Summer 2010

Ever since we made our blog private, I have been such a slacker about updating! I really want to blog more, so I am setting a goal to update every Sunday:) It is really fun to have these posts to go back and look at. This summer was so much fun, but it felt like it only lasted about one day! We took way too many trips this summer and have vowed to stay home next summer and save our money!! We will see if that actually happens...j

We started off going to Gatlinburg, Tennessee with some good friends in our ward, The Clantons and the Weidlers. My sister Heather's in-laws own a cabin there, and were able to get us a great deal for a weekend stay. My favorite part of the trip was tubing down the river... my least favorite part was losing our 3 week old camera!! I am still so mad about that! Here is a picture my friend Wendi took with her camera, but sadly that means she is not in it!

A few weeks later (I think, it has been so long, I am getting the order of things all mixed up...) I turned 26! Jeff threw me a little birthday party and we had delicious shish-ka-bobs and he even made me a cake. He also got me a new camera since I lost ours in Gatlinburg.

Then a couple weeks after that, my best friend since my sophomore year of high school came to visit me! Carlos and Natalie are expecting their first boy a couple of weeks before me (the beginning of October). We had such a good time with them. We all went to Hilton Head, South Carolina and Savannah, GA for a little weekend getaway. The beaches on the atlantic ocean are much nicer than I expected, but Florida gulf beaches are still my favorite. This picture is us in front of Jeff and my favorite restaurant, Sonny's. The girl taking the picture for us kept telling Natalie and I we looked like sisters, we get that all the time and I love it!

After Natalie and Carlos headed back to Utah, Jeff had a coaching clinic in St. Simon's Island, which I think is in Georgia, but it could be in Florida, I don't remember... We stayed there for a few days and hit up the beach in the rain. Then we went to Gainesville to visit our good friends from BYU, Trent and Amelia Savage. They had just had their first baby boy, TJ (Trent Junior), a few weeks prior. He is the cutest little baby and we had a great time there. We got to go to a Godfather's pizza buffet, which was a childhood favorite of both Jeff and I. Jeff and Trent got in several games of x-box football of course, and Amelia, the babies, and I took a long walk to the park which was some much needed exercise! They are hopefully coming to visit us again in a couple of weeks, so stay tuned for more adventure stories! Oh, this picture was at the national park where gators roam free, but they were all hiding in the water this time around... we only saw a couple of heads floating...

One of the biggest highlights of this summer was a visit from Jeff's mom, dad, sister and nephew. Jeff's parents stayed for about 2 and a half weeks and Jenny and her son Will came out for the weekend and we all went to Myrtle Beach! It was so much fun and went by way too fast. Unfortunately Cheyenne got too much sun, because she got sick the last night at Myrtle Beach and it lasted for about a week until she was fully recovered. Here is a picture of the Bennum clan outside a restaurant in Myrtle Beach.

We stopped by University of South Carolina on the way home and right when we pull in, Steve Spurrier pulls up in his black BMW! Jenny was so brave and hopped out of the car, "Steve! You'll never believe it! We came all the way from Washington and Utah just to see you, so you gotta let us get a picture." He of course said yes, but insisted he stand by Jenny!! She was so smooth and said it as if she knew him, I could have never done that! haha... he had a three minute conversation with us and was on his way.

We had to get a picture of all of us before Jenny left, so we got this one on timer. It turned out great!

We had such a great time! I am really lucky to have such great in-laws... whenever I told people my in-laws were coming for 2.5 weeks, they were like oh no! I was like, no I am really excited! It was so much fun to have them here, we didn't want them to leave. We are still trying to convince them to move out here by us! Frank mowed the lawn every week for Jeff, Connie was always doing some sort of housework, and they both weeded our side plant area, which was a big project, we got to go on walks in the morning (or they would take Cheyenne and I got some time off). They also babysat for us so Jeff and I got our first real date night alone in several months and it was awesome!

Jeff went back to school the beginning of August, so our summer is sadly at an end... we were so spoiled getting him home all the time (he only was gone 3-4 hours a day in the summer)- now it is hard to have him gone again:(

I wanted to write more, but Cheyenne just woke up from her nap, so I better go get her. Stay tuned for more regular updates in the future- hopefully!!