Tomorrow! I love ya, Tomorrow!!!

Well, you may ask me...What are you doing up so late? And my answer to that question: I have no idea. My plan was to go to bed early. That obviously didn't happen. My money is on the fact that I am so excited to see Jeff tomorrow, that sleeping is no longer on the top of my list. I know, it isn't healthy...yaddah yaddah yaddah but in all honesty, I am totally alright with that. I think I will make up the lack of sleep tomorrow on my five hours of plane riding or the 3 1/2 hours of riding in a car. Either way, I think I will be set. Well, I think I am about to hit the sack FINALLY so I will see you in Idaho! Woot Woot! :)

F-O-U-R MORE DAYSSS!

It is official. In 4 more days, I will be back in Idaho to visit my dear fiancee for 10 whole days!! I miss him so so much. Good thing we have FOREVER together :) He says he has many fun things planned for us! I don't know if I should be nervous or not...Jeff is the rough it up type so if I get there and he expects to go dirt biking on an 18 mile trail, that would not be surprising at all. Sometimes I wonder what I got myself into. That's okay though, I am totally willing :) UPDATE: We get our wedding invitations today and I am so excited! We ordered them through Shutterfly. I have gone through Shutterfly for other things before and it has turned out well, so hopefully this time will be just the same. Oh and something that I realized about Jeff recently, he is a great cook. I am not with him, but he tells me about how he always makes dinner for his family. Last night he made steak kabobs with vegetables. Oh, I must say that I am marrying the most incredible man and I am so excited. I love him more than anything! :)

How we met!

There are so many things that could have prevented us from meeting.  1.) Jeff asked his mission president if they could send a request to the area presidency approving an extension on his mission, but his mission president told him that he thought it was best that Jeff went home when originally scheduled. Jeff got off of his mission on August 26, 2010 (exactly one year before we will be married...that was not planned). 2.) Jeff went to ISU (Idaho State University) before his mission and planned to go back and finish his degree there. About a month before he got off of his mission, he told his family that he wanted to go to BYU Idaho when he got back instead. So, his dad registered him for classes and got on the ball. Jeff got back from his mission 2 weeks before school started. 3.) If Jeff's dad would have put Jeff in a different English class, we probably would have never met. And the reason I say this is because our paths would not have crossed otherwise. We both have completely different majors, there's no way this girl would be an electrical engineer (I am majoring in Elementary Education).

Jeff and I met on September 9, 2011 (which  is the same day a year later we are having our wedding reception in Ohio and no that wasn't planned either!) in English class at the weeee hours of 7:45 in the morning. (Yeah, let me tell you that I probably only looked decent for this class for the first week, then it was rolling straight out of bed and into the closest outfit.) Even though this was technically the second day of classes, ( I had English Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and school started that Thursday) I still wasn't sure what to expect. I was still nervous and reserved. I walked into English and I sat down. Not in front, but not in back. The middle row is my comfort zone. Before class started, this guy behind me started talking to me. I am not sure exactly what he said. I imagine that he introduced himself to me...Jeff. And I smiled and listened politely, but honestly, I did not have any interest in socializing. Before class officially started and we said prayer, our teacher, Sister Croft told us all to get to know the people around us. And there went Jeff...again. He started talking. I just really didn't want to because I was shy, but he was persistent. And I wish I did, but I do not remember what we even talked about, my guess is probably something along the lines of "Where are you from" and "What year in school are you", you know, all the things you normally ask someone you first meet at school.  Come to find out later, that Jeff really is a shy guy himself, so this was all temporary until we really got to know each other better. So, that is how we met! :) And one last thing, my stake patriarch back home told me that I should stay away from Return Missionaries when I got there. Jeff introduced himself to the class and told us he just got off his mission from Argentina two weeks prior, but later on, I didn't care ;)

Jeff's side of the story!

May 27, 2011

The day started early in the morning.  Her dad had a business meeting with a few other people from the stake and he had invited me to come along.  Having known why I was visiting Ohio in the first place it was very kind of him to present me with the opportunity to talk with him about marrying his daughter.  Whitley’s mom and dad had already impressed me with their kindness and the effort they made to make me feel comfortable in their home; I really appreciated that because I am kind of a shy timid person until I get to know someone very well.  On the car ride over to the restaurant we were meeting at, her dad and I started talking just about whatever and one thing led to another and we started talking about marriage.  I won’t go into detail how the conversation went but suffice it to say that it went very well. I gained a great respect for Dan Regovich that day and I look forward to getting to know him better in future years. 

When Dan and I arrived back home Whitley was still getting ready for the day.  So I took that opportunity to go and prepare myself for the task at hand.  I went downstairs into the basement where I had been sleeping while i visited Whitley and her family.  Out of my back pack I pulled two boxes one contained a watch.  Whitley and I always had an inside joke that we were going to just get engagement watches because they were much more practical and useful in the world. The other box contained the ring I had brought with me to Ohio.  I had had the ring for several weeks already and was so ready to give it to her, many nights I would sit in my bed and look at the ring and think about how I would ask her. 

              

It had rained a lot the past few days in Ohio but we could not have asked for a more perfect day to go out together.  Whitley drove us to a nature reserve just a few minutes away from her house, the place was beautiful and I could not have picked a better place to have asked her to marry me.  We walked around the park on trails for about 20 minutes.  The whole time I couldn’t wait to finally pop the question but I had no idea what I was going to say.  All I knew was that I had both a watch and a ring and I somehow wanted to incorporate both items.  After walking for a few minutes we crossed a bridge and with the running stream in the back ground I stopped and said “Well I guess this is as good of place as any.”  I Turned to face her and told her how much I loved her and how special she was in my life.  To my surprise I wasn’t nervous at all, even though we had talked about getting married a lot I still thought I would be nervous but what I was about to do felt so right I had nothing to fear.  I got down on my knee and took the larger watch box out of my jacket, I looked up at her as I opened the box and asked her to marry me, she said yes and started to chuckle a little bit and told me to get up.  I don’t know what was going through her mind but I was not done, I told her that I was not done and had something else for her.  I pulled out the ring box and took out the ring that she had fallen in love with months prior to this moment, and I re-asked her if she would marry me and she again said yes. 

I got up and we hugged and held each other close for a minute and then decided to finish our walk.  It was the happiest moment of my life.  When Whitley and I first started spending a lot of time together my jaw and cheek muscles hurt because I was Whitley made me smile a lot more than I was used to, as we finished our walk I was smiling so big and was so happy my cheeks again began to hurt but I didn’t care.  So we finished our walk and then went and got lunch.  Later that day we took our engagement pictures at the Kirtland Ohio church sites and went out to dinner.  This will always be one of the most important days of my life.

We are engaged!!!!

On Friday, May 27th 2011, we got engaged! I knew that it was coming though, so it was a bummer to both of us that it wasn't more of a surprise to me. We had decided when winter semester 2011 at BYU Idaho got out in April, that we would get engaged in May and married this summer! Even though we have been planning all of this out, it is more exciting once things start rolling and rolling they did this past weekend! This past weekend Jeff came out to visit (it was memorial day weekend) to talk to my dad about marrying me. He flew in on Thursday and as a family, we all went and picked him up at the airport. I remember that I was so excited to see him. I couldn't stop hugging him and holding his hand, but then again, neither could he. We just hung out that night and the next morning he went to a stake business oriented meeting and talked to my dad then. When I woke up that morning, I got ready as quickly as I could and tried to look as best I could, but I was so excited to see him, so honestly, I didn't look that good. He didn't seem to mind. Phew! We decided that we weren't really hungry so we went to Lake Metroparks near Buttermilk Falls (where my dad proposed to my mom) . We walked out on this really long and windy bridge (over a man made marsh) and I was really quiet (I claimed at the time it was because I was sick, but now I know it was because I knew what was coming and I was a little nervous, but EXCITED). After a few minutes we decided that we had enough, that we were going to explore something else. We just started walking down the paved pathway under the trees. I remember that we saw this cute little stream. It was very romantic. There was a tree that was laying over top it, so we decided to sit on it. It was all covered in moss and I was worried that it was going to dirty up my pants (because I knew that we were going to be taking engagement pictures that night) and it just got boring. I think we were both getting really anxious at this point. We got off the tree and continued walking on the path and all the sudden Jeff stopped us and looked at me and told me that "this is as good of place as any" and then he told me he loved me. He got down on his knee and pulled out a funky shaped cardboard box with a watch inside and asked me to marry him (we always joked about getting engagement watches because they actually have a use...telling time). I laughed, said yes, and told him to get up. The ONLY reason I told him to get up was because I hated the feeling that he was bowing down to me or something. But then he told me that he wasn't finished. He took out a normal ring box now and asked me. I said yes and pulled him up. We kissed and just held each other; it was the most tender moment of my life. I love him! We will be married August 26th, 2011 in the Idaho Falls, Idaho temple!