January 1, 2013:

This should really be titled “Condensed blog of 2009-2012” because it is really long…but here it is!

Ben & Teyanna met at Arizona State University and were joined in holy matrimony in Mesa, Arizona on May 16, 2009 (pics here). Ben graduated from ASU May 14th with a bachelors in math and economics and Teyanna had just fished her second year of college at ASU. In August 2009 they drove across the country to Maryland where Ben started a PhD program in Finance at University of Maryland, College Park. On the way out they had quite an adventure, stopping in Utah, Yellowstone, Mt. Rushmore, Nauvoo, and Kirtland.

Once in MD they stayed at Teyanna’s grandparents for 2 months, and then Teyanna started a job at a law office and they moved to a basement apartment in College Park, MD. Ben was  glad to not be driving 75 minutes to school and Teyanna was glad to finally have a job, although the stay with the Schollians was great! Teyanna worked for 1 year to get in-state tuition and started school at UMD fall 2010. Teyanna worked at the School of Public Policy while studying at UMD and graduated 2 years later, in May 2012 with a bachelors in economics and a minor in statistics.

The plan when they moved to Maryland was to buy a house and rent out part of it to help pay for college. It took longer then expected but they finally closed on a house in June 2010, just in the nick of time to get the 8k tax credit. With the help of Teyanna’s Uncle Paul, Ben added a bathroom & kitchenette to the basement and finished the 2 two basement bedrooms. When school started that fall they were in the basement and were renting out the main floor to 3 college students. It still took a couple more busy months of working on the basement and going to school but it was soon quite nice.

In 2012 Ben worked on his dissertation (he finished required classes May 2011) and worked part-time at the Treasury’s Office of Financial Research. After applying to lots of jobs & a couple master’s programs, Teyanna decided to take a job as a research assistant at the Federal Reserve in DC and started in July 2012. They somewhat spontaneously decided to take a trip to Europe in October 2012, since Ben will be busy teaching next spring and then will be on the job market.

Adventures & Fun Times

Some shared hobbies we’ve enjoyed:

Travel: Teyanna loves to travel and grew up going many places each summer. Ben would rather have a “staycation” where you just relax at home (or maybe a cruise), but he has let Teyanna “drag” him to quite a few places. UMD also gives him some money to travel to finance conferences so we get to explore some of those places as well. Here are some of our favorites (it might be a long list so feel free to skip it ;).
-Jan 2009 – Florida with Ben’s family. Teyanna met most of Ben’s siblings and they went to Disney World.
-May 2009 – Honeymoon: Bahamas cruise, a couple nights in FL, and a couple nights in MD (to look for a house and see Ben’s siblings who didn’t come to the wedding). The cruise was awesome but we got sunburned really bad the first day so we had to take it kinda slow the rest of the time :-/.
-August 2009 – Drove from AZ to MD. Stopped in UT (saw Ben’s brothers), Yellowstone, Mt. Rushmore, Nauvoo, & Kirtland. Pics are here.
-December 2009 – 5 days in AZ (with Teyanna’s family) & 3 days in FL beach-house with Ben’s family (pics here)
-June 2010 – Ben went to Victoria, Canada for a finance conference while Teyanna’s Dad & sister visited MD
-July 2010 – Palmyra (free tour:) and Niagara Falls – beautiful!!!
-August 2010 – Lake Powell (w Stephens family) & Havasupai Falls hike (w Afton&Sean – pics here)
-December 2010 – went to AZ for Christmas & back in MD for New Years
-June 2011 – Santa Fe & AZ. Ben had his finance conference in Santa Fe. They explored it together for a couple days, then Teyanna went to AZ and Ben joined her their for a Memmott family reunion (camping in AZ).
-Dec 2011 – went to AZ for Christmas and then back in MD for New Years
-Jan 2012 – 8 day Cruise :D. Left out of Baltimore, stopped 1 day in FL and 2 days in the Bahamas!
-May 2012 – Shenandoah, VA with Teyanna’s family, after celebrating her graduation. Pics are here.
-June 2012 – Las Vegas, NV. Ben had a conference their but they went together to explore and then Teyanna went to AZ to see her family and her cousin, Afton, who was 8 months pregnant. Saw a good magic show in Las Vegas and and AMAZING Cirque du Soliel show – Ka. It really was amazing!
-June 2012 – 2 days after getting home from AZ, Teyanna flew back because Afton had her baby.
-Oct/Nov 2012 – EUROPE :D! London, Paris, Rome & Greece – three nights in each! They were each amazing! Pics are here.
-Jan 2013 – Spent Christmas 2012 in MD/VA and went to AZ 12/29/12-1/6/13 for New Years. Ben went over to San Diego for 1/3-1/7 for a finance conference.

Shows: Teyanna loves plays and Ben likes them too. We don’t watch too many movies, Teyanna watches a bit of tv shows online and Ben plays a game once in a great while. Favorites seen together:
-Les Miserables – on Broadway in Baltimore – Ben surprised Teyanna 😀
-Wicked – in London
-Mouse Trap – murder mystery with some friends in MD
-All’s Well That Ends Well – in DC for Teyanna’s lit class
-Candide – in DC for Teyanna’s lit class – great book and musical
-Secret Garden – at Ben’s High School in VA – his little sister was in it 🙂
-Merchant of Venice – at Ben’s little sister’s high school in VA
-Harry Potter # 7part1 – in MD with some friends… not a play but they bought out a theater on opening night and some people dressed up really good 🙂

Hikes: We like hiking and occasional camping. We’ve done lots of little hikes but some memborable big ones were:

• Flat Iron, AZ (got engaged there in Jan 2009 and hiked 10 yrs later …much more sore that time lol)
• Camelback, AZ (2.4 miles)… first time T said I<3U… and 11 yrs later we did a little sand ceremony thing there
• Havasupai Falls, AZ  (22 miles), Aug 2010 – spent the night at the bottom of the canyon
• Sandia Mountains, NM (~9 miles) in summer 2011
• Old Rag Mountain, VA (9 miles) in summer 2012
• Grand Canyon, AZ (18 miles)… in one day in Feb 2019 :-/

Family: Ben is the 4th of 15 children and grew up in VA near DC. Teyanna grew up in AZ where we try to visit often but we had fun living 75 minutes away from her Schollian extended family while we were in MD/DC area.

Well I don’t expect anyone to ever read all of that, but that’s a bit about us =). In any case it’s a nice journal entry for posterity’s sake ;).