Mid Winter Tales

Walking in a Winter Wonderland!!! Throughout my life I've had exactly ONE white Christmas, and most of the time I have always thought how great, and how proper, it would be to have a white Christmas. Well, the one, and now it appears to be two, white Christmases I've had in my lifetime have pretty much squelched any further desire for white Christamses. The first was two years ago, and we had 23" of snow at my house, which on Christmas day, caused the roof of my grandpa's barn to cave in and destroy the building. And today marked what is likely to be my second white Christmas....unless we can escape from Utah like we planned!!!! Like a thief in the night, a five to six inch thief, the snow has come to try and thwart our travel plans to spend the Christmas holiday with my family in Washington. I might have to live up to my claim that I would drive through 20 feet of snow to see my family for Christmas!!! Yikes! lol. We will see if we make it back alive.......
The last few months have been busy with wedding plans, the girls' school, excitement and wedding plans. A few of the highlights:
***Less than three weeks from now, Eric and I will be MARRIED!!!!!
Three weeks from now we will be on a cruise and officially have those wedding rings on our fingers. I'm going to put Eric's ring in his stocking for Christmas....now, some might say he shouldn't have it before the wedding, but he's the one that picked it out so it's not like any big surprise what it looks like!
***A week and a half ago Eric's cousin Alicia and Eric worked to set up a surprise bridal shower for me, and it was an absolute blast!!!! I was blown away, and a few tears might have run down my cheek at having people here that care about me. Well done! to my new cousin for her efforts, to my almost new husband for his ability to carry out the surprise, and to Halee and Kennedy for not spilling the beans
***Halee and Kennedy got their room decorated for a Christmas present, so that now it looks like a "girl" room. After repeated complaints at how ugly their old room was, Eric and I decided to surprise them with an upgrade! And you know they loved it when Halee said that it was such a great room that she'd never ask us for food again!!!! Haha
***During the month of December I moved! Eric will follow when we get married, but for now it's really fun having a place to decorate and feel like home. And I may or may not have gone on some crazy Christmas decoration shopping spree in order to make things look a little more festive. Did I buy a santa and snowman salt and pepper shaker? Who wouldn't?! is more the question that you should be asking. And there might be a Santa figure gracing the table that would make my grandmas's santa collection proud. For the most part it is a great place to be.....on the other hand, the pilot light of the water heater going out has proved to be a bit of a nuisance
***Eric and I had our own early Christmas. In a very unplanned occurrence, while Halee and Kennedy were with their mom, Eric and I exchanged and opened all of our gifts. It was a lot of fun, and since we were planning on having an early Christmas anyway before we went to Washington, we didn't see any harm. However, I still wanted to have something for Eric to open on Christmas, so I went out and got a couple more things. Incidentally enough, those gifts did not make it to Christmas. They only made it until Eric got home from work that same day!!! I admit, I am an anxious gift giver and have a hard time holding off, although I usually do pretty good at Christmas. So once again, Eric has nothing to open on Christmas, so I might have to go out and remedy that situation.....hopefully I can hold out on giving him the gift for one day! LOL
***At the Williams' family Christmas party, Eric was a bingo winner, which if you know Eric, is a VERY big deal because nothing puts a smile on his face quite like winning something.....even if it's only a game of chance. Just don't mention the fact that the bingo game continued until EVERYONE won something....haha ;)....however, to his credit, Eric did win the finale game of blackout, so go on you sweetheart! You make me so proud! :)
***In November it was my birthday, and I found out that Eric is an anxious gift giver as well, as he gave me presents a week before my birthday! But I must say, he is an excellent gift giver and everything he has given me, pretty much ever, I have absolutely loved! He knows me well.
*In October we went to Cornbellys and went through the corn maze. Eric and I split up and I took Kennedy with me and Eric took Halee with him. We wanted to race to see who could get through the maze first. Well, I must say, I expected the maze to be complicated and misleading and tricky, and so Kennedy and I wound up waaaaaaaaaaaaaay out in the field. Eric just took the logical turns that seemed too easy to actually be the right way, and sure enough, he got out about 10 minutes before me and Kennedy. Shoot!
***In mid-October Eric got in a car accident and totalled his Audi....sad day for him because he loved that car. Sad day for me because Eric was hurt! He did get some stitches and possibly a fractured/broken nose, but it all turned out okay in the end. Now you'd never know he'd gotten hurt, except for a slightly less than straight nose. But that's what we call personality :)
***We attended Eric's brother's, Matt's, wedding to Jessica. It was beautiful and fun. Only problem was, it was earlier in that same week that Eric had his car accident and the swelling of his lip made some say that he looked like a turtle when he smiled in the pictures. Jason and Matt had a hard time supressing would could only be termed as giggles when they would see their older brother with his smile. Would I be a bad fiance to say that he kind of DID look like turtle? ;) But a very cute turtle that I love very much, mind you! "Tuuuuurtle....tuuuuuurtle.....am I not turtley enough for the turtle club?" hehehe

Now it's just a countdown until the wedding!!!!! Can't believe it's so close, after what seems like so long! Wish us luck! :)

End of Summer

Well, the summer is kind of winding down, and so we're trying to take advantage of whatever sunshine is still left. Eric and I have recently made a couple of trips up to the SLC area and have enjoyed spending some time around the city and going to Temple Square and things. Parking, we found out, is an absolute disaster anywhere near Temple Square, and the food court at the mall we wanted to go to was equally as frustrating since the mall closes at 5 or 6. What mall does that??? That doesn't even give people time to get off work and go there. Bad business, if you ask me! lol.
Last time we were up in SLC was on Tuesday. We went for the proofing session of the photo shoot I did for the Gold's Gym competition (which was actually something quite fun, despite how completely unnerved I was for it....believe me, you can ask Eric how I was bouncing off the walls! lol). We were able to walk up to The Gateway and enjoy a little stroll around those parts. We also did an impromptu photo shoot around Temple Square and the JS Memorial Building. It was a lot of fun! We even had some random guy that wanted to take our picture with his fancy camera that he was just learning how to use, and boy did he get all into it! He was down on the ground trying to get the right angle and everything. It was great!
Like I said, we've been trying to spend some time outside, so for Labor Day we all went to play tennis and then to play mini golf. It was the girls' first time with the mini golf, and it was quite the learning experience. It took them a while to understand that you can't just pick up the ball and move it, or pick it up and put it in the hole, or that you stick with the same colored ball that you started with and don't switch to hitting someone else's ball just because it's closer to the hole! Haha. Overall, we had a great time though! Needless to say, though, we did not keep score :)

Chit chats & Tidbits

Hey yo! So it has now officially been one month since the big proposal day and things are just moving forward. We've been covering lots of wedding plans and have a good amount of things figured out. We've tended to keep things pretty simple. Our colors are pretty much crimson red and silver, with what has come to be a good dose of black as well. I think it'll be classy and elegant looking when it's all said and done. I've also found my perfect dress that I just absolutely fell in love with! I never imagined I would actually feel that way about a dress, but I sure enough did. It's a funny thing because I had actually already ordered a dress online, but when Eric and I had been walking bya bridal store and I saw the big mirrors and the pedestal and everything, I decided that I really still wanted to go in and try dresses on, get the whole experience you know, even though I wasn't planning on buying anything. Now the dress I ordered online I had really loved the way it looked, and honestly had no intention of getting anything else. I just wanted the experience. I tried on about 5 dresses just figuring out the way that I would like something to fit. You see, there's those girls that have envisioned every detail of their wedding since they were little and go into an engagement and a wedding knowing exactly everything they want. And I am most definitely not one of those. When, growing up, I thought about getting married, I always just imagined how I was going to feel and how happy I was going to be marrying the person I loved. All the other details never really crossed my mind. And so it was that I didn't really even know exactly what kind of dress I wanted. So after trying on several dresses, it came to THE dress and when I saw it on and could imagine myself all dressed up for my wedding in it, I knew I loved it. Even so, I still refused to buy it because the price was drastically greater than the other one that I had already ordered and still liked, even though after actually trying on dresses I began to gather that I might not like how that dress fit. Eric could tell that I really wanted the dress I tried on, but even so we left the bridal store just as we had come in - empty handed. After that, Eric walked me down to Orange Julius and in the time of the walk, he managed to talk me into going back and getting that dress that he knew I loved. And I have not had a moment of regret or buyer's remorse and can't wait until the dress comes in at the end of September!

It's going to be so exciting to get married up in Washington! But we'll be having a reception down in Utah as well for any friends and family that can't make the trek up to the northwest. The winter weather in Washington can tend to be a little temperamental (and wet!) and so although the wedding is still 5 months away, we are keeping our fingers crossed that the weather will cooperate!

Lately we haven't had any big doings going down, but we've just been enjoying time together. We got all registered at Bed Bath & Beyond and Target and Eric had a lot of fun playing with the handheld barcode scanning machine. It's lucky that some kid passing by didn't get their eyeballs burned with the red laserlight as they walked by us! LOL! But we were able to get all registered without any red scanning laser injury to anyone.

The weather has generally been great so we've been spending a good amount of time out at the pool. As long as we don't lose the pool key.......at Eric's apartment complex, as at most complexes, to get inside the gates surrounding the pool, you have to use a key. If we lose the key we have, we can't get into the pool, unless you pay to have it replaced. So we had searched with great diligence to find they key after it had been misplaced when Eric's brother borrowed it. We searched high. We searched low. We turned over couch cushions, went through drawers, looked in the laundry, went through toys....we looked everywhere we could think of. No luck in our search. Eventually, we went ahead and just broke down and bought a new pool key. Sure enough, about two days later, I got a text from Eric saying he found the long lost pool key. It happened to be in the one place that we didn't look.....behind the girls' toy bins in their closet. Now why, oh why, did we not think to look there?! Hmmmm. But now the good thing is we have an extra :)

The extra time in the sun has definitely resulted in some extra sunburns, but that is mostly just speaking for myself. Especially after we went to the waterpark in Lindon. Four hours in the sun will really kind of toast you if you're not wearing any sunscreen! But we had a GREAT time playing in the lazy river, going down the slide, playing in the kiddie pool and just messing around. Kennedy and I went down the waterslide about a dozen times so that Eric could get a picture of Kennedy in mid-air as I threw her into the splash pool at the end, but in the process we ended up getting enough pictures to fill an entire sequence of coming down the slide and landing in the splash pool! It was way good times!

The girls and I have been bonding a bit more as they have developed a liking for sleeping at my house whenever they can. As a matter of fact, that's where they are right now, all cuddled up in my bed. Where do I sleep? Well, I just curl up on the end of the bed, kinda like a dog, and just sleep at the foot of the bed haha! What can I say, I try to treat the girls good, so they get the cozy spot :) Maybe that's why I'm out here typing on a blog instead of in my bed asleep...or should I say, at the foot of my bed asleep lol.

We have had the chance to celebrate a little bit with some birthdays in Eric's family. We went over to his grandparent's house this las tweek because it was both of their birthdays, and it's great to be around Eric's family! They are all great people and I'm loving every chance I have to get to know them more. They are all so kind and welcoming and open, and that's really something I've needed as I'm still trying to adjust with missing my family. I'm loving them and looking forward to marrying into the family for sure. What exciting things lie ahead!!!!!

It's Official - Officially!

I said yes!! I wasn't surprised that we got engaged, but I was surprised about when Eric did it. He got me :)


A little reenactment....and I realize that in this picture, Eric is crouching and not kneeling, but believe me, when it was the real thing he was kneeling! :)

The ring that Eric picked out on his own. I thought he did a great job! :)

This is it!!!! We are now on the fastrack to happily ever after and have taken the first step on our life together when Eric officially proposed on July 14.....just shy of our six month anniversary. And I'm sure what comes to mind is the famous question.....how did he do it??

Well, Eric and I have known for months that it would come to this. And we knew it was going to be even more in the imminent future after our trip to Washington and Eric's talk with my dad. So I knew it was coming, but I didn't know when. Eric knows I am a curious person and I think he got a lot of fun out of teasing me and alluding to things about the ring he may or may not have bought, when he was going to propose, and how he was going to do it. He loved it :) But so did I.

The day before he proposed, he and I and the girls had gone up American Fork canyon to find a camping spot to roast some hot dogs and make some s'mores. It was a great night! While we were there, Eric asked what I wanted to do the followoing day for date night. I said I was up for whatever and he suggested coming back up the canyon to make some foil dinners. We had been talking about foil dinners recently and how delicious they are, so I eagerly agreed to the idea. And I love being outside and it was a beautiful spot that we had found to enjoy a campfire.

So the next day Eric and I headed up the canyon after I got off work. The girls were with their mom and so we were just going to take advantage of some time with just me and him. Eric had very lovingly prepared everything for going up the canyon while I was at work, and so he was all ready to go just as soon as I got home. We packed up the cooler and chairs in the car and went on our way. We got to the little picnic sight next to the river and Eric started employing his Eagle Scout skills to make a fire while I wrote a letter. The foil dinners required a bit of monitoring since the foil started to disintegrate in the fire haha. Eric managed to save the dinner c0mpletely but got burned on his arm in the process, and has since dubbed that mark a love scar, since it will indeed leave a scar.

While we were starting to eat dinner, Eric asked if I wanted to play one of the card games he brought and I said of course. He said he forgot them in the car so he went to go get them and came back with his backpack. I didn't think anyting of it until he sat down and pulled my laptop out of his backpack instead of a card game. After a minute, he came and sat by me and we started to watch a slideshow that he had put together that day. It was really sweet and went over pictures of when we had first started dating up until the previous weekend when we had been in Washington. It was perfect. And then at the end there were some slides that said he loved me and felt so lucky to know me....first as his friend....and then as his girlfriend.....and now hopefully as his fiance. At that point he got down on one knee and pulled out the ring. He said some things to me, expressed some of his feelings, and then told me it would be his great honor if I were to be his wife and asked me to marry him. To which I said.....OF COURSE! :) And so he slipped the ring on my finger and it became officially official :) Shortly thereafter I found out that the girls had not gone with their mom, but were in fact with his mom who was watching them so that he could take me up the canyon to propose :) Apparently Eric had been a little scatterbrained throughout the day as he was running around stressed trying to get everyting ready for that evening. Halee and Kennedy had been excited to find out that Eric was going to ask me to marry him and Halee told Eric that she has to let her know, as soon as he knew, if I said yes or not, because she really wanted me to. When we got to Eric's mom's house the girls came running up to see what the result was and when Halee found out, she turned to Eric and exclaimed, "I can't believe she said yes!" Haha it was so cute.

Since that day we have been finally officially planning what we have been talking about for months. And the wedding excitement begins as well as a new and thrilling chapter of our lives! :)

Raime's Big Shin Dig Wedding

Raime's big day was something special indeed and super fun to be a part of! There were LOTS of pictures, but that's no surprise to anyone that knows that newly hitched couple ;) It was a gorgeous day and perfect for seeing my BFF marry her sweetheart. Being in the bridal party, I stuck around for all the picture taking and all that. Eric was an absolute star with his patience and willingness to wait around. The girls did a great job as well of keeping good attitudes. I think the girls especially liked the reception and the candy bar that was available there :) Who knew they would love gummy blue sharks so much? haha. In the end, it was a long day, but we had fun, we had laughs, we danced a bit and we enjoyed spending the time together. Raime's reception was definitely done in signature Raime style and loaded with lots of good times :)

Washington-ho!!!

In Twin Falls on the way back from our trip. I didn't expect to find something gorgeous like this in Twin Falls haha.

Finally reaching the Columbia Gorge on the way to Washington. Almost home! :)

Kennedy in Washington up at Long Beach.

Halee at Long Beach. It was a great day for the beach, absolutely gorgeous!

On July 7th after I got off work we all set off together for Washington. It was actually a bit of a miracle that we were all making the trip, because for most of that day I had supposed that I would very likely be making the trip alone since Eric had been having some health issues and had looked like he was about ready to die that morning. However, Eric is very stubborn and very persistently insisted that he make the trip as well for the chance to spend time together, spend time with my family and make it for Raime's wedding. So I gave in, but mostly due to the fact that by the time we left, he was looking much better. We had decided to drive through the night, and the only con to that was the difficulty in entertaining myself while the girls were asleep at the same time that Eric was in a drug-induced coma. In the past in such circumstances, making a long drive at night, I would open all the windows, turn the radio way up, put the car on cruise control, and sit up on my seat to put my head through the sunroof to drive. But this just wouldn't work with Eric and the girls sleeping for one simple reason....the car had no sunroof. And so I vaguely recall (and don't recall at all) portions of the trip. But in the end, we all made it safe and sound Thursday morning. Oh thank heaven.

Thursday we spent the day with my family, as Eric met the rest of the clan. Thursday night proved to be Eric's motivation in his dire insistance in making the trip, regardless of his state of health. That was the time he had determined to approach my dad to have "The Talk"....you know, that one talk that all boyfriends that hope to be fiances have to have with their girlfriends' dad haha :) A later post will show the result of that talk. Friday we had a great day at the Long Beach up in Ilwaco, Washington and I think it was the most perfect day I've ever seen along the Washington or Oregon coast. It was great!!!! Friday night we were able to spend some time with Branden and Kehaulani since we spent the night at her house in order to be close to the temple the next morning for Raime's wedding. And what a great wedding that was!! It was a perfectly sunny day out for taking pictures outside the temple, and you best believe there was plenty of that going on! haha. It was so fun to see my best friend so happy and getting married and all the activities associated with that made for a busy day. Sunday was more family time until late late that night we made the decision to start heading home.

Seventeen hours later we made it home safe to Pleasant Grove, UT. Yes, traditionally that trip is a 12 hour drive, but we made things interesting by slowing it down, taking a rest in Twin Falls, ID and doing a little inadvertent detour through Pocatello. But we made the most of it and enjoyed absolutely every mile of the trip!!

4th of July in Pleasant Grove

The Fourth of July for us was one that was fun, food, fireworks and more fun! After spending the day playing and barbecueing, we spent the evening lighting up some fireworks and relaxing a little later with the Stadium of Fire fireworks going off in the distance. It was a great day and night with a lot of fun going on!!!

The Girls

For those of you that don't know, these are the girls, Halee and Kennedy. Many of our adventures definitely wouldn't be complete without them.

Halee, the blonde on the left, is the romantic girly girl. The first time I met them, we all played a game of Candyland and Halee was cheering for daddy (Eric) to win. She had decided to sit out that time. She turned to me and asked me if I wanted daddy to win too. Now, I was playing in the game, and being competitive in nature, I of course wanted to win myself. But for the sake of making a good impression, I told her that yes, I wanted her daddy to win. She got all happy about it and then told me she knew why I wanted Eric to win. Because I loved him and was going to marry him. Keep in mind that this was only the second time I had been around Eric!! Haha.

Kennedy, the brunette on the right, is the competitive athlete. During that same game of Candyland, Kennedy was the one smack talking, telling me I was going doooooowwwwn! She takes no prisoners, believe me! The only time she'll run to hold my hand is when I'm beating her up the stairs and she wants to keep me from winning!

Halee and Kennedy just turned 5 in March. That's right...although they may not exactly look it, they are twins!!! I believe Halee is older by a whole minute! They are probably the smallest, lightest five year olds I've ever seen, but that makes it easier for all the piggy back and shoulder rides they always want :)

The Story of Us

Eric and I agree that our story is one that is, simply put, the most amazing EVER!!! Neither of us had any idea where things might possibly go when back in August of '09 I got an email from the fellow named Eric Brady. Sure, the name was cute enough, but why was this guy sending me an email? Well, Eric and I happened to be on the same dating sight and his interest was piqued when he saw that I lived in Vancouver, WA, his old high school home.

So yes, it's true....we met online! GASP! Dun dun dun.....

I don't know about Eric, but I swore I would never do the whole online thing. It always seemed kinda hokey to me. I also swore I would never live in Utah. Yet here I am. Hmmmm.....I see a trend developing here. Well, in keeping with this trend, I swear I'm never gonna marry Eric!! Haha :) We'll see how that one pans out.....

Anyway, as fate would have it, Eric and I happened to cross paths on the cyber highway. The planets were aligned, the stars were shining, the clock was at 11:11....or something of the like. However it happened that we initially saw each other online, things just took off from there. NOT!

After exchanging several general and fun emails, we fell out of touch. Now, I'll take the blame on this. I was the one that didn't write back. Shame shame shame, I know. But in my defense, Eric was starting to, or was already in the process of dating someone at the time. And we'll just leapfrog all of the details of that. On to the better stuff!

A couple of months went by before Eric and I had the chance of crossing paths again. During the short duration of our email communications, we had become Facebook friends. Because everyone knows it's not official until it's of Facebook! So cyber-officially, we were friends. Even though we'd never exchanged a text or phone call or anything besides the few emails. So it was in the beginning of November or so (I don't remember exactly....I'll change it if Eric can remember when) that I happened to be on Facebook and saw that Eric was on as well. In all our loooooong months of friendship (all two or three of them) I had never seen him on facebook. And so I thought to myself "I would like to message this young lad." But alas, I convinced myself that he would think it was weird because he probably wouldn't even remember me.

However, I gave myself a little pep talk, and decided to go ahead and message him. So I threw caution to the wind and typed those fateful words "Hey, how's it going? You probably don't even remember me."

But beyond all belief, Eric remembered me! Or so he said.....we chatted for a few minutes before he had to go. He gave me his phone number and told me to feel free to text him anytime. And then he signed off. So although I had reinitated contact with Eric via my brave facebook message, the ball was once again in my court because I had his phone number and he did not have mine. I thought to myself that I would like to text him the next day, but no, that would just be weird. Wouldn't it? I would look desperate. Wouldn't I? So I convinced myself to wait until after the weekend to text Eric, so as not to appear stalkerish or anything. And with that decision, I took that ball that had been in my court, and I dropped it. Because it turns out I totally forgot about it after that day. Once again, shame shame shame.

Weeks later, I happened upon Eric's name in my phone when I was looking for something else and I thought to myself "Well, I can't text this young buck now. I'm sure he would just think it was all kinds of weirdness for me to text him after so long. Too late." But once again, I rallied my courage and decided to send a little text, even though he had probably already forgotten me by that point. To my surprise, he replied before long. And that's how it all really started. From that day on, our texting jumped through the roof. First time in my life that I had more than 10,000 texts in one month. Sickening, I know. But that's how we started to get to know one another. Eric would work nights and I would try to stay up with him because we would just text back and forth all night.

In December, I went to New York and Ireland, and so Eric and I were out of touch for a while, and it was really during that time that I realized how much I enjoyed him. And I missed hearing from him terribly. It also didn't hurt that the night before I left, Eric had told me that he liked me and thought he was falling for me. But here's the catch in all of this.....we had never talked on the phone! We had talked (or, I guess, texted) about it....wondering what each other sounded like and everything. But I think both of us wanted the other to call first. And neither of us wanted to be the one to call! LOL

As it turned out, in January I came down to Utah with my brother for a wedding he was attending. My point in coming was to see Eric. So we FINALLY met. And it was wonderful. We chatted for hours. And everything just seemed to be easy.

From that point on, things have just worked out in amazing ways. Everything fell into place, and that's how we now find ourselves currently living 1 1/2 miles apart in Pleasant Grove, UT. Although I swore I would never live in Utah, I found something that enticed me beyond resistance to pull up my roots in Washington and pack it all down here. So far, so good. However, we can't say yet if things are going to ultimately work out. At least not officially. Not yet :)

And there's no doubt that our continued story will be just as amazing as the beginning.