How it Started

I'll just address the elephant in the room right upfront: This is a long blog post. I put in some pictures, which I'm hoping will act as snacks in Sacrament Meeting and keep you entertained....mostly. Carry on!



Some might say that it all started with a note. But actually, it didn't. Actually, it all started with knock. And a handsome stranger asking if this was the apartment where our ward was having nice notes.

Some might say that it was the wrong apartment, and at the time, that's what I told him. But actually, it wasn't. Actually, it was the right apartment, and the right girl, and the right boy. I just didn't know it yet.

I didn't make a great first impression. As in, I asked him if he was weird and awkward in the first 3 minutes of knowing him, and he thought I was rude. [For the record, he was a teeny bit awkward, so it was a valid question.]

However, it wasn't such a bad impression that all hope was lost. He came over again, and I redeemed myself. And then, he came over again, and again, and then he kept coming over. And I didn't even mind.

October 9th was my birthday, and since the best friend advertised free food and birthday kisses in a painstakingly crafted mass txt, he was there.

Some might say that Stephen had nothing to do with building this cake. Those people would be right. He just put the candles on because I said we couldn't eat it until I had blown them out, and if we're being honest with ourselves, we might as well just admit that the cake was 90% of the reason why he was there.

I won't tell you what I wished for when I blew those candles out....but the weekend after my birthday, I found myself squashed up next to him on a couch in an apartment south of campus, watching a scary movie with some friends. And he held my hand.

He played it cool, but this is how he felt:

(Me, too.)

A week later, I got a mysterious nice note. It looked like this:

This is the note that some say it started with.

I searched the ward menu, and the only S.S. in our ward was Stephen Shimp. And I knew, grazie to my women's intuition, that Stephen had not written this nice note.

Even so, he did like my cute skirts. And we did go out sometime.

This is the night he wanted to take me on a date, but it was the ward Halloween party. So we just hung out there and took beautiful pictures like this one about it.

This is the night after the Halloween party, the other night he wanted to take me on a date. A Jew came to town and we had already planned on going to Cornbelly's with my roommates, so we just invited Stephen and his roommates along. They did things like taking pictures of us in the pumpkins and then offering to let us use them on our wedding announcements. I did things like pretending not to notice their comments....

This picture is not from a date either. It's just from Halloween day, when Stephen and I hung out for like the hundredth time. And for the first time, he caught a fish from the Raintree River. And also for the first time....something else happened :)

When we finally did go out sometime, it was to this place:

The Quarry

I had been rock climbing a few times, and even been on a few dates to this place. This date was the best of them all :)

This might be where my mom might say it all started. The day after he asked me on a date, I called my mom. 

"MOM," I said, "You'll never guess what happened to me."

"What!" she said, all excited already. 

"The cutest boy in the ward asked me on a date!" I said. "I think we're going this weekend!"

She cheered. She asked for his name. She facebook stalked him. She congratulated me.

That date was on November 3rd. And not to color myself psycho or anything, but in the interest of full disclosure I should probably share that when my sister asked me less than a month later if I liked him, I told her I kind of wanted to marry him. 

In December, we had all kinds of adventures.

December 1st found us ice-skating at the Gallivan Center....

 This conversation happened when we stepped out onto the ice:

Stephen: WHAT! Heather, you don't know how to ice-skate??
me: No, I do! I promise I do! I just....I forgot, but I'll remember in a second!
Stephen: Oh, no, no, Heather, noooo!
me: Stephen! It's fine, I'll remember! Just wait a minute!
Stephen: What are you doing? Heather, what??
me: I'm just skating! Hold on, just slow down for a second!

It was not my most graceful ice-skating debut, but as soon as I remembered what to do (after about 5 minutes of tremulously clinging to Stephen and insisting that I knew what I was doing), I actually did okay. 

Looking at the temple lights in SLC....

.....meeting some Anti-Mormons posing in awesome costumes for free pictures, forgive us for that brief affiliation.....

.....wandering the streets of SLC, looking for the car.....(Don't worry, it was parked at none of these hotels. We checked.) 

 

 

I love Christmastime. I love downtown Salt Lake City. And holding hands on the car ride back to Provo, once we finally found the car at 2 in the morning, I loved Stephen, too.

This one time, we made a bomb-amazing gingerbread house.

 Ingredients, if you're interested in replicating our fine work:

-Starbursts from my kids for Christmas
-Berry Colossal Crunch cereal for the roof
-fudge-striped cookies from a 100 calorie pack
-brownie bites, also from a 100 calorie pack
-Frosted Mini-Wheats cereal
-tootsie rolls from ???
-frosting from when my kids made gingerbread houses at school and the parent volunteers tried to throw away the frosting and well, I rescued it.
-graham crackers from a bonfire we attended in oh, October....

And then he went home to Indiana, and I went home to Maryland, and we skyped almost err day.

Even when I was back in Utah for New Years Eve and he was still in Indiana, and I should probably have been going to a party or something. We skyped then too.

When he managed to get his arse back in Utah, we had more adventures!

He taught me how to snowboard....

and one time, when we were snowboarding, he asked me to be his girlfriend!

I said no.

But then I said yes of course, so it was just a minor setback. Then we went home, made fajitas, called his parents, and - most importantly! - changed our facebook status (super-important, you guys. It is 2013)

I should note that, when we called his parents, his mom said I seemed really sweet :) ...........which she quickly followed up with an invitation to read the new For the Strength of Youth booklet. 

As boyfriend and girlfriend, we once optimistically went to Sundance to try to get into the Matthew Mc-con-a-hottie and Reese Witherespoon movie without previously buying tickets, and instead just eating at a cute Mexican restaurant when we found that there were no more tickets available.

We went to Fire and Ice at the Riverwoods. We missed the fireworks, and the snowboarding, and pretty much everything else, but we were in time for the ice sculptures!

....and in time to walk around and try on some really beautiful hats.

 Winter has never been my favorite season. As in, it has always been my worst-favorite season. But winter with Stephen is a nice season, because it involves fun things like snowboarding and yummy things like Little Caesar's pizza that I had to buy for my roommates and warm things like cuddling.

It was one night, later in the month of January, when Stephen said: "I don't want you to think I'm weird, but....do you ever think about, what it would be like if we were to like, get married?" 

I was so surprised that he said that, but to tell the truth, I did think about it. Pretty much err day.

All of a sudden, it was February, 

Jazz game!

 and then Valentines Day. 

Which was a perfect day with a perfect ending. The ending was a whisper that sounded like this:

him: Heather. 

me: Stephen. 

him: .....I love you. 

 

me: I love you, Stephen!

And with that, we started life with a new normal.

 

It was normal to go rock-climbing,

normal to go running,

normal to hike the Y (with one person riding piggy back at times),

normal to fall asleep on the apartment floor after working out.

It was normal to never have leftovers, because I had a Stephen instead. Normal to sit on his lap while he studied and I graded. Normal for him to come in and visit my class, when he had a chance. Normal for me to come and study with him in the library and go to classes with him when I was off-track, or to go to the UVU basketball games so he could get extra credit in his class. It was all just the best kind of normal I had ever lived!

So that's how I think it started. How THIS

happened, is a blog post for another day :)

The Perfect Valentines Day, revised

Remember that one time when I posted a blog about what I think the perfect Valentines Day would consist of?

I changed my mind.

Here's what the perfect Valentines Day would actually consist of:

this breakfast, plus blueberry oatmeal being delivered to his apartment butt-early in the AM

this note stuck under the beautifully-scraped off windshield of a certain Cassidy Jane Carbaby

these being delivered to my school in person by the cutest boy

"Mrs. Baggett!! Did you know Miss Connor is getting married?
"....What? No, I don't think so."
"No, she is! We saw her, there's a man with her and he brought her flowers and....I think she just got proposed to!"
"No, that's just because it's Valentines Day. That's her boyfriend."
"GO ASK. She's getting married, I'm serious."

(in my room....) "I just had to come in here, because my kids are convinced that you're getting married."

"What! Stephen, what are YOU doing here? Did you bring Miss Connor flowers?"
"Yeah..."
"Why? Because you love her?"
*Everyone in unison: "You love Miss Connor, you love Miss Connor...."
"Okay now, that's not having an appropriate mouth. Let's get lined up for CAMP."
"Is Stephen staying?"
"No, he has to go to class."

He leaves.

"Stephen is pretty buff."
"You think so?"
"Yeah. Why did he bring you flowers?"
"Because it's Valentines Day...."
"And he's in love with you!"
"Oh, really? Is that why he brought flowers?"
"Yeah. Are you in love with him?"
"What do you think?"
"Yeah, you are. Because you're smiling!"
"Oh, that means I'm in love with him?"
"Well, that, and he brought you flowers...."

Tooooo continue:

this pinata that I made

and that had all this stuff inside of it

this amazing restaurant for dinner

this movie for afterwards. (or was it another one? who knows. the conversation in the audience was riveting.

I think it would be nice, if every girl in the world believed that her boyfriend was better than every other girl's boyfriend. Which is why I don't feel bad saying, right now, that my boyfriend is better than yours :)

Free Food and Pure Poetry

Sometimes, when I am off-track, I spend the day at a carnival. Not on purpose, really - I always mean to go to UVU to go to classes and study with my friends, but I always wind up with my arms full of cotton candy, popcorn, a free necklace or two, and fliers. So it would appear that I went to a carnival instead of a university, like I meant to. 

And if you know me at all, you'll know that that is just fine with me.
And I'm sorry if this gif gives you a seizure.

Anyway, I might as well just admit that I know it is going to be a carnival before I even pull into visitor parking. I know that I will be offered food, and I know that I will graciously accept. So when I walk in, and the library is to my right, I breeze on past it and wander down the hall in the opposite direction until somebody feeds me.

This works out especially well when my best friend, being a model citizen, wants to eat healthy, but she still takes a bag of popcorn and hands it off to me so I can give it to a certain perpetually hungry boy who is studying in the library. Hashtag, Caitlinisthebestfriendandiamthebestgirlfriendever.

(Sorry for hashtagging but I don't think it's quite as bad if you write out the word hashtag so everyone knows you're being ironic even if secretly you kind of like it but you just know that it's frowned upon because people overdo it so you don't want to be one of those people so you write out the word hashtag so people think you're being ironic even though secretly you kind of like it but you just know that it's frowned upon because people overdo it so you don't want to be one of those people....really sorry)

So anyway, while planning lessons in the library today, I decided that I want to teach my kids about cinquain poems for Valentines Day. Google was surprisingly unhelpful, so I just went ahead and wrote my own cinquains to use as examples. Here is what I came up with:

Cupid

 Sneaky, Romantic

Hiding, aiming, enchanting

A cherub of love

Matchmaker.

 Cassidy Jane

Silver, Adorable

Revving, singing, racing

My cute little automobile

Carbaby.

Brad Rudolph

Flashy, Squiggly

Darting, swishing, bubble-blowing

A fish like no other

Betta King.

Stephen

Intelligent, Hungry

Chomping, disrupting, kissing

Getting A's on all his tests

Boyfriend spaz.

In other news, Stephen loved the free popcorn I gave him. And I'm sure everyone in the quiet section of the library loved me for bringing it.

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The Perfect Valentines Day

Iiiii think, would consist of:

.......sorry that food is my love language. Maybe there would be a little bit of this too:

That is cran-raspberry-apple juice in the background....

 

This would actually just be perfect on any day.

I know Valentines Day is about spending time with your valentine.....and I know that I scored lowest on Receiving Gifts on the Love Languages test. But commercialism isn't such a bad thing :)