The Second.

The next time I saw Ben wasn't until August of 2005. He was now home from his mission, and Leslie and I were getting ready to go out of town for "AcappellaStock" which was our new yearly routine. I met up at Leslie's house to find Ben asleep on the couch with Adam on top of him.

Leslie had a roommate Melanie that was going with us, and Ben is mainly Melanie's friend, who, through Melanie met Leslie...and Adam is Melanie's 1 and a half yr old son.

Honestly, it was the cutest thing seeing those two all tuckered out. I was so quiet, because I didn't want to wake them. Apparently, Ben didn't get any sleep that night and had to work late the night before, so I was told to try to be quiet.

It was a lot of fun watching them sleep...

both of them making fun sounds and tossing and turning.

Finally Ben yawned and turned over to see this crazy person, me, staring at him

...and mumbled out a "oh hi" as he rubbed his eyes and woke up.

He then went into roadtrip/packing/dad mode, and changed Adam's diaper, and

packed up the diaper bag, and got food from the fridge, and

somewhere in there tried to make himself presentable.

Unfortunately, since Leslie's car isn't so big, we had to take seperate cars,

and so Ben, Leslie, Melanie, and Adam were in one, and Erica and I were in the other.

But fortunately, I am smart, and actually brought some walkie talkies, so the trip to Utah was a lot more entertaining than originally planned. We played a lot of roadtrip games between the two cars. It was probably one of the more fun roadtrips I've been on.

We stayed at Ben's sister Bethany's house, and upon arriving there, I immediately fell in love with her and her kids. They were so kind and hospitible, and a lot of fun...also, we stopped at a gas station on the way down, or perhaps a Walmart, (I don't remember) and I bought a set of Hillbilly teeth. Which started the whole "Buckwheat Benny and The Lumberjack" saga.

I don't remember too much from that trip, but this is what I do remember. Taking a lot of goofy pictures with Ben and the hillbilly teeth, singing a lot of songs, and the night after the concert.

After the concert was over we went back to his sister's house, and started getting ready for bed. Ben was sleeping upstairs, and the girls were sleeping downstairs...

I changed into my pajamas, and went upstairs for a drink, and somehow started talking to Ben for a couple of hours. Both of us at that time were in relationships with other people who we cared about alot, but had a hard time seeing things working with them in the future. That night Ben told me his dreams, what he wants out of life, what he wants in a relationship, and shared his feelings on family, church, friends, everything...and I likewise.

When we were both yawning beyond control, and finally decided to sleep, we both decided that when we got back in town, we needed to call it off with our boy/girlfriend, because we both knew that we weren't going to be happy....

About 3:30 am I finally headed back downstairs to find Leslie, Erica, Melanie and Adam sound asleep. I climbed under the covers and passed out.

The next morning I woke up to someone stroking my hair, with their leg wrapped around me saying, "Good Morning Beautiful!" in the nerdiest voice ever.

Sure enough, that's how Ben wakes people up, well, atleast me.

Turns out I slept in later than everyone, and woke up to find that Ben made me breakfast, and even brought it to me, with a huge glass of orange juice, saying that Leslie informed him that that is a "must" for me in the morning.

I was quite suprised, I'm not used to people making me breakfast,

and catering to my every need...well, within reason.

We played a bunch of games on the way back as well...

and at the end of that trip I had decided that this Ben kid pretty much rocked my socks.