The Verdict Is In

Marriage is awesome.

It's been 8 months, and upon reflection that's what I have to say. I'll even take it a step further: marriage with Jana B. is EXTREMELY awesome. It is so great to be on the incredible journey of life with someone as great as Jan. Most people who read this blog are already fans of Jana B; but let me just expound upon a few of the reasons why it is so great to be married to this woman.

MAJOR CUTENESS: If Jana were in the military, this would be her title. When I was a young lad, I used to collect Ranger Rick magazines--I loved animals in general, ferocious and cute equally. My room was adorned with pages of those magazines, and tons of them were totally cute animals. I like to think I have a pretty good radar for cuteness, and the young Mrs. Jana Eliason knocks it off the charts, causes it to shatter, and sets the whole console on fire. Consistently cute and irresistible. It's so great to be around someone who is always totally cute. No matter what happens, when you run into JB, it's like "Oh, hey! Life is good."

Constant companion: I have always loved being part of a team. I loved being in a rock band; I loved working with other people on projects; I always form study groups--I like to belong to a group (maybe this comes from being a part of ten kids). But the kind of scary thing about many teams I've been on, is that they come to an end one day, and all you do after that is reminisce. But when you're married, it's great because you are on a team that lasts forever! And let me just say: Jana is a dang good teammate.

Pick up the slack: With JB, there's never any slack. Anytime one of us can't get something done that needs to be done, the other steps in to make sure it gets done. Case in point: Jana has done so many loads of our laundry, and the fact is that I will never catch up with that.

Just good: I've said this once, and I'll say it again: JB is just good. She's so reliable in that way. In her treatment of me, of others, and in her life in general, she's just good, and it's inspiring.

Hilarity abounds: Some may or may not know this, but my wife is a really funny lady--both clever and zany. She picks up on extremely subtle things, but she also has no major problems clowning around.

The reality is, I could totally go on and on. But I'm just putting this out there--marriage is AWESOME. And marriage with Jana B - TOTALLY awesome.

Year in Review

Dear Friends,

Here is a brief update on Team Eliason. We've had a great 2010 and we're excited for all of the things coming up. We thought today's date was was particularly memorable, being 1/11/11 and all.

2010 truly started, for us at least, on May 1st. Mark and I were sealed in the Salt Lake Temple the afternoon of May 1st and started our awesome adventures together! Our decision to marry each other has been the best one we've ever made, and we consider it"the greatest investment" (that's why our blog is called that - because family is the best investment of time, energy, and love).

The summer months were spent in Tempe and Gilbert, AZ, where Mark worked for Teach for America as an instructor for the new corps members (working 14 hours days or so) and I worked as a research assistant for some BYU professors. We spent the weekdays in a dorm room on ASU campus and enjoyed the cafeteria and the convenient gym and pool each evening. (Having a cafeteria necessitated the use of a gym and pool each day.) Then, on the weekends, we would go to Mark's parents' condo in Gilbert that was on this beautiful lake (man-made of course). But, we had breakfast every morning outside on the patio with the water and the ducks and the cute turtles. Then we went inside because even by 7:00am, it was pretty hot outside. We had a very kind ward there and we were able to spend time with Mark's brother, Jon, and his family and we also spent time with my brother, Ammon, and his family (as well as Jes's awesome family). A great summer together.

At the end of the summer, before Mark and I went back to Provo (Mark was going to start his first year at BYU Law and I was going into my third), we took a trip to the Big Apple - so fun! We stayed with Aunt Jan and Uncle Paul and had an absolute blast. We have included some pictures below, so we will not discuss this in detail.



(Mark has strapped his backpack on tight, just in case he falls out of the raft or something....cute boy!)

We entered law school this last fall and had so much fun going to school together everyday. Although law school is not always just a fun party (shockingly), if you are ever going to do it, the best thing is to have your spouse with you. If only one of us was in law school, talk about never seeing each other! But this way, we are always seeing each other. We have been so grateful to spend most of our first year together side by side at our study carrels and seeing each other during breaks between classes. It helps to have this experience together as well, since law school can be demanding. Mark has been so awesome and has been my inspiration to study. He is so diligent and such a good worker. He also has one of his best friends in the first year class, which is great. Mark and I are on the Environment, Energy, and Resources Society (EERS) board (an enviro law club on campus) and went to Denver to a NEPA conference in October. Mark is also the 1L SBA rep, which basically mean he is on the student council at BYU Law. So popular! I started the Immigration Law Forum this past semester and we have had some good events, including an immigration bill debate. I also set up October's Domestic Violence Awareness Month at BYU Law to help raise awareness and increase prospective attorney commitment to the cause.

Also, Mark and I have been able to do some fun camping this last fall and summer. As part of the EERS board, we planned an overnighter with law students in Spanish Fork canyon. In the first part of October, Mark and I trekked down in our trusty Subaru to Capitol Reef National Park and camped in the Dixie National Forest. Thank you to all the people who gave us camping gear for our wedding! It was put to good use!

In November, Mark - the amazing athlete - convinced me to sign up to do a triathlon together. We accomplished our goal in running, biking, and swimming - all in a row (which basically means we finished without dying). We trained a bit here and there and had some fun nights at the RB pool and some lovely bike rides to beautiful Utah Lake (and when I say "some" what I mean is "one"). Provo is so pretty in the fall.

Mark worked diligently fall semester to line up some sweet externship opportunities. In May and June, we will go to Uganda where Mark will work as a legal extern at International Children's Legal Aid. He will be assisting AIDS victims with their wills. Then, in July/August time, we will take a trip to Oxford, England! This has been a dream of ours, and we are excited to go. Mark will be a research assistant to an Oxford professor and will research international public law.

This next semester, I will be dancing again with a BYU team, this time with a contemporary dance group that does outreach into elementary schools. It's called Kinnect and try to teach ideas and problem-solving through dance.

We were so glad to visit with family over the holidays and we send our love to all friends and family! Keep us posted on your lives!

Much love, Jana and Mark

NYC cont.

So... we continue documenting our adventure.

Out on the town, we took in the great sights of New York - all the tall buildings and endless shops and restaurants. Here is Mark, claiming the city as his own!


This is the day we hit Times Square, Rockefeller Square, Ground Zero, American Stock Exchange, Wall Street, China Town, Broadway - you name it. Of course, we don't have hardly any pictures from all of that, but we were sure to document the Chocolixir, found at your local Godiva store (and if you live somewhere that has a "local" Godiva store, you must be pretty fancy).



Okay, we actually DID take some pictures of these other sites. A lot of them ended up being church visits - St. Patrick's, Trinity Church, and synagogue in Manhattan. Here are a few of the places of interest that day:











After exploring the financial district, we ventured up to Chinatown. We were going to see "Memphis" on Broadway that night, but we really wanted to eat at this Chinese place that came highly recommended. So we walked to the highest point in Chinatown, grabbed our handfuls of potstickers, and then jumped on the subway, eating as we ran to catch our play (which, by the way, if you go to New York, "Memphis" is an AWESOME musical to see on Broadway). We got stuck right at this point, as we couldn't make a decision--should we stop or should we go? What to do? To be continued....

Empire State of Mind

Okay. Turn on Jay Z and Alicia Keys for this next post, just to get yourself in the spirit. Or turn on Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York." We'll go ahead and skip the formalities of our wedding and jump straight into the JB/ME adventure to New York in August (Jana says the wedding pictures are coming soon!). We had a few free plane tickets, some wonderful relatives living in Manhattan, and so we hopped on a plane a week before school started to see the Big Apple! (It was Mark's first time, so JB showed him around.)

Here's something important to keep in mind in this post (and Dallin, you'll appreciate this)--One of the great things about New York is the food...so, we're jumping on the trendy bandwagon of putting pictures of food on our blog. We'll highlight some of the "faves" as Jana likes to say.


First, we enjoyed a New York City double-scoop ice cream cone in front of the Natural History museum. Aren't we cute? Following that, we journeyed INTO the museum itself, only to encounter some ferocious(ly cute) wildlife. Here's Jana and the lil' baby deer:

And here's Mark with the DINOSAUR! You can't say DINOSAUR! without all caps and an exclamation point, because it doesn't transmit their ferocity.

Then we shimmied on down to the Shake Shack, baby! One of the best burgers in the U.S. of A. Here we are...


And here is our meal - yum..


And for all of you "You've Got Mail" fans out there (and I know you're out there!) you might recognize one of the three most sacred Jewish-owned locations in the world:


As we walked in, a young Kazahk came up to Mark, and kept pointing at the cheese, saying: "Ah wat is a dis?" (What is this?) to which Mark would reply in a low yet nasaly voice: "'At's cheese" over and over again, until Jana had to drag him away.


Btw, the best souvenir from NY that is 1) cheap, 2) not totally cheesy like a bumper sticker or a cheap t-shirt, and 3) is useful is the Zabar's mugs. $1!! Just a word to the wise - next trip, Zabar's mugs.

We had a jaunt at the Lincoln Center - watched a couple of Paul Taylor's choreographies outside by his company and then saw South Pacific. South Pacific was, as opposed to the awesome deal you get with a Zabar's mug, not cheap. But it was okay.


The next day, we hit the town....to be continued! (More pictures and stories to come)

Mark's books

Marrying Mark meant marrying new books. Growing up in my parents' house, it seemed that there were new books to be discovered on the shelf. This is probably a result of evolving interests in different things as I got older. I used to see the red, old-fashioned type of children storybooks that were from my parents' era and I'd read the story about the old Chinese emperor or a story about some heroic dog. Some Sundays I would read the illustrated encyclopedias and other informational books. I found the books by C.S. Lewis later on and only glanced over books like A Pilgrim's Progress, uncertain of my interest at the time. There's also a favorite section of Calvin and Hobbes books on my parents' bookshelves. There are still books there that I'm sure I've never noticed, partly because I started my own collection of books. That collection is largely still in my old bedroom at my parents' house, being too big to take to our small apartment in Provo. But we have most of Mark's books here, most of them crammed on one tall shelf. I will peruse the titles sometimes or just admire the books as I walk by them. Mark's always impressed me by how well-read he is. The first time I met him, six years ago now?, he was reading some big book, probably Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. He sat with his leg crossed over his knee, his elbow on the bent knee, his chin in his hand, his square glasses framing his furrowed brow focused on the page. We were both at the same BYU Recycling Club meeting. I wasn't sure what to make of him at the time, but then you can't always trust first impressions. However, one impression of Mark has remained true - he loves to read and has quite good taste in books. The books he brought with him to our marriage are beautiful and thick. He prefers hardcover to softcover because they last longer and he is determined to have all these books available to our children. There is a long line of classics and then some rows of mathematical, statistical, political, economical books from recent years. He has books on philosophy, leadership, communication, religion. He is always reading about five books at a time - a couple different ones before bed, another one for the airplane (when he used to fly more often), and two others in there for good measure. He reads the Economist when he rides the bike at the gym or sometimes at breakfast. The shelf is a pretty good size, but not too huge. But I am surprised when I really look deeper at the titles and find something I never found before. You will never guess the great find I made last night on the top shelf on the right. Two books by Dave Barry! They were collections of his humor columns from the 80s and 90s. What a find, I thought. Mark walked by our bedroom last night and asks me what I was reading. When he discovered it was Dave Barry, he offered to read some together. So Mark started reading them out loud. We were on our bed, Mark reading these columns, and I was laughing so hard, I was in tears. A talent I didn't know my husband had! He is exceptionally good at reading Dave Barry columns out loud! He laughs at all the right times, adding just that much more humor to the moment, and does the best inflections. I had no idea Mark could do that. This was truly a treasure to find. This, my friends, is a favorite memory of our first months together. I think it was because we both had full school commitments the next day, and can feel the weight of law school, and laughing was very therapeutic for both of us. I think it also reminded me of reading Calvin and Hobbes with my dad and he would read them aloud and would laugh at all the right times, which would make us all bust up laughing. And here I was, twenty years later, having a laugh attack with my husband reading to me, while we casually lounged on our bed in our own little home together. It reminded me of the times my parents would crack up about something one of them said, and I would stand there smiling at my parents' mirth. I would marvel at the fact that I could still crack up at stuff when I was a grown-up, and instead of making my brother laugh, I could joke and laugh with my spouse. Last night I experienced this full circle. It was full circle, but something totally new. I guess I am amazed at a few things. I am amazed at how great Mark is and how much fun it is to be married to such a good and nice and funny and happy person. I am amazed at how much my life has been blessed by being with him. I am amazed at how things that you thought were left behind in your childhood can pop up in your adult life and it is awesome. I am amazed that you can have new experiences and learn new things about someone you thought you totally had "figured out." That kind of surprise is the sweet filling of life. And I am amazed that I am still finding new books on Mark's bookshelf.

what's more American than me?

mark and i subbed in primary for the 8 year old class yesterday, which means we got to attend SINGING TIME! i really liked singing time growing up, but i REALLY like it now (probably because adults just don't do fun things like that - and it's a shame too). so, we sang a song i hadn't sung since elementary school: "what's more American?" such a classic! mark and i loved singing it with the picture prompts and everything and kept singing it all day: "What's more American than toothpaste?... I AM! I AM! I AM!" (if you don't know this song, you should really get acquainted with it.) so mark asks me at dinner, "what is more American than Ernie?" (That was one of the pictures on the singing posters.) i laughed and thought "hmmm... what's REALLY American?..." and for some reason, all things 80s came to my head. so, i said "MTV." mark questioned, "Why?" (Hadn't he seen Girls Just Wanna Have Fun?) then he did the Mark-hand-gesture finger point and said with a smile "this is a serious game, Jan." so, we commenced on discovering what is truly American. we had to name something from the song and find something that is more American than that. what's more American than Superman? Mark responded, Rocky - he's a self-made man. so, you see, you have to compare apples to apples in this game and find something within the same category as the thing you named. we started to discover some things about our perspectives on America, however. mark's responses always tied to the American ideals of being self-made, being rebellious, facing the frontier, or being individualistic. my criteria for the game was to find things that were purely American-made. (mine was more difficult, i found, because of globalization. it was almost impossible to determine if something was exclusively American.)

so the question: are Mark's ideals still true to America? to me, conformity was the new American way. look at mass media - it's all about being the same. but, is this American? mark said that the indie film maker epitomizes American ideals - the independent, the new, the individual. interesting, i said. so, what made Americans "American" at the dawn of America was the independence from Great Britain. it was about breaking away from those foreign rulers an ocean away. these days, those that epitomize that same "American" spirit are breaking away from other Americans. popular media is the new Great Britain; the indie filmmakers - the carriers of the American ideals. or, are they?

new question: who says that America is what America is or was 200 year ago? is America as we see it now, and to be American to be what we are? and what are we exactly?

what's more American than me?

ok go