Young Again

Thursday was Ben's Birthday!! We knew it was going to be a crazy day, I had a baby shower that my friend and I were giving for another friend and I had two volleyball lessons. Luckily we had a fun birthday breakfast and Ben opened his gift from the girls (waterguns). Aunt Gloria and Dana stopped by in the afternoon and we had so much fun visiting and seeing baby Jillian that I didn't get a chance to make a birthday dinner that I was going to try to squeeze into the hour between getting home from work and getting to the shower. So I stopped and got Chipotle for Ben (I think he liked that better anyway. When you never go out to eat, it is such a treat to get take out from your favorite place!!) So needless to say it was a crazy birthday, but Ben is such a great guy that he enjoyed it anyway. His seminary students played a joke on him and had cake for him too!! So all-in-all he had fun!

But since we knew ahead of time that we wouldn't have much time to celebrate, we planned to go to dinner friday night for his Birthday, just the two of us! When i went to get Amanda and Megan (our unbeliavably, awesome babysitters that both girls absolutely adore...you know your girls are well taken care of and loved when they ask you to leave if you are taking to long to say goodbye! and when they are constantly saying, "when do we get to see Amanda and Meghan"), Ben called the Hess', our neighbors, and asked if we could borrow THE JEEP for the evening!!! It was so much fun! Now if you just look at this jeep, you would think 'why in the heck would you want to take that thing on a date, or why do you think that jeep is so great...' But it is AWESOME!

Let me just fill you in on some background with this jeep. This was the jeep ben drove in high school. It was his brother Sam's before that and then Aaron drove it for five years, too. A few years ago Ben's parent's were going to get rid of it because it was pretty much falling apart. It leaked, it needed new tires, the mirrors were all off, most of the time you couldn't get it into second year, and nobody was driving it anymore because Aaron had gotten a new car, etc. We took it for about two years and Ben drove it to bart or to Mervyn's, if he was driving to work that day. It was our second car for a little while. But right before Livia was born we sold it to our friends, and now neighbors, the Hess'. It wasn't practical at all for us since the kids couldn't ride in it, we didn't have anywhere to park it and it needed a bit of work. It was a sad day, but we were happy for the Hess' to have it. We knew Ashley would love it and at least we could still see it around!

But even more than that history, that jeep was how I remember Ben! I used to watch for that jeep around town in high school (I was in love with Ben even in high school, although he didn't know it.) My hear would skip if I saw the jeep in the parking lot for a church dance. I would look for it at high school basketball and football games when we were playing mission. I always had my eye out for him and his jeep. We went to different high schools and lived on opposite ends of town. One time after a church dance, he took me driving in th eparking lot in the jeep. I was so nervous. I really didn't know how to drive clutch, and he showed me how. I did horrible, and i know it was because I was so nervous and giddy that he was actually touching my hand to help me shift (even back then, it was hard to get it into gear, you really had to muscle it in). I can remember when ben would stop by, which was rare, but you could hear the music from his jeep coming around the corner in the court, and my heart would kind of skip a beat. He was carefree with the doors off and his hat backwards!!! When we were a little older (seniors) he would let me drive the jeep around the block (I was better at clutch by then). My heart would just melt when I would see Ben in his jeep. And even when we had the jeep for that short time after we were married, I just felt so young and carefree whenever I would drive the jeep and especially when Ben and I would take it somewhere together! There is just something about an open air jeep that makes you feel a little more carefree! Especially when you have som many fond memories of such an awesome guy driving that jeep!!

Last night, except for crossing the dumbarton bridge, it was so awesome!!! (and even getting totally wind blown while driving across the bridge was great). Ben still new all the tricks on how to get it into gear and keep it from turning off (which it used to do quite often). Looking at him sitting in the drivers seat took us back 10-12 years to high school and I still got that same giddyness. He always looked so "hot" in his jeep and he looked even better now. (Although he still looks like he is 17 sometimes and last night you could tell he felt like he was 17 again!!) Ben was in his comfort zone again, back as a teenager and loving every minute of it! He even made the comment, when the Hess's want to get rid of this jeep, we are going to buy it back again.


Thanks Hess' for letting us have a great evening of being young again.