It's the Final Countdown..

I really love the title to this post and you would too if you watch the greatest show of all time, Arrested Development. I'd like to give a shout out to my favorite character Gob Bluth (not Job, thanks Bryce) at this time. I'd also like to give a shout out to the month of July for going by so fast! Something I'm pretty happy about. I realized something awesome yesterday while Stu and I (and Megan and Tyler) were in Temple Prep. I go through the temple one month from Sunday!! Which means we get married a month from today! Which means we will be in Cancun a month from tomorrow. Not sure which of those I'm more excited about haha, for Stu I'm pretty sure it's Cancun. Today I put on my white pants and thought "only one more month of worrying about underwear lines. This is the best." Obviously not the only benefit of getting endowed but one I've thought about probably more than I should. So, in honor of the last 30 days of being unmarried and in the hopes that they pass quickly here is a list of 10 reasons I'm excited to marry this fiance of mine. 

10. Because I've been pinning adorable decorating ideas for the past 5 months and want to see our little home finally come together! We (I) picked our bedroom colors and bedspread out the other day and I was about to die of joy. It was so fun. Registering was a blast as well and it was surreal to look at the different household items you never even realize you need, even though I've been living away from home for over 2 years. Stu and my mom have been making fun of me because I registered for an extension cord. One of these days when he needs to plug something in and he's not near an outlet we'll see who's laughing!

9. I'm stoked to change my last name. I love being a Barlow and I think I have a pretty great cursive "B" but I will gladly kiss it goodbye here in a few weeks. I always said I wanted to marry someone whose last name was at the beginning of the alphabet because in elementary school I got this kind of strange pride out of always being called first on the roll and I wanted that for my kids! So thoughtful. Despite the demise of this childhood dream, I'm still very excited to become a Reynolds.

8. I'll leave this one blank since I think my grandparents read this sometimes. But, you know...

7.  I love Stu's family. I haven't met a single person in his family that I haven't instantly loved. I think it's funny how often I get asked "So what do you think of his family?" People often ask that question expecting a negative response. I feel so lucky that I'm getting such an amazing family! We were saying the other day how our kids are going to have 2 sets of AWESOME grandparents, aunts, and uncles. We both lucked out in the in-law department. :)

6. We made a goal to go to the temple at least twice a month for our first year of being married. The temple has been on my mind of lot since I'm going through in a month so this is one of the things I'm most intrigued and excited about for sure.

5. This one won't happen for a while, but... babies! I want a baby so baddddd. Stu and I have gone through almost every online baby name site and have only agreed on 2 names. And we can't remember one of them. So our kids may not have names. Another bonus to marrying into the Reynolds' family: Adorable freckly babies. If our kids don't have the Reynolds' freckles I might have to tell the doctor to put them back.

4. I've heard it's easier to get good grades and focus on school work when you're not dating or engaged. We're both really hoping that this rumor is true...

3. I will have successfully avoided any chance of teen pregnancy. Let's go!

(Thanks dad for taking this picture, and thanks to my mom for her hilarious reaction upon seeing it).

2. While dating and being engaged Stu has been pretty tolerant of the state I tend to leave my car in. (Messy, very messy). I have a feeling this tolerance is going to come to an abrupt end as soon as we seal the deal. I welcome the extra organizational help.

1. I think there's only a certain amount of progression a pair can go through while dating or even engaged. I can't wait to be married because it comes with so much potential to grow. My best friend Chelsea and I always used to say "we know each other so well and have so much fun together. What if we never find a boy who we love as much as we love each other?!" Our moms found this a little creepy...it was a legitimate concern for best friends of 14 years. I'm happy to say that I had no need to worry about it. :)

10 Things I've Learned Since Being Engaged

Narrowing this list down to ten things was not easy. I learn new things about Stu, myself, and what it really means to be on the brink of making the biggest commitment I'll ever make. All good things of course. :) Here are a few of those things pertaining to being engaged, and some others that I just felt like  other people might like to know, such as...

#10. Basketball finals takes place in several series of 7 games. "Finals" is plural for a reason. After the Heat beat the Celtics in the playoffs after 7 games they moved onto the Finals to compete against the OKC Thunder for the 2012 Championship. Now, I was under the impression for some reason that after the basketball nation had determined that the Heat and Thunder would be playing in the Finals, that they would determine the championship after playing just one game. Lucky for me, there were in fact SIX more games after that one. I do mean it when I say lucky, reason being that the Thunder won the first game in the series and if they had taken the championship I would have had a very disappointed Heat fan of a fiance. And now the Heat are up 2-1. :) Only 3 more games!

So here's what I've really learned. I used to dread watching games with Stu. I tried hard to not complain but it was starting to get the best of me. Just when it was starting to get really bad, like a game every single day bad, I noticed that I had started to figure out the game. And I actually cared who won! Haha for someone who has watched more sports in the last year than in the rest of my life combined (x100) that is saying something. And I have to admit, I'm pretty proud that I am now able to explain playoffs/finals to the blogosphere. So, take time to learn about the seemingly boring things your main squeeze enjoys. You hate it, then get used it, then if you're lucky--you might start to enjoy it too.

#9. I dream about the wedding literally every single night. This never happened before there was a ring on my finger even though we knew we were getting married. It was as if now that there is a piece of hardware on my finger, my brain magically knows that it needs to solve wedding problems in my sleep. They have ranged from really stressful (all my teeth falling out), to REALLY weird (having a mexican fiesta and then watching rated R movies inside of the temple).

#8. I hate being at my apartment. I can't wait for us to just live together already. Being with Stu at his town house feels more like home than being at the apartment I've lived at for a year. I don't even leave food there anymore except for breakfast haha. August can't come soon enough. And by August I mean September since that will realistically be when we will actually be able to settle in. We found this really great apartment in Orem and are waiting to hear back on whether or not we got it. Cross your fingers for us. :)

#7. Savings are suddenly important. I've never cared that much about money and have just been content in the past as long as I had money to fill my car up, pay for my gym membership, and hit Costa Vida occasionally. All of a sudden, it's not just about me haha. I'm more grateful than ever that my parents made sure I developed my ability to play the piano as well as encouraging me to start teaching piano lessons in high school. It is an awesome job and I'm so glad that we can always have that to cushion our income a little bit.

#6. People are more accomodating to me when they know I'm engaged. It's like everyone thinks that I'm planning my wedding every minute of every day. If I'm running somewhere late, "It's okay, I know you're getting married." If I forgot to register for an essential class Fall Semester, "You're engaged?? Don't worry about it!" Banana Republic didn't have something in my size, "It's for your engagment pictures?? I'll have it rushed here!" It is awesome. I'm going to keep pretending I'm engaged after we get married, because I doubt anyone cares after the deed is done. I can't wait to see what it's like when there's a kid on the way...

#5. Planning things isn't as fun as I thought it would be. That's why I'm so glad that my mom and Stu's mom are both in wedding planning beast mode. I really haven't had to do much. I just show up when I'm told to and tell them when I like stuff. They both have incredible tastes so I don't have to worry too much about the way things will turn out.

#4. Every day I get more excited to just be married and care less about the actual wedding. This is one of the best surprises. I've never liked when girls get caught up too much in the stuff that goes into that one day. When it really comes down to it, it's just a party for other people. I know that day I'm going to be completely oblivious to the shade of pink of the flowers in the centerpiece. I'll be way too focused on the handsome boy next to me. :)

#3. My perception of us as a couple is gradually changing. I've started to mentally view us as more of an unofficial little family. This is super cool. Maybe if you've experience it you know what I mean but if you haven't, I don't really know how to explain it and even if I could, I wouldn't want to ruin it for you. :)

#2. I love doing wifey things. I've been cooking a ton and it's so much fun. I was telling Stu the other day that I used to totally pity my mom when I watched her make dinner every single night. I thought it would be so inconvenient to have to interrupt what you're doing every day around 5 o'clock to go make some food for everyone. I look forward to it now though. I love finding new recipes and trying them out and we've loved some of the healthy recipes I've found. Stu is an awesome cook too so if I ever do need a break, I'm lucky I found a good one who knows his way around the kitchen.

#1. Dating is fun. Being engaged is lame. I always said I wanted to date for a year before getting married. When we get married in August, it will have been almost exactly one year since we started dating. I'm glad we're having a relatively short engagement, but it cannot pass fast enough. Sometimes it seems like we're going to be stuck in engagement purgatory forever. Only 2 more months though and Stu assures me it's going to fly by. :)

WTS??: Not What You Think It Stands For

If I tricked you into reading this by titling this post after an abbreviation for an inappropriate curse phrase, you may now leave this page. WTS, in fact, stands for Wedding-Triathlon-Socks.

1. Wedding

Okay for those of you who have planned weddings and used the conveniences of Facebook to spread the word, let's talk about creating an event to get addresses. I am so confused by this. You create the group to get addresses and then people say they are "attending"...and then they don't post their address...Haha. So am I now supposed to track down all these people and get their addresses? I don't quite understand this phenomenon...Stu and I are getting a good laugh out of it as our event says there are about 100 people attending but we probably have less than 50 addresses. It's a mystery!

2. Triathlon

My dad just did his 2nd Ironman in May and it was so BA. That does stand for what you think it does. Ironman's are insane (as in cool) and the people who do them are equally insane (as in CRAZY)! When we went and watched him compete in this last one we caught the triathlon bug. Stu was hooked pretty instantly, it took me a little longer to get on board. When I heard that the one he wanted to sign us up for was the week before our wedding I decided that I'm in. I figured it would be a super fun thing to get in to and also that it couldn't hurt to be on a vigorous athletic training schedule in the 3 months leading up to the wedding. :) The training schedule that we do is sweet because unlike the schedule I used to train for the half marathon I did last year, this one tells you to train for a specified amount of time, rather than distance. Example: Today we run for 50 minutes. Tomorrow we will swim for about an hour. Wednesday we will bike for 97 minutes. (I made all that up. I hope it isn't that long...) But you get the idea. I love this so much better than just going to the gym and doing random cardio and weight lifting. The only problem is that we don't have bikes. Those long bike rides are KILLLLER indoors. It is so boring and so hard to sit and just spin for long than 45 minutes. You start to loathe all of the music on your ipod. We need bikes. Yes, need.

3. Socks

There has always been one mystery of the universe that I just cannot understand. Where do all the missing socks go? Where?!?! I used to get upset at allll the socks I lose but over the years it's gotten to a point that it is just plain comical. Observe:

This is my Sad Sock box. It is full of lonely, single socks. Whenever I can't find a sock match, the single sock goes in the box. I refuse to wear mismatched socks, so these outcast socks are put out of commission, perhaps forever if their partner goes undiscovered.

Occasionally I will open up the Sad Sock box and see if the partners of any of the forsaken socks has snuck its way in unnoticed. These were the contents of the box a couple of days ago when I decided to give it a try. I know. It's unreal. How does this happen??

This is the outcome. Out of all those socks, only 8 pairs were reunited. Only 8! Once again, How does this happen?! There are sneaky elves breaking into my apartment at night and stealing my socks, I am sure of it. Or there is a black hole out there in the universe that is acting as a home for a host of my beloved socks. I've looked in my car, at my parent's house, behind the dryer, under my bed, through every drawer, through my sister's drawers...Everywhere. But no dice. Maybe someone in the witness protection program needed some mismatched socks. I don't think they're coming back.

The silver lining in this otherwise dreadful situation is that it seems that the vast majority of my lost socks are green. And green is my least favorite color of sock.

How My Boyfriend Became My Fiance

I was extremely wary of starting a blog because, as I mentioned in my last post, things that are cliche and I don't usually get along haha. Yesterday, I finally came to the decision that my last post would be my first and last ever blog post. (A terribly constructed sentence). Driving home from my family's Memorial Day BBQ I said to Stu, "Okay that's it. I'm never posting on the blog again." His response was a great reminder of why he is so good for me. "Do you really care that much about what people might say or think?" Touche StuLuv. So, the blog lives on! Hopefully it can be a good way for friends and family who live far away, particularly the ones in Toppenish, to keep up on us since they can't be as close as we wish they were.

As promised, here is the story of the proposal. The long version... I'm still practicing how to condense it into a short version for those who don't want to hear a play by play of every minute. :)


It's not that big of a secret that we started planning our wedding around the beginning of April. We actually got a pretty impressive amount of stuff done because Lucy, Stu's mom, was in town and together our moms went to town trying to get things done before Lucy had to leave. With so much planning done, I think we were all pretty eager to make it official. The moms were definitely getting tired of keeping it on the DL. One did a better job than the other...thumbs up, Lucy.

We went ring shopping a few times and I finally gave in to the reality that I was going to have to design my ring to get what I wanted and that designing it and having it made meant that it would take longer than I wanted to have it done. This also meant that I would have no idea when exactly Stu would have the ring. I had an idea of when it would maybe be finished but any suspicions of it being this last weekend were squashed when my mom told me that my family was leaving Friday to go camping. I knew Stu wouldn't propose when they were out of town. Looking back on it, there were several hints that I should have picked up on. The biggest one being that Lucy actually texted me and told me that it was happening. Haha okay it wasn't that blatant, but almost! Word for word, the text said: "Jess your mom said she wishes I could be there Friday! I wish I could too! I'm so excited for all of us!" I struggled for HOURS with what to do with this information. I didn't know if I should ask her what she meant or tell Stu what she had said and I felt soooo bad that I had somehow ruined the surprise when I knew Stu was probably trying really hard to keep it a secret.

I finally decided to just tell him and he said he didn't know what she was talking about and I should ask her. The response was that my mom had told her that I was getting my dress fitted Friday and she wishes she could be there. Even though my dress fitting was in fact on Thursday, I totally bought it. A shout out to Lucy, Wendy, and Stu for all the behind the scenes work that went into covering this up by the way! Come to find out that there was a lot of swift phone calls and texting that took place between me asking what she meant and her reply about the dress fitting. Well done friends.

Now we get to Friday.

Under the impression that we were heading up to Stu's friend Cam's cabin to have a game night with a huge group of people, I obliviously headed up to Park City with Stu. He even went so far as to tell me that we were meeting up with other people for dinner and they bailed at the last minute, I even heard the phone call. We ate at this AWESOME restaurant and had the best pizza I've ever had! I would definitely recommend Maxwell's Eastcoast Eatery to anyone who likes pizza. After we ate Stu said there were probably already people at the cabin so we could just go up there and wait for everyone else to show up. Still no real suspicions. Especially when we got to the cabin and there were cars in the driveway. We went inside and the only thing I had time to think as I closed the door was "it shouldn't be this quiet in here..." When I turned around I saw the trail of candles and rose petals that led out to this:

I may have figured out what was going on by now. :) Stu sat me down in the chair, said some things that I can't remember anymore because my head was spinning, and then stood up for the big moment. And then this happened:

The ring wasn't in the right pocket. It wasn't in the left pocket. Nope. No ring! He didn't seem too nervous but I definitely was. His exact words were "Okay I'll be right back... Walk of shame." (Later we found out that someone who could hear him that I had said no when they heard that hahaha). So I waited:

It didn't take him too long though :) The ring had just fallen out right next to the car. And then this happened:

And then this happened :)...

Didn't he do an amazing job?! I am still thoroughly impressed. Special thanks to Cam, James, Johnny, and the two cute girls who helped him with everything and put it together. I loved it and I love the story. It wasn't quite over yet though. As we were leaving he told me that we were going to have dessert in Salt Lake. My mind was still spinning so much and I was so focused on staring at the ring that it didn't really occur to me that this was strange since we both HATE desserts. I also didn't find it strange that we drove right through Salt Lake and to Sandy. Only did I find something a little off when we passed Sandy and started driving into Draper. Then it hit me that my family wasn't really camping. They were still at home and probably waiting there for us. Not only was my family waiting there though, but Stu, my mom, and my best friend of 13 years Chelsea had put together a surprise engagement party.

 

It was so fun. Stu summed it up perfectly later. Having friends and family there to celebrate this awesome moment just made him even more excited for the wedding. I couldn't agree more. The proposal was perfect. Being engaged definitely feels good after the past couple months of secret wedding planning, even though I hope it goes by quickly! I also can't stop staring at this beautiful thing on my finger.

Well done, Stu!

Chapter 1: How We Met

I'm surprised how excited I am about the first post to the "marriage blog." Anyone who knows me or Stu know we both have a unique disdain for any and all things cliche. Starting a blog after you get engaged is about as cliche as you can get! I decided to make an exception though, just this once, and give in to the classic mormon relationship blog haha. I have a great story for this one, so hopefully that makes up for it a little bit. :)

Before I get to the Proposal, I better fill in the backstory of how Stu and I met. 

I graduated in 2010 from Jordan High School and one of the things I was most excited about for college for getting to attend a student ward. (This is especially funny for anyone who knows how notoriously anti-social I am in my wards). Luckily I was at least semi-social in my Freshman Ward because that's where I met Lucas Reynolds. We were super good friends that entire year and he was always telling me how I needed to come do something with him and his older brothers, all of whom attended BYU as well other than Ethan, who was on a mission at the time. Plans were made several times for me to come do stuff with them but they always seemed to fall through. 

That finally changed when Lucas left on his mission. He had already moved back home to Washington for the Summer but decided to come out to Utah to visit some friends one last time in the middle of June before he headed out for Brazil. I'm so glad he did. :) That weekend my roommate Steph and I met up with Lucas and his brothers, Paul and Stuart, along with their cousin Stacie to go bowling at Fat Cats. To be completely honest the only interaction I really remember having with Stu that night was when he came and tried to help me with my bowling strategy one or two times because he was scared I was going to send the bowling ball through the floor. The other vivid memory from that night is him mocking a socially awkward girl that was dancing in the lane next to us. A boy after my own heart.

He sent me a friend request on Facebook that night and sent me a message, "Did you get that shoulder iced?" (I don't think I'm that bad at bowling!) The rest of that conversation consisted of brainstorming techniques to make a better bowler, making fun of redheads, and much sarcasm. We probably talked strictly on Facebook for a few days before I finally just decided we needed to take our interaction to the next level and threw my phone number out there. 

We went stargazing and to get snowcones that weekend  and hung out for about 2 weeks before our first official date. A fateful date that ended in a little pain, and a lot of amusement. We went to sushi at Happy Sumo and then went back to Stu's to watch a movie.. to "watch a movie." We "watched a movie" so much that I got a rash on my upper and lower lip and woke up the next morning with a large portion of my lower face significantly scabbed. This would have been hilarious if the story ended there, but just to add injury to insult, I was going to the Young Women's Camp  director for my home ward during the coming week. Luckily it was pirate themed so I just drew a black beard on my face with a little makeup! 

I don't think I fooled anyone and it's still something I don't think I'll ever live down. When your first kiss came along with such an awesome story, you're morally obligated to share it with the world, right? :)

Anyway, that's the beginning of our story! I can't believe we've known each other almost a year or that we'll be getting married in just 3 short months, almost exactly a year after we started dating. 

August 31, 2011:

 Out to dinner at La Jolla Groves for my birthday.

Now I better get started on my next post about the proposal... It's a good one. :)