Anxiously Engaged in a Good Cause

For Christmas, Danny's parents gave us snow shoes. Tuesday night, we decided to go snow shoeing up Timpanogas, to a waterfall where we also had our first kiss just a little over a year ago. It was such a beautiful night, the moon was full and really bright and the snow was nice and deep and powdery. We played around for a bit and rested in the snow, just kind of talking casually and enjoying each other's company. We meandered back down the mountain. We were about 200 yards from the end of the trail when Danny discovered something in the snow. He told me to come look. And there was this sign:

At first I was like, ok, that's neat, and just kept walking towards the car. I didn't get that it was for me at all. Then he was like, oh and look! There is another one over there. And i walked over to it, the next one was more personal so i was starting to catch on. There were a whole series of signs that said cute things about our relationships, inside jokes, and what not. The whole time, i kept asking if this was a joke and what was going on. I really did think he was just messing with me, like Jim does to Pam off of the office.

The signs led up to this, a ring of candles, hot cocoa, and an amazing proposal, which i still thought was a trick until he dangled the ring in front of my face.

and now we are engaged!! We are shooting for May 8th... yippppeeee!!!

The Holiday Season

This Holiday season has certainly started with a bang. Friday morning I was happily nestled in my warm blankets and down comforter, with the Christmas lights on, and the heater blowing on me. It was a romantical sleep. All of the sudden, I was awoken to heavy banging at my front door. There was something blocking the alarm clock so I couldn’t make out what time it was. I thought quickly to myself that I was not expecting anyone, so I rolled over and fell back asleep. A couple of minutes later I was re awoken by a phone call from my roommate. Ah, it must be her at the door. In my apartment complex, we have door codes instead of keys. So I was like, maybe she’s just having trouble getting the code to work. I assumed she would eventually get it, and I fell back asleep. Sometimes kindness gets replaced by sleepiness. A couple of minutes later, my light flicked on and there stood my two roommates, wide eyed and white faced. Both were talking loudly and fast and I had just woken up so I was having a hard time figuring out what was going on.
“What’s going on guys?”
“There is a guy trying to break into our house. He has been banging on our window for a few minutes and now he’s banging on the front door! What should we do?”“… is it someone you know? Could it be either of your boyfriends? Have you looked through the peep hole in the door?”
Negative to all of the questions.
So what’s my first inclination? Lets grab weapons! I’m good at this game by now. Briefly after that thought, I asked “Could it be our other roommates ride to the airport? Do you know when she was suppose to leave?”
They weren’t sure. I was having trouble calming one of my roommates down, plus I wasn’t entirely awake. I heard her call her boyfriend (who lives with my boyfriend) and they were on their way in a hurry.
My boyfriend knows our door code, so I felt comforted in hearing the sound of the door code being opened. We all came outside. And who was the intruder? None other than the roommate who did not get woken up’s ride to the airport. Just as I had thought. DAH. My roommates are so dang dramatic. I also felt horrible for my poor boyfriend who had to wake up for a 7 AM final.

Next, my brother and I had a flight out of Salt Lake City at 4 PM that same afternoon. We left at 1PM, trying to beat traffic of everyone who would be leaving Provo and also because it is the weekend before Christmas so I was confident that the airport would be insane. I called ahead to make sure our flight was on time and what not, which it was. The sun was shining, finals finished, and we were on our merry way to the airport to get home for the holidays.

Suddenly, a massive winter storm broke out. Like literally, we came around a corner on the highway and it was a blizzard. We slipped a couple of times on the road, and our driver (Danny’s good pal) was slightly freaking me out with his driving skills or lack thereof, but we made it to the airport nonetheless.
We got through security and all checked in remarkably fast. We sat at our gate, kind of wondering how our flight was going to make it out of Utah in the crazy snow storm. Our flight was delayed an hour. Then, another hour. And another hour. Finally it got pushed back until 8:00 PM. We would miss our connecting flight that went from Denver to Tulsa. We stood in a 2 hour line to try to figure out what we were supposed to do and what our options were. (While we were standing in the middle of the line, a healthy blinged out black couple in their 50’s marched ahead of everyone and started throwing their arms in the air “Maaaan we been hea’ 12 hours dog. We just tryin to get to Las Vegas man. This ain right”) After standing with our luggage for two hours, we found out basically nothing. They told us to stick it out and the flight in Denver was holding for our flight to get there, which was nice. But we were still stuck waiting. And man, I just feel bad for people who work at airports. Because obviously, none of them can control the weather, it’s not their fault that everyone was stuck there but people get pissed off and flip out at them. Not a job for me.
We grabbed a bite and waited. We checked the board again. Another delay—8:55 PM. We weren’t sure if the Denver flight would wait that long, so back to the crazy long line we went. I figured out that you can actually call and work things out, so we ended up not being in line too long. I found out over the phone, that our flight was delayed until 12:45 AM now. Boo. Not happening. We were both hungry, tired, and grumpy. We were like delirious laughing at all the ridiculous people stuck in the airport. It was kinda entertaining. Plus, we were all in the same predicament so you just like have this bond with total strangers. We were delayed again until 7 AM. I texted my boyfriends mom, who lives much closer to the airport than Provo. Her and her family saved the day! They came and picked us up and fed us all kinds of tasty treats and let us sleep in their nice warm beds. Oh it was magical! Definitely the best thing that happened to me that day. A tender mercy, if you will.
They were so good to us, and even woke up at 5 AM to take us back to the treacherous airport. We got to the security line, which was a tad longer than we would have liked but we were still in good spirits.

Then, they let us know that the person who had given us our tickets for our new flights and written that we needed to go through extensive screening in security. That was starting to push my limits. I was just so bloody sick of the airport at this point, but whatever, soon enough I would be on my flight home with no worries.
They opened my bags and started going through my stuff. My lap top set the alarm off. Great.
“Mam, since your computer set the alarm off we are going to have to give you a pat down” (UM, which totally makes sense because if I have something weird in my computer obviously I would have like a bomb on me or something. It didn’t seem super logical to me.) Fine, whatever, pat me down and get me the devil out of here. So, the dude pats me down and has the nerve to ask me to take off my sweater! Not a hoodie, not a jacket, but my sweater—basically the equivalent of a long sleeved shirt. I glared at him and held my tongue from everything I was thinking and how fed up I was. I simply said “No.” My face was steaming… and probably redder than shiz. The dude grabbed another airport employee as he was walking by and asked what he thought. He quickly looked at me and said to him “You want her to take off her shirt?” Had my spirits been lighter, I would have just told him he had to take me to dinner first.

FINALLY we got to our gate, boarded, and made our way to our layover in Denver where we were greeted by a very kind and very questionable steward. Or stewardess. Still not really sure about that one. See picture for details.


We made it safely and soundly to Oklahoma and had a pretty great Christmas with the fam.