...No kissing...and that's about all I said.

Little did I know that when I said the "NO" word I sent Melissa into her challenge mode. I will not give out any numbers (I had only ever kissed 1 other girl she had kissed thousands of boys). Her carnivorous side came alive. She was out to kiss my head off!

Not two days later I was at her apartment...Melissa likes to get up close and personal...I looked at her and said "You are trying to get me to kiss you". She gave me a grin that I can only describe as dangerous! I told her right then that we weren't supposed to do that. Her reply was to move in really close and whisper into my ear..."you want to kiss me...you really like me".

What in the world is a guy supposed to do in that situation? I liked her so I couldnt run for the door...not two days prior I had just given her my "No Kissing" policy. I decided to be strong! I would win this game!

I told her that I would not be the first to kiss. She didn't like that! I have to give it to Melissa...she was tough. She held out for a whole 24 hours of telling me how badly I wanted to kiss her and getting really close before she was all over me. Naturally if a girl kisses you...you kiss back.

Well it was over. I was in trouble. All it took was one of Melissa's kisses for my "No Kissing" policy to go out the apartment window (Melissa will debate the location but trust me I know!).

In the end I have to thank the thousands of boys that made Melissa into a carnivorous kisser! She sealed the deal with the first kiss which happened to be her kissing me!

First Kiss

So there's a song on the radio that always makes me think of me and Ben's first kiss. 

"Are you gonna kiss me or not?"

It was in the Snow View Apartments lounge in the very cold month of February...ok maybe January.  Ben was taking way too long to take care of that detail!  For a man with a plan he was way behind.  So naturally I did what any woman in my situation would do.  I took matters into my own hands.


Kind of like Eve in the Garden of Eden.  I like to think I knew exactly how she felt.  Kidding!


I always like Ben's version of how our first kiss went down...let's just say it is dramatically different from mine :)  Maybe if we're lucky he'll respond to this post with his version!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDUOcHg5ijg

Name Change???

I propose a blog name change. Does anyone else feel like this blog should be named something like BenandMelissaBrubaker....huh what do you think? I think it has a ring to it! Just throwing that out there for consideration.

Dance space at last!

At last the New Year's resolution people have finally given up on the gym. Ha!  I knew they weren't in it for the long haul!

I finally had plenty of dance space at my Zumba class.  Yay!  I can dance as big as I want to.  And the teacher has finally noticed my potential, because she tried to get me to come up on stage.  Really she did.  Funny, that I turned her down isn't it?  The old Melissa would have been all over it!

New Melissa isn't as concerned with being the center of attention.  Instead I just like to get a good workout and come home and cook delicious healthy meals like this lovely concoction I pulled off P-dub's website:

It was divine!  I think Benjamin might even eat this one.

More String

Ben:  Can you send some string in your next package?

Melissa:  Like what kinda string?

Ben:  You know just some string.

Melissa: Umm for a kite?

Ben: No just some string to hang up decorations with.  I give SGT Hall half of all those decorations you send me, but he said he needs some more string to hang 'em all up.


Melissa:  Ah I see this is very important Army business I am tending to by getting plenty of string to Iraq...pronto!

Say no more!  The string is on it's way!  Or maybe I should use some sort of army code like 'papa's got a brand new bag' or 'the purple duck has flown the coop'!

Girls Night!

On a whim I gathered 4 of my little nieces in the surrounding area for a sleepover/pizza/just dance 2 party.  It was a blast.

It started out with a cartwheel contest which eventually turned into a Just Dance 2 battle.  I ordered way too much pizza!  Who knew 4 large pizza's was too much for 4 girls and 1 woman??  Actually my niece Lilly tried to warn me, but I was like oh good we'll have some left over for breakfast.  Ummm try like 2.5 pizza's left over for breakfast tomorrow!  And that was after we shared with Irma and my dad.  Oops!  Lesson learned!

Good thing we had that dance party which was "dance-tastic" according to Erin.  After burning off all those calories they were hungry for ice cream...they sure did a good job of twisting my rubber arm!

I learned a very valuable lesson tonight about decision making with such a large group of girls.  It's difficult to please everyone!  Picking out ice cream was interesting.  We agreed that we would get vanilla and one other flavor.  Oh boy! Picking out that one other flavor just wasn't going to happen!  There's really no compromising when it's between peanut butter cup and mint'n chip...ya know what I mean? 

....that hardshell chocolate was divine.

Anyways we decided to also pick out a movie from Redbox....also an interesting experience!  I think I was able to narrow it down to about 6 options...and somehow we ended up with something half of them wanted to watch.  I'm still not really sure how that happened.  I felt sorry for the poor guy behind us waiting for 1 woman and 4 little girls to make a decision on one movie!  I wanted to turn around and be like 'hey if you think we're indecisive about this you should've seen us in front of the ice cream'.  Oh man.  It was fun though!  It's interesting to see what their taste is in different things and what they are willing or unwilling to compromise on.  I find myself trying to remain unbiased on some decisions like the movie...but then I realize that I am so unbiased that I end up picking out the movie I least wanted to watch...go figure!

Well I'm beat from spending all of Ben's hard earned cash.  It's a tough job, but somebody's gotta do it.  Good night!