Reflection on 2014, Best Year of My Life.

In an attempt to satisfy my New Years resolution #4, Resurrect the Blog, I bring you this post. My poor blog has been neglected nearly this entire year and while I can't give an actual legitimate excuse aside from being too busy or on occasion too lazy, I can at least pretend to attribute it to the fact that I met, dated, and fell in love with the man of my dreams. Here is the story in the form of a Christmas letter we sent out at the end of the year:

To All of our Wonderful Family and Friends, 

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and THANK YOU for being so supportive and excited for us as we have taken this leap into the wonderful, incredible and terrifying world of marriage and family. This past year has been such a blur but it has been incredible and we can hardly believe it will soon come to an end! 

To begin the year, both Stuart and myself were as single as could be living the busy student life in Provo with one eye ever-searching for “the one”. During the month of January Stuart had begun to notice a certain cherry-red Mazda 3 with a BYU sticker on the back operated by a blonde female driving around the Belmont parking lot, the condominium complex in which we lived. After inquiring among his friends about the owner of the vehicle, no answers were to be found and he determined his only option to find out who she was would be to write a note to leave on her car when he found it in its usual parking spot. So write a note he did, but carried it around with him for a time because the vehicle was nowhere to be found. After about 3 days he finally found the illusive Mazda and left the note on the windshield that said “Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy, but here’s my number, so call me, definitely. –Stuart” 

That night I gathered the courage to send Stuart a text. I had some reservations but ultimately came to the conclusion that I’ll never know unless I take the chance. After our first several dates things really began to pick up and the mutual respect we had for each other began to turn into admiration, then eventually into love. Shortly after we had begun dating we made the bizarre connection that his mother Whitney and my oldest sister Angelyn had been roommates at BYU many years before. What a strange coincidence! (If you can call it that). 

At the end of the winter Semester Stuart decided to pick up and move to Southern California to do summer sales to hopefully earn enough money to last him through the next year so he could focus 100% of his attention on his schooling. This was a very uncertain time for both of us because we hadn’t quite had enough time with each other to know what would happen to our relationship if we added the distance. We were both willing to find out, however, and about every 3 weeks or so I was able to drive or fly down to California to visit him. About mid-summer we found out that the distance did quite well for our relationship and after much prayer and consideration decided we were going to take the leap of faith and get married. I sent Stuart some photos of rings I liked and waited as patiently as I could for him to propose. According to Stuart I wasn’t very patient at all, but my argument there is that when you’ve got the love and affection of someone as wonderful, handsome, and hard-working as he is, you want to make it permanent as quickly as possible. After a month or two of Stuart informing me he still hadn’t purchased the ring, the summer was finally coming to a close and he began his journey back to Utah. On Labor Day weekend I decided to meet him down in Hurricane in Southern 

Utah since that is where my family resides and was very conveniently located on the way back from California to Provo. We decided that we were going to hike Angels Landing in Zion National Park while we were there since Stuart hadn’t had much of a chance to do anything “Summer-y” the entire summer he was selling in Orange County. My younger brother Jared was strangely eager to come with us even though it required him to wake up with us at 4:00 in the morning to do so. The next morning we began our trek up the mountain. After we finally arrived at the peak and we had a chance to look around Stuart began to tell me all the things he loved about me. Since Stuart had made this a regular practice it didn’t tip me off that something was about to go down. And besides, in my mind he still didn’t have the ring. Stuart then asked Jared if he would take a picture of us with his phone. Unbeknownst to me, he had the ring box in his other hand which Jared saw and promptly switched his camera to video mode. Stuart knelt down and as he opened the box we both heard a “tink… tink… tink” which was the sound of the ring bouncing down to the edge of the cliff! Stuart dove for the ring and caught it before it could roll any further. What a rush! I was still trying to process what was happening before I even realized that the ring and my almost-fiance were both racing to the edge of a 1500 foot precipice. It all happened so fast! When things calmed down and I finally had a grasp on the situation I gave him a resounding “YES!” and a polite applause was heard by the other hikers that had witnessed the event. (See video below)

The fall semester somehow went by incredibly fast and incredibly slow all at the same time. I was working full time and attending Cosmetology school from 5-10 PM each night and Stuart was focusing all his attention on his rigorous pre-med schooling, and it proved to be quite the challenge to plan the wedding in such a short amount of time. We are extremely blessed, however, with wonderful family and friends, in particular Stuart’s mother and siblings and my sisters, that took most of the load upon themselves and provided us with a more beautiful wedding than we could have hoped for. We were married November 14^th in the St George LDS Temple. We were both so impressed and inspired by the generosity, sacrifice and emulation of the Savior from not only those that helped with the wedding, but also those that attended to wish us well. Many came from far and wide, many sent gifts and cards, and others attended our reception that didn’t even know us but were acquainted with our families. What a wonderful example of support and love we have been shown and we are so grateful to have your influence in our lives. 

We are now adjusting to marriage beautifully. Stuart is continuing to diligently pursue his studies to become a surgeon and I am enthusiastically pursuing my career as a cosmetologist. We are very excited to find out what our first year of marriage will bring us! We hope you all have a wonderful holiday and pray that this next year will return one-hundred fold the blessings that you have so generously bestowed upon us. Merry Christmas!