One year! For reals, this time!

 Wow! I can't believe we've already been married for a YEAR! This has been the most amazing year yet(yes, even including my mission), and I'm working on a sum-uppance of all the things that have made this year great. For this post's purposes and in general, though, the best thing has just been being together all year! Two of my favorite things about marriage are waking up next to each other every day, and never having to drop each other off at different apartments every night. It's sappy, I know, but I just can't seem to ever "wake up on the wrong side of the bed" when the first thing I see every morning is my wonderful best friend AND husband waking up next to me! Probably helps that he is always cheerful, too!

Okay, so we thought deeply about what kind of romantical thing we'd do to celebrate the big first anniversary, and....

WE WENT WHALE WATCHING! 

If that doesn't sound like the most thrilling thing to you, then that is probably because you have not spent multiple hours watching the Nature videos on PBS...come on, doesn't everyone want to see a whale spout in real life?

We have actually been wanting to go down to this lighthouse place in Palos Verde for a while, because supposedly this is the place to see whales, and so Miles got off work early and we headed down. This also strategically gave me time to prep some of my dinner surprises. :)

Right as we pulled into the parking lot, I looked out the windshield and was pretty sure I saw a whale surfacing! We jumped out of the car, and sure enough, there WERE whales out there, and we saw at least a couple spouts!  Off to the left we saw a couple dolphins, and then Miles pointed out that to the right was a group of seals leaping in and out of the water. We were so excited that we were jumping around like kindergartners--there's TONS of things out here! We were both secretly expecting to just kind of sit around for a very long time, waiting for whales to show up, and here the ocean is apparently swarming with them!

It was kind of like this! Only the whales looked more proportional, not suspiciously like they'd been drawn in "Paint"

Weeeeell...turns out that we were just the luckiest little newlyweds in the world, once again, because when we started walking around and talked to the "whale society" people that had set up their camp and spyglasses(can I call them that? It sounds so much more fitting with the buttons they had pinned to their whale-watching vests and directors' chairs), they apparently had been there all day and had only seen four whales. TOTAL. Isn't that amazing?

We hung around to see the whales leave, and after a while of looking at boats through Miles's spotting scope , we took off for dessert.

Miles took this artsy panoramic shot. I think that cleft in the ocean is where all the other whales were hiding.

Since we had decided that making our own special dinner at home would be more fun than eating out, Miles was in charge of picking a special dessert place, and we decided to do that first. And the winner was...Cold Stone! Yum! We were kind of excited to see those little mochi there, and the server humored us and put some on top of what we got for free. Yay for anniversaries again!

I had been plotting for some time to make a special dinner, and decided to make what we'd had on our first date. Through a funny turn of events, Miles had taken me to SPARK restaurant in Provo to try to get some hot chocolate, but they didn't have any. Instead we had mango mojitos(NON-alcoholic, mind you), and, of all things, two kinds of edamame. I used my trusty friend Mr. Google to help me find out how to make those things, and then added chicken salad croissants to the menu, since that's the yummier version of the food we didn't get to eat at our wedding reception. Here's how it came out:

One year!

Tricked you all! It's not our anniversary...exactly. One year ago was the night Miles proposed.
Before THIS story, I should probably mention that a year ago we'd also just been broken up for a week and a half or so. To explain THAT story would take more time than any logical person would want to spend on a blog, so we'll skip that for now and just say that we'd been dating for a year and a half and it felt like something needed to happen. We'd been talking about marriage for months but I was afraid of making the step and thought that Miles didn't seem to be coming to any decision. Little did I know that he had, and had had a ring since October. I guess he just really wanted me to be sure all on my own, and I wanted him to be sure all on his own, and... we got all confused and broke up :) ...which ended up being a good thing, since it made things really clear for both of us. So, this is the point we were at last year...

Now, I wish I'd written more about this sooner, because even though I wrote in my journal that night it's just something like, "SURPRISE, WE'RE ENGAGED!" and tells a vague story. I'll do my best, though. However, consider yourself forewarned: *this is a love-ish sort of story and may contain large amounts of cheesyness*

This was during BYU's Christmas break, but since I was working at the MTC I was still staying up in Provo, walking back and forth from work. I would LOVE to see what I'd done with the missionaries that night...I wonder what our lesson was about? :) Anyway, on that night's walk home I finally got to the outside stairs to my apartment, and noticed two balloons tied to the railing. Looking closer, I also found an envelope with my name on it sitting in the snow on the steps.

The handwriting looked familiar, but I couldn't be sure.

The "security card?" A pack of matches

I read it (click on the picture to enlarge it), and looked around suspiciously. The only person I could see was a guy standing across the street. He looked a lot like this creepy Russian MTC volunteer that hit on me when I caught him sneaking around in the classroom building at work. Hmm. The instructions were clear, though, and my curiosity got the best of me. I'd rather face Mr. MTC-Creeper asking me out than live never knowing what could have happened, had I cut the balloon.
I released the green one, and sure enough, the creeper-look-alike started across the street. As he got closer, I was both relieved and confused to see that this guy was totally unfamiliar. He walked up and said (in a British cockney accent), "Hello! I'm Roger. I'll be your chauffeur for the evening. If you'll just follow me, my car is parked over across the street."
At this point it occurred to me that this is probably how kidnappings happen, but I WAS curious, so when he assured me that he did know someone that I knew, I went along with him. I think when we tell our engagement story to our kids, I'll have to edit that part, so they don't go around getting in cars with random strangers all the time.
All this time I was secretly hoping that it might be Miles, and secretly afraid of not knowing what I'd do if it was. I had no idea that this was anything more than a really cute date idea.

Right abooooout here. Just with a lot more snow

As Roger pulled up to the back of the old President's House on campus, I knew it had to be Miles. We'd discovered this spot in the summer and we thought it was a super secret garden. (Later I found out that just about everyone knows where this is, but we thought it was a find!) Roger came around and escorted me out of the car, complete with a carpet covering the snow where I stepped out. I could see candles in the snow and Miles was behind a tree lighting some luminary lanterns he'd made. (He later told me that I came home faster than he thought, and he'd had all kinds of hold ups along the way, including the microwave in the Wilk being broken)
We talked, and as Miles started telling me how much he loved me, he noticed that I was looking at something over his shoulder. It was a policeman, coming around the side of the house. I thought, "Wow, Miles really planned this thing!"...until I saw his face, and realized that the policeman was not part of the plan. I guess you can't light floating luminaries on BYU campus...anyway, after delivering that message, the sheepish cop left awkwardly, and somewhere around this point Miles said that he'd talked with my dad, and suddenly it clicked: he was proposing!!! He knelt down and pulled out a little ring box, and...asked.
Talk about surprise proposals! The funny thing is, I'd been thinking about things the whole week and had had so many moments when I knew that if somehow things worked out, I definitely wanted to marry Miles. I was still super freaked out to make such a huge decision, though, and it was a few minutes after he got up off his knee and we talked that I felt calm and said yes.
BEST DECISION EVER!!!

okay, so this was on Valentine's, but close enough

Lookin' our best

Colonel Mustard and Mrs. White

some engaged night or other...

We got married on April 9th of this year, and it's the best thing in the world to be married to my best friend! We have SO much fun together, and eight months, nine or so road trips, a move, a couple mini car accidents, and one awesome Christmas later, life is pretty incredibly good!