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 :)

I-I-I-I Work Out

Sometimes, your boyfriend really wants you to work out with him. And while you might think that this is working out,

the boyfriend might not agree. Which is unfortunate, because his version of working out might be a 45-minute military training thing that he invented that includes push-ups, planks, jumping jacks, crunches, squats, arm circles for AN HOUR.....and sundry other things.

Working out so hardcore is actually kind of fun if you are motivated by your goal to get Venus dimples by the time you go back on-track. But no matter how fun it is, it can also be extremely tiring.

Which is why, sometimes, your roommate ends up taking this picture:

and sending it to you the next day.

After all, who doesn't love a good post-workout nap on the perfectly clean carpet of their 6-girl college apartment?

Highlighter Woes

I just spent my Recess time trying to get the lid of a highlighter out of a shoe.

 

The lid had been wedged in between the pink things on the bottom of the shoe. 

How, you may wonder?

I was teaching a lesson on long vowels and short vowels. One of my girls, who is normally pretty chatty (and very happy about it) started to look a little concerned. I wondered what was wrong but didn't worry too much about it until she came up to me, looking like she was about to cry, and said:

"Miss Connor, I just broke a rule and I think you're going to have to - because I wasn't following directions, so I think I'm going to have to pull a card and you're going to have to call my mom and she's not going to be very happy because I got my lid of my highlighter stuck in my shoe because I wasn't following directions....."

"You got your highlighter stuck in your shoe?" I asked.

She nodded miserably. 

I didn't even know what to say. I mean, what would you say? The girl was about to have a panic attack and all I wanted to do was laugh! So I told her I'd help her at recess and sent her back to her desk. 

Three minutes later, I was jamming a dry erase marker in between the pink things, trying to get it under the highlighter lid justtt enough to wiggle it out of the shoe.

Two minutes after that, I was giving up and bringing the shoe to another teacher.

"That's hilarious!" she said. "How did that even happen?" 

"How did this happen, M?" I asked. 

Her golden response? "I just wanted to put my highlighter in my shoe so I could show K, because it was funny, but then it got stuck and I didn't show her because it wasn't even funny like I thought it would be."

The other teacher shook her head. "I don't know how to get it out....maybe bring it to Mike, he probably has some pliers or something. You've got to take a picture of that," she added.

"Take a picture of it and then we can show it to my mom!" my girl said on the way down the hall to find Mike. 

Please remember that this was the girl who, just minutes before, was prepared to burst into tears at the thought of having to tell her mom about the card she might have to pull. 

"I don't think your mom would like that too much," I said. 

The smile disappeared. "Oh yeah, maybe don't take a picture," she said.

Mike was driving around a cart with some complicated electrical something-or-other when we found him in the hallway and asked him to get a highlighter lid out of a shoe. 

The tools that eventually dislodged it, in order of use, include:

1. a pen

2. a pair of scissors

3. the highlighter itself

4. the highlighter AND the pen at the same time

5. a pair of biggish pliers

6. a pair of needle-nose pliers

Lessons learned: 

1. Don't stick your highlighter lid in your shoe.

2. Don't expect to get anything done during Recess.

New Coat

There was once a time when I was the youngest in my family. I know....weird, right? So that phase didn't last long. It ended officially with the birth of a red-haired, wide-eyed, explosion of a person named Nicole, on June 9th, 1992....twenty years ago. 

I say "explosion of a person" because Nicole is one of those people who is just exploding with personality and awesomeness.

Obviously, Kelly and I were happy to have her.  

 

Mostly, when I remember Nicole as a baby, I remember her with a shocked expression and hair standing straight up. I remember her blowing bubbles in the bathtub. I remember playing Barbies with her for hours on end, and then playing with our matching horses for the rest of the day. 

One time, we were all cleaning the pond behind our house during Spring Break. At one point, Nicole got some pond water on herself and left to change her clothes. When she came back, she was too nervous to get back in the pond, so instead, she stood on top of a storm drain and made up a song to encourage us. For some reason, it didn't exactly encourage us, and we encouraged her to get down. We still tease her about that!

Nicole is super-social, and she makes some really good friends. Her best friend Gina is a favorite of our family. 

Nicole and I have an interesting history with stuffed animals. One time, Nicole was annoyed at me about something, and I didn't realize that she was. She came into my room, where I was calmly sitting on my bed, reading a book. She was tenderly holding a stuffed animal of mine, a penguin named Shuffle. Smiling broadly, she said: "Heather, do you like this penguin?"

I looked up. "Oh, sure," I said, and went back to reading. 

"Well that's nice," she said, and then proceeded to beat the penguin on the floor repeatedly. 

It's okay though, because I got back at her. Nicole has this Blues Clues-esque stuffed animal gender-confused dog called BenKetty. I don't know why, but for some reason, I hate it. I think it annoyed me for real one night and then after that it was just so fun hating it that I couldn't stop. 

One time I sent Nicole a picture on her phone of Benketty hanging from the fan. 

Another time, I sent her a picture of Benketty about to fall in the toilet. 

In response, she sent me a picture of Benketty holding my purse one night before I went on a date. The txt said, "Look who's coming with you on your daaaate!" She also took a picture of Benketty in my suitcase when I was about to go back to Utah with the caption, "You will never escape!" 

Would you end such a glorious back-and-forth? Neither would I. 

Nicole is very generous. She always gives me zzzz's so I can be more bootylicious. Also, one time she sent me a care package that was literally THE BEST THING OF MY LIFE. It was so great that sometimes I get a little teary thinking about it. Nicole just is so good at thinking of others. 

One of my favorite things about Nicole is how hilarious she is. She's funny when she's just waking up and she trudges downstairs with her hair all piled on her head for dinnertime. She's funny when she's singing at the dinner table, or when she's explaining politics to me. She's funny when she's talking to the birds or imitating them. She's funny when she's giving a talk or when she's gushing about Dream Street or Steve Johnson or Winnie. She's just funny all the times!

Nicole's unofficial motto for life is WWFRD: What Would Flo Rida Do? She is a great rapper. And she finds really great music and shares it with me, which I appreciate. 

Nicole is a princess, and she loves princess things. In fact, her blog is called "Life as a Princess" and should be read by everyone and their dog because it is so entertaining and great. In high school, everyone called her a princess, and when this one really adorable boy asked her to prom, he gave her a tiara and did it really cutely. Nicole deserves things like that to happen to her, and she looked absolutely gorgeous when she went to Prom with her princess self. 

Nicole is super-photogenic. Just see above for proof: ^

Misery loves company, and when I am miserable, I often choose Nicole as my company. She is sympathetic and hilarious. When I complain to her, I feel better. She makes me laugh. She is great.

Nicole has come to visit me in Utah many times, and we always do such fun things when she does! The first time, we went to the Bean Museum and took funny pictures. We went ice-skating and to Bridal Veil Falls. It was wonderful having her there :)

Now that she is at BYU-Idaho and I am in Provo, she comes to visit more often. I always try to plan fun things when she visits because I want her to think I am cool, like her! Nicole is always fun to do stuff with because she is so funny and always makes me laugh. Besides which, she loves my friends, and they love her, so we all get along great. 



Nicole is someone who is dependable. I love her because if she says she is going to do something, then she does it! She is also really nice to have on road trips and at movie nights because she is comfortable to lean on, and she is nice about it.

 

Nicole has style! In high school, she would often wear pajama pants to school. It stressed my dad out a lot. He would sometimes work himself into fits as he imagined his daughter going to college without knowing how to dress herself. But he needn't have worried, because Nicole gracefully rose to the occasion. She now dresses SO cutely and so stylishly. She has about 30 cardigans. She wears cute boots and scarves. She is cool.

Nicole is who she is, no matter who she is interacting with. I love this about her, and I'm pretty sure that's one of the big reasons why she has so many friends. She's not trying to impress anyone by being someone else, and people love who she is, so there's no need to, anyway.  

I love doing photo shoots with Nicole because she always makes them so funny! This picture (above) is from this last Christmas. My mom wanted pictures of all of us with our baptism quilts. I think it was cold outside and that's why we were all doing those faces? Maybe? Anyway, Nicole's makes me laugh every time I see this picture :)

Troy Toy was one of our favorites of the pest control boys from summer 2009. I mention him because it was funny to me how Nicole interacted with those boys. She would sit with them in the living room, making friendship bracelets and talking about all her boy problems. They loved her, and Troy wore that friendship bracelet for a long time after leaving us. 

Nicole is a great travel buddy. She is so good at directions, first of all, so that is super-handy. She just kind of has an innate sense of direction. Sometimes it fails her....like when we tried to go to New Jersey and ended up nearly in New York at 5 in the morning, searching for a hotel we hadn't planned on needing. But that wasn't her fault, and I loved having her in the car with me, because she was so fun, and she stayed awake with me. 

I don't know if you are aware, but Nicole is a superhero. She even gave a speech at her graduation about it. 

Nicole loves DC. She was a nanny here last year, and she got to know the city pretty well. She integrated herself into the "Moms' Club." She figured out the Metro. And then, at the end of her term as nanny, she brought all of us to DC and took us on a "Tour d' Nicole," where she showed us all of her favorite places. We loved it!

I can't even really get over how great Nicole is. She keeps getting better and better! I love being her sister :)