Intermission

I just wanted to apologize for the extended break in posting lately...

Apparently contractions when you're 25 1/2 weeks along aren't really a good thing.
I'm doing better, but still dealing with some serious exhaustion and am consequentially trying to buy myself some quality rest time at every opportunity.

I'll be back soon!

A Decade in Retrospective: 2002

2002 brought us the world.

We watched as the Olympic torch was run through campus and marveled as the Games came to Salt Lake City. We didn't study nearly as hard as we should have for sixteen days or so.

But seriously, who am I kidding?
With an upcoming wedding in May, we didn't study nearly as hard as we should have for an entire semester. I can't even tell you what classes we took during that time. I can, however, tell you all about the athletes we saw at the Gateway, or that Katie Couric fell in love with fry sauce while she was here covering the Games. Sad.

We had a perfect spring wedding on a typical blustery day in the Windy City. Being sealed together for time and all eternity was an unparalleled experience that I shall always keep deep in my heart. We enjoyed a day full of family, friends, love and laughter. We danced at our reception. And in seemingly no time at all, we were off on our own for a very memorable wedding night... complete with stowaway tick.
(See Bryson or I for details-- talk about your ice breaker!)

We traveled to St. Augustine for our honeymoon. We learned that anything south of the Ohio River might as well be a foreign country to Bryson. As the accents got thicker and thicker on our road trip, his comprehension level took a steady decline. In Georgia, he carried on an impressive conversation with an elderly black man at a roadside pecan stand. He still has absolutely no clue what that gentleman was talking to him about. In Florida we drank from the fountain of youth (literally) and dined on gator tail (yum). St. Augustine was gorgeous and the perfect honeymoon hideaway for us. On the way back to our new life in Utah as husband and wife we explored Mammoth Cave and attended the Nauvoo Temple open house.

Our first home was a camping trailer set up at an RV park at the base of the Jordanelle Dam, while Bryson worked a construction job at a Church campground in Heber Valley. After my parents decided to leave Illinois and relocate to Cache Valley, we made our second home in their basement when we returned to the university.

Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.
Nothing could have been better.

A Decade in Retrospective: 2001

2001 changed everything.

During this time my relationship with Bryson continued to deepen, and we became practically inseparable. He even took an evening English course with me on Southern women's literature. Yep, that man truly loves me.

In the summer we flew back to Chicago to spend time with my family. We took the train downtown and I showed him a little taste of the city life as we explored together. We took a road trip to Nauvoo with my family and showed him a little taste of the midwestern rural life coupled with a rich experience in Church history. Heading back to Logan, we prepared to start a new semester at Utah State.

Then the events of September 11th occurred.
I can vividly remember my dad calling me as I was in my apartment getting ready for the day, urgently telling me to turn the TV on. Immediately I knew something terrible had happened. I quickly flipped through the channels just in time to see the second plane hit the World Trade Center. That image is still vividly burned in my psyche. We mourned for our nation. We struggled to make sense of a senseless act. Life seemed to stand still for a time.

Eleven days later, Bryson popped the question.
After a restorative day hiking in the mountains and a fantastic dinner at the Coppermill, we headed to the amphitheater on Old Main Hill. Our spot. Perfect for deep conversation, evening picnics, stargazing... or in this case, a most unexpected proposal. Cradled in the shadow of Old Main with the beauty of the Logan Temple and Wellsville Mountains before us, it couldn't have been more perfect.


The outside world may have seemed hostile and uncertain, but together we knew we could make it. We had shelter from the storm around us. We had each other.

A Decade in Retrospective: 2000

2000 was a year of transition.
A few months prior, I made the difficult and slightly crazy decision to leave BYU after three years of completion to pursue a dream of studying culinary arts. Having grown up in a cougar blue household, graduating from the Y had been and always was the end goal of my educational ambitions. Leaving Provo for the unfamiliar was an enormous step out of my comfort zone, and I was deeply conflicted about it. My concern was that I could be walking away from everything I had so carefully planned for myself over the past several years. It's funny how those tentative steps into the dark can turn into unanticipated paths of illumination.

In January 2000 I stepped onto the Utah State campus for the first time as an enrolled student. I discovered that I was a lot stronger than I had previously thought. I had my heart broken, beaten, and shattered-- and lived to tell the tale. New friends entered my life and buoyed me up during my difficult moments. One of those friendships grew into something more.

2000 was about classic college life. Drama, dances, and dinners of communal pots of macaroni and cheese. (From which I ended up catching an awful case of mono... thanks, Brett!) I spent spring break in sunny San Diego with my new girlfriends. The mountains of northern Utah & southern Idaho called out to us during the lazy summer weekends. I fell in love at first sight with the Moab landscape. And realized while we were there that I had also fallen deeply in love with Bryson.



Change can be terrifying. But most of the time I've found if you can just fight through the doubt and heartache...
Change is good.

Massacre!

We interrupt this regularly scheduled blog with a most disturbing breaking news story.

The gruesome remains of several chocolate glazed donuts have been discovered in a local household. The delicious fat-laden pastries were found decapitated and left on horrific display in a public arena for all to behold. It is recommended that no baked goods be left unchaperoned until the suspect is apprehended. Citizens are encouraged to be on the lookout for a white female, approximately 32 pounds and 3 feet tall.

A Decade Later...

Today it is almost ten years ago since that fateful day that we first met. I was unpacking my things in my dorm room after a difficult decision to transfer schools and you showed up looking for my roommates.

It wasn't exactly love at first sight.

I was still burning the torch for a relationship that was slowly dying out, and you were hardened and battle-weary from a series of life's hard knocks. To everyone else around us, we seemed as opposite as could be. But opposites or not, after a short while we became good friends. It turned more than a few heads when we started dating several months later.

To everyone on the outside it was seemingly incomprehensible. But we knew better. We understood each other. And what looked like irreconcilable differences on the surface was anything but in actuality. Underneath, we were the perfect match.

Now, a decade later, there is not a moment that I am not grateful for the turn of events and hand of Providence, which led our paths to cross. Each day I am blessed to enjoy the ups and downs of life with someone I couldn't love more if I tried. And yet, beyond all logic and reason, that love continues to grow year after sweet year.

There is no one I would rather be sharing the rest of eternity with.
Happy Birthday, Bryson. ♥