WARNING: This post is for my own reminiscing and entertainment, I won’t feel bad if you don’t read the whole thing or any part of it for that matter…
Here’s our story (at least my side of it):
Growing up my dream was to go to BYU and meet my dream man and then live in Utah for the rest of forever… well, don’t tell anyone, but I didn’t get accepted to BYU and I was devastated! My good friend Emily Adamson dragged me with her to a very cold place called Rexburg. I planned to go there for a year, just for fun, to try something out and to be on my own.
I remember when my parents and little brother Trevon dropped me off there at apartment #303 at Carriage House Apartments and I was feeling a little like, “Don’t leave me here, this is like the smallest town EVER and where are the mountains?!?!” I was thinking there would be mountains like there are in Provo and I was disappointed. Anyway, that first year was a BLAST!!! Of course there was homesickness and all that, but I LOVED it there! I was soooo cold, but the snow was soooo beautiful!
I loved walking home from class and watching it fall, it was amazing! BYU-Idaho is such a cool place! I recommend it to anyone and everyone! I can’t believe all the fond memories I have there. Anyway, when spring came, it was beautiful! At about the same time I had a crush and he is partly to blame for me coming back Fall semester. No it wasn’t Jonas, he was on the south side of the world at this point. But I did know Jonas’ sister, she was in my ward and she never told me about him, I have no idea why not...
ANYWAY, I loved BYU-I, the weather was awesome, I had a crush, and I was only one semester away from my associate’s degree. So… I changed my mind and I went home for the summer and then came back for “one more semester.” I took mission prep since I would be turning 21 that December and planned to get my associates and then go back home after the semester. Well, the first weekend back, Saturday September 7, 2002 Emily and I went to an event on campus in the Eliza R. Snow building. It was a Canadian magician that I know nothing about because we never got in.
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It was sold out and we decided to wait in the stand by line. We were talking to this nice older couple in line behind us until a friend of theirs came up and gave them tickets and then they left. Well, behind them was the hottest guy I ever saw!!! HAHA!!! Well, I think that now but at the time I thought, “he’s a really cute nice guy, but I’m sure he’s after Emily.”
We talked until we realized we weren’t going to get a ticket and so we invited him and his friend over to play games in our apartment lounge that night. I remember thinking it’s so cool how he asks everyone questions to get to know us all. Random thought, I guess but I was impressed by him. Well, life was a little complicated for me at that time.
My mom was going through her 2nd round of cancer and there were some other things going on that made me feel like maybe I needed to go home. Also, the crush I came back to school for was dating my room mate (don’t worry I don’t blame you if you read this, no hard feelings =) And I started to like his room mate and anyway, life was confusing.
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So I didn’t really think about Jonas that much. I liked him, but like I said, I thought he liked Emily and life was confusing. Well, we invited him to play sardines and Rambo with us the week after our first meeting. We invited tons of people and it was a lot of fun. I remember sitting by him to eat ice cream that night and thinking he was really cool and fun.
A few weeks later he dropped by our apartment. I was trying on my dress for the preference dance that I had asked my crush’s room mate too (confusing, sorry) And after I changed back into my regular clothes I came out to the front room and saw him talking to my room mate Leslie.
I didn’t know at the time that he had asked for me at the door so I just started talking to them, feeling pleasantly surprised to see him. We started talking about President Hinckley coming to dedicate the Hinckley building and how we need to go get tickets and so we went together. We found computers on campus and were online trying to get tickets, the computers were way backed up because all of Rexburg was trying to get tickets. We never did get tickets but we were cracking up together that night, laughing over who knows what!
I was having so much fun with him! Well, that Friday morning, he called me and asked me out for that night, our first date and actually his first date after his mission. It was October 11th, 2002 and it was honestly the best first date I have EVER had! First we went to Broulim’s to get some hot dogs and marshmallows and then we met up with our group at his sister Buzzy’s apartment (yes, the sister who never told me about him)
Even the simple thing as the grocery store was so much fun with him. We drove out to a ranch and went horseback riding, roasted hotdogs, and flew kites. Then we went back to Buzzy’s place and played spoons, spaz uno, watched Mike’s New Car, carved pumpkins, made smores on the element, and played Super Frog. It was way fun and I barely got home at curfew, yes there is curfew at BYU-I. The next night we went to a concert on campus and watched a movie with friends. It was that night that I was surprised that he didn’t like PG-13 movies either, not very common. So, I was really really getting interested in him!
The week after that we both went to preference with someone else. I felt bad because I wanted to be with Jonas and I was even looking for him all night but never saw him. Emily saw him 3 times!! Well, here is where it gets a little fuzzy because after that we were always together, we hung out all the time and dated and had lots of fun together. There was this one day that we went to the gardens at BYU-I and woah!
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I remember it had been cold and then the sun came out and it was warm and beautiful. We took a walk to the gardens and we both felt the strangest like peace or something. Anyway, it was a cool day, hard to explain. I must have been a little funny when I got home because I remember my room mate Kristen saying, “You were just with Jonas weren’t you?”
It was then that I started wondering about what I was going to do next semester, I can’t go home to AZ or go on a mission and leave this guy here, but if there’s nothing there for him, then I need to go home. I remember vaguely telling him I was confused about what I wanted to do next semester. One day, he put his head phones on me and played the song “Ain’t no mountain high enough” meaning if I did decided to go to AZ, he would chase me there. I decided to stay yet another semester at BYU-I and I remember I didn’t want him to know that I had signed up for the class eternal marriage for the next semester. It wasn’t a huge deal because a lot of people take that class whether they’re getting married or not, but I was still embarrassed. Mission prep one semester and marriage prep the next? But he did end up taking eternal marriage with me! The week after that I went home for thanksgiving.
Before I left, Jonas gave me his head phones and played me the song, “I love you always forever…” But he didn’t say it, we had breakfast together and then he walked me to the bus that would take me to the airport. I told him I’d call him maybe on Sunday or something… HA! We talked on the phone every single day for like 2-3 hours of those long long LONG 8 days! And like on the 4th day he told me he loved me and he wanted to marry me. Oh and also back home in Arizona, my crush from high school got home from his mission. He picked me up at the airport and we went to a YSA activity together and he wanted to hang out more but we didn’t, I wasn’t really into it.
We talked on Sunday night, the weekend I was home and I told him about Jonas. Anyway, when I got back to Rexburg we were pretty much engaged but not officially. At Christmas break, we drove up to his family’s (in Cardston, Alberta, Canada) for the first week and Christmas and then we drove down to my family’s (in Gilbert, AZ) for the 2nd week and new year’s.
He proposed on New Year’s Eve in front of the Mesa temple at midnight. That was when we first kissed and it was both of our first kiss. It was a dream of mine to only kiss the man I was going to marry. And so then we were engaged for winter semester and we got married on May 10th, 2003! When I first got “dragged” up to Rexburg I never thought I would fall in love with the place and leave there with a husband, a bachelor’s degree, and 2 daughters!!! So, that is how it all began. I am forever grateful for Emily, my unnamed crush, and Rexburg’s beautiful springtime!
Jonas, you are the most amazing man I have ever known and I feel so entirely blessed that I was led to someone so completely perfect for me. I have so much fun with you and I am so happy to be with you. I look forward to forever with you. I love you!
Maelie, Kyla, and cousins Kailin and Anna! 
aren't they CUTE??!
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