Life Lately in the White House

Life has been just crazy busy lately! Ryan got a new job at the end of September working as marketing coordinator for a dental company. So far it has been a great change for both of us! Ryan likes the environment much better than his previous job, not to mention the benefits are a lot better. :)

For me I've just been busy plugging away in graduate school counting down the days until the end of the semester (which is when I am done with classes and start my medical externship). There are exactly 4 weeks, 18 school days, and 28 days until the end of the semester. I guess that's what being in school for over 15 months straight does to you. Don't get me wrong I have loved my classes and learning and treating clients every week, but I just can't wait to get out there in the real world and get more hands on experience and then eventually get a career. To be quite honest, I'm pretty sure if you were to ask Ry he would tell you that I am more excited to quit working at Olive Garden as a server than I am to graduate and get an actual career (then again I guess they go hand in hand). I realize I sound pretty negative (I guess that's the senioritis speaking), but I am really grateful that I have a job and that it works so well in my schedule, but after working at the OG for over 4 years... I'm just ready for a change.

On another note we are about to have another big change in our lives. For the past 6 months we've had my brother and sis in law and my cute little nephew living in our basement while their house was being built out in Herriman. It's been kind of fun having them around to watch movies with, cook dinners, and my favorite would be getting to play with my adorable little nephew every day.

How could you ever get sick of playing with this little stud? It's been so much fun to watch him grow over the past 6 months - sit up on his own, get his first 2 teeth, imitate hand clapping, and army crawl (yes he army crawls instead of crawling on his hands and knees, how funny is that?!) This last week he pulled himself up to a standing position for the first time. Although it has been so much fun to play with him everyday and watch him grow and learn new things, it has definitely made Ry and I think twice about when we want to have kids. I've learned that kids are cute, but that they can definitely be handful at times. I think we'll wait at least a few more years before we try to cross the bridge. Being newlyweds and all, having the nephew around was fun, but has sure served as a great form of birth control. :)

The life we have grown accustomed to for the past 6 months will change come this weekend when they move into their new house. It will definitely be weird not having them around all of the time anymore. Especially having my cute little nephew around.

Crazy Trip

So now that you know a little bit about how we started out. I thought for this next post that I would jump ahead and talk about what we have been doing the past few weeks. The past 3 weeks I've had a break from school and seeing clients, so I have been working and having fun with the hubby traveling on the weekends. This last weekend we went to Zion's National Park.

Ryan has always loved Zion's and I think it is safe to say that our trips to Zion's will most likely continue to be an annual thing. We actually took this same trip during Memorial Day weekend of 2012 and loved it so much that we jumped at the chance to go again this year. The first time we took this trip, I knew that Ryan was testing my sense of adventure and endurance. Well obviously I passed the test of our first road trip and our first canyoneering adventure because he didn't send me packing afterwards.

Before we headed down to Zion's this year, we stopped by one my good friend's wedding receptions in Alpine. We ended up getting a later start down to Zion's than we had anticipated. We had been driving for a couple of hours when of course I started getting tired and ended up falling asleep in the passenger seat. It was a little after midnight when I woke up to Ry pulling off to the side of the freeway. "We have a flat," Ry said in a perfectly calm voice. We got out, emptied our trunk to get out our donut tire. We got it on and started driving to the nearest town. Luckily we were only about 10 or 15 miles out of Parowon and found what appeared to be an open tire shop at a truck stop. We pulled off and went in to ask if they could replace our tire, of course it was just a semi-truck tire shop and so we were stuck. Next, we called AAA to see if they could be any help, but then we realized that Ryan's parents had AAA and that they couldn't help us because Ryan wasn't on their plan. The lady was still nice and gave us a phone number to call that may have been helpful. A guy answered who said that he wouldn't be able to replace our tire until 9am the next morning. We were stuck. We decided to drive through Parowon and find a hotel to stay the night.

We woke up bright and early Saturday morning to drive to Cedar City to get our tire replaced. After it was replaced, we were finally headed the rest of the way to Zion's. Our friends had already been there a couple of days and we were worried they would maybe start our hike for the day without us. Luckily when we showed up at the cabin, all of Ryan's friends were just getting out of bed. We ate some breakfast, packed up our gear, and left on our hike. We got a little bit late of a start and the clouds in the distance were threatening rain. The hike is called Birch Hollow and has many repels into slot canyons. There were flash flood warnings for Sunday, but there was still a chance of rain for the day. I have to admit I was a little nervous about the potential for rain, because once you get past the first repel, there is no turning back - you have to go the rest of the way. We started out our first few repels at a slower pace because we had some first timers with us. There were about 14 repels total. When we were about half way through and about to enter a narrow slot canyon with multiple repels, it started raining. We decided to take a break for lunch and wait a little while to see if the rain let up at all. It stopped and Ry started to help people repel down into the slot canyon and I stayed back to wait until he had sent everyone else through. After we got about 7 of our 10 people down, it started raining pretty hard. We looked up above to see if we could see any break in the clouds and couldn't see any. I looked at Ry and he had a worried look on his face. Ryan doesn't get worried over little things, so it scared me when I saw that look on his face. I was petrified! I started imagining the worst: water rushing down the slot canyon, creating mini waterfalls with each drop, where we would be standing and waiting to hook into our next repel. He looked at me and said, "We need to go and get down these last repels NOW!" I was so scared I could barely even move. I stood there for moment and then begged Ry that we say a prayer to help us. We said a quick prayer, begging our Heavenly Father to lighten the rain and then I strapped in and sped down the rope into the slot canyon. Luckily we had 2 ropes and so once Ryan was down we got it ready for the others ahead of us to set up the next repel. It was so muddy everywhere and slippery, I was worried someone was going to slip and maybe fall. After a few minutes that we said our prayer, the rain began to let up. It continued to rain but it had lightened immensely. Even though the rain had let up a little, we continued to keep a steady pace down through the rest of the repels. Luckily by the last repel the rain had let up completely and we were able to take our time on the last repel which is a lot of fun.

On these crazy trips that Ry takes me on, there is always one point when I honestly ask myself "What am I doing here, and why did I ever agree to do this?" This time, it was when the rains began to pour and I was honestly worried that we were going to die. I know that might sound a little extreme, but in that moment I was so petrified. I was so happy to have my wonderful husband there to hold me and comfort me and offer a word of prayer to our Heavenly Father, who was so merciful and blessed us by lessening the rain. We were truly blessed with a miracle.

Of  course after we got out of the slot canyon we had a good 5 or more mile hike mostly uphill to where we left our car. We reached our car just as it got dark. We only had one car because we left our other car at the beginning of the hike. We were debating about fitting 10 people in a standard sized Subaru, but then (another miracle) a couple showed up who also had their truck parked there. They were heading back the same direction and were kind enough to give us a ride back to our other car.

We got back to the cabin we were staying at, cooked a very late dinner, where shortly after the power went out. By this time after what we'd already been through with our tire and the crazy rain situation in the slot canyon, I actually wasn't surprised at all when the power went out and it didn't come on again that night. Ry and I were so exhausted that after dinner we went straight to bed, while everyone else (who was single - we were  the only married couple) stayed up for another hour or two.

We had originally planned on doing another hike on Sunday that we had a permit for, Pine Creek. But I begged Ry not to go even if some of his other friends wanted to. I didn't want to take the chance of getting caught in a flash flood after our experience we'd already had that day. He willingly agreed to just stay at the cabin and keep it very low key the next day. I was so relieved!

I was nervous to come on this trip before we even left. The fact that we got a flat tire and couldn't get it fixed until morning I thought was a sign that we shouldn't be going on this trip. Despite all of our crazy experiences we had on this trip, I was so glad that we went. It was a reassurance to me that Ry and I can get through scary situations and work together as a team. Not to mention all of the tender mercies we were blessed with by our loving Heavenly Father.

Our Story - The Engagement

To start off this wonderful story, I first need to tell a background story. In May, while I was still living down in Provo and Ry was living in Salt Lake, I drove up for our date night. Ry took me up this little canyon on the way up to Park City called Lamb's Canyon. We hiked around for a bit and then I had this very childish thought. I had always wanted to carve my name in a tree before and I had never done it. Being lame, I mentioned this to Ryan and he being the sweet, sweet man he is did not make fun of me but insisted that we carve our names in a tree of my choosing. We found the perfect Aspen tree to carve our names in. We didn't come prepared with a knife or anything like that, so we ended up carving our names with Ryan's car keys. That date was probably one of my favorites that we'd had thus far. Here is a picture of our tree. 

So months down the road, Ry and I had been talking marriage but we had not really talked about a date or anything yet. The first week in September we happened to be downstairs at Ry's house when I told him about a dream that I'd had the night before. I told him that in the dream he had given me something very valuable and it made me very happy. Being Ryan, his response to that was "I gave you a cat? Well that's pretty cool! I wasn't sure if your landlord would allow you to have one so I that's why I haven't gotten you one yet, but I have thought about it actually." I corrected him of course and told him that he had given me a pretty special ring. I could tell he was purposefully avoiding the fact that in my dream he had given me an engagement ring. As you can probably tell, I was getting a little anxious and impatient about waiting to get engaged. I had always wanted my engagement to be a surprise, but I was honestly trying to figure out desperately when he was going to propose. He hadn't had a chance to talk to my dad yet, at least in person and I was pretty darn sure he would have asked my dad in person. I had it figured in my head that our engagement was still at least a month if not more away. After I told him he had given me a ring in my dream, he paused for a couple minutes and then simply told me to be patient (sadly it wasn't the first time he had told me this). He then told me not to make any plans for that Friday night because he had a very fun date night planned with his best friend Garrett and his wife Mckenna. 

So Friday night came and I hurried home after my clinic session at school. I was a little confused though because we had just gone to the state fair with Garrett and Mckenna the night before. Ry picked me up at my house and as we were walking to his car he was on his phone talking to Garrett. He said that Mckenna was sick and that they wouldn't be able to make it for our date. Ryan looked very disappointed and insisted that we couldn't do our date because it was much more fun in a group setting than just a couple. So he suggested that we just drive around for a little bit until we found something else to do. He knew that I loved the Fall leaves and the leaves up in the mountains had just begun to change color. He suggested that we go for a drive up in  the mountain. As we were driving toward the mountain, I noticed he was sort of going in the direction of the canyon where our tree was and I suggested that we go visit our tree and look at all of the pretty changing leaves up that canyon. 

I noticed that Ry was a little more talkative than normal while we were driving through the canyon. I asked him why he was so talkative and he just brushed it off with the excuse that he still was really energetic from playing with his two nephews earlier that day. We parked the car and we started our hike up to our tree. It had faintly crossed my mind that Ry could potentially be proposing, but I tried to piece everything together like when he would have had time to ask my dad and time to get a ring. Besides I had suggested that we go to our tree and he had agreed. Surely he couldn't be proposing, it didn't piece together at all so I simply dropped the idea. I thought this was just another one of our many hikes that we always took. While we were hiking up to our tree, I was telling Ry a rather awkward and embarrassing experience that I'd had earlier that day. Normally he would have probably joked and laughed at me. But he didn't really comment on it at all which really surprised me. As we walked up the trail just before we got to the clearing where our tree was, I noticed a pair of red sunglasses. Ry had a pair of sunglasses just like them. For a millisecond I thought that they might be his and then I remembered that he said he had gotten those sunglasses at a Ute football game. I thought that someone else had been hiking on our trail with the same sunglasses and had dropped them. I reconsidered this and thought that the odds of someone else with the same sunglasses hiking on a rather remote trail was rather unlikely, but we had already arrived at our tree. I walked around to the side where we had carved our names to find this... 

I was so shocked that I just stared at the tree for the longest time. When I finally turned around, I looked down to see Ry who of course was down on one knee holding an $8 ring from Claire's. Before he could even say anything I just looked at him with shock and disbelief and asked very seriously, "Is this real life? Is this really happening?" He reassured me that it most definitely was real life and then very romantically asked me to marry him. I've heard of other engagement stories of when the girl is so choked up in tears that it takes her a minute to even get an answer out, but I was so excited I screamed "YES!" and practically tackled him in a hug before he could even manage to get the ring on my finger. Even after 10-20 minutes had passed, I had to keep asking him if this was "real life." I was so excited about the engagement it took me a moment to realize the large bouquet of roses he had in his arms, or the lovely picnic he had set up in the clearing, or the very romantic playlist he had playing in the background which he had made especially for this occasion.

He explained that after we ate, we were going to reenact our first date we had together which was going to a laser light show at the Planetarium downtown. He had planned everything down to the very finest detail. I shouldn't have been surprised by this fact because he is a marketer after all. What I couldn't believe was the fact that he had someone managed to get ME to suggest where we should go. He also planned in time during our date after our picnic for me to call and tell my family and friends. I know many girls may have been appalled to have been proposed to with an $8 ring from Claire's, but honestly I was much happier with the element of surprise rather than going ring shopping together prior to our engagement and picking out my own ring. My $8 ring was very pretty, but Ry did promise me that we would be going ring shopping in the next week or so to find my ring. I honestly believe that I got the best of both worlds. I got the element of surprise and he let me go and pick out my own ring. I don't think he could have planned a better proposal. 

As we sat down and ate dinner, I was still shocked and still trying to piece everything together. The biggest question I had was when he'd had time to ask my dad. Turns out he had to call and ask my dad's permission. He really wanted to ask him in person, but yours truly actually messed up his chance to ask him in person. It had been a few weeks earlier when we were spending the weekend at my family's cabin in bear lake. My dad had invited Ryan to go golfing with him. Ry had only met my dad a couple of times and I felt kind of bad leaving Ry by himself with my dad for a few hours. So I ,being an idiot, tagged along ruining Ry's chance to ask my dad permission to marry me in person. He said that he would have asked him at the cabin some other time while we were there, but there wasn't really ever a good moment because we were always together. He also toyed with the idea of driving up to Idaho one night to ask him, but the problem was that we are always together every night after I get done with school. As you can see, he was really trying his best to keep that element of surprise and boy did he ever! 

I don't think I had ever experienced this much excitement or euphoria before. I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with Ry. I don't know how that man does it, but he definitely knew just what to do to surprise me and create the best engagement a girl could ever ask for. 

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I love my ring so much that I couldn't help but share a picture of it too! 

Our Story - Surviving Salt Lake

As a small town girl from Southern Idaho, I was pretty nervous just moving to Provo which I thought was a big city. Now for my next leg of schooling I had to move to Salt Lake City which of course is only 30 minutes north of Provo, but very different and much bigger. I was so nervous to move to the big city, but I am so grateful that I had this wonderful man to help me become familiar with the "big" city. 

About a week after I moved to Salt Lake Ryan's sister Sadie left on a mission. Just before she left, Ryan and his family invited me on their last family vacation before Sadie left. We went up to a cabin toward Park City for a few days and went boating. It was so much fun. This was the chance I really had to get to know Ryan's family and how wonderful they were and how much they love to play board games and card games (not to mention how competitive Ryan and his sisters can get). It was that trip that Ryan first hinted that he had been thinking of us getting married. If I remember correctly we were talking about Mariachi bands (I know kind of random) and I told him that I didn't care for them. That was when he said, "Does that mean we can't have a Mariachi band at our wedding reception?" Rather funny way to bring up marriage, but I was super excited that he did. :) Sadie left on her mission and before she did little did I know that Ryan had told her that she would most likely have a new sister-in-law when she got home from her mission.

I spent most of my time either at work or with Ryan for the last month before grad school started. I also took a trip with my parents to California to see my brother and sister-in-law. They were finding out the gender of their baby and we went down to celebrate with them. After their doctor's appointment they met my parents and my sis-in-law's family at a restaurant to reveal the gender. We had all taken bets on what we thought the gender would be. I had bet that it would be a girl and it turns out that they were having a boy. Which was a little bit of a relief to me, because I could not see my brother raising at little girl, at least not yet. Even those few days away that I spent with my family, I missed Ryan like crazy. Which I considered was a good thing.

Classes started for graduate school a couple of weeks later and I was petrified. I was happy to see that many people from my undergraduate program had made it into the U's program as well. I have to admit I was petrified when a girl from my undergraduate program who was one of the top of the class dropped out of the masters program after only a week. I felt like I was in over my head and was tempted to drop out myself, but after thinking of how much of a hassle it was to apply for the program it made more sense to just plug through it. I tried and worked my hardest in classes, but I frequently found myself thinking about when Ryan would propose. I knew it was coming and it was killing me not knowing when. 

Our Story - Making Decisions

To continue our story of how we came to be.... 

We started things out slow by just dating about once a week for the next month. We both were in kind of the same situation. Both on the verge of graduating and deciding what to do next. Ryan was applying for jobs, literally all across the country and I was in the process of applying to graduate schools and waiting to hear back. We continued to date over the last month of school.

We both really liked each other so we continued dating. We both heard back from jobs and graduate schools about the same time. I had been accepted into University of Utah and Idaho State University. I was a little sad that I hadn't gotten into my two top choices, BYU and Utah State, but I was excited that I would at least be going to grad school.

Ryan had gotten a few job offers, one with a huge company... Proctor & Gamble out in Ohio. It was the most prestigious offer that anyone received in his program. When he had flown out and interviewed for the job he really liked the big city feel and wanted to take the job.

I was debating on which of the 2 programs was best for me. I really wanted to go to the U of U because it was ranked the best program out of all 4 I applied for, but it was more expensive and I would have to stay the summer in Utah in order to get my Utah residency. If I went to ISU I could go home for the summer and work for the BLM fighting fires again where I knew I would make 2-3 times the money I would make just waiting tables at Olive Garden during the summer.

I was so indecisive that I was almost making myself sick with worry. I prayed and pondered and weighed the pros and cons of each. For about 2 weeks I did this until finally I asked my home teachers to give me a blessing. For some reason I thought that in their blessing that I would get a clear answer, but they simply blessed me to choose what I thought was best and that my Heavenly Father would be supportive with either decision. I guess that's one thing I've always been afraid of is not necessarily making a bad decision but making the best decision.

So I stepped back and looked at the bigger picture, setting school aside. I decided that living in Pocatello for two years did not really excite me at all, not to mention I wouldn't really have any friends there. Sure it would be closer to home, but the cons seriously outweighed the pros.

I know what you're thinking, well what about Ryan? To be honest I had the worst feeling about leaving Utah for the summer to fight fires, because I knew that if I left for the summer that things might not have worked out between us and I was really anxious to see where things were going in our relationship. So I decided to stay the summer in Provo and go to the U of U in the fall for graduate school.

Back to Ryan's side of the story. He couldn't have wished for a better job or offer from Proctor & Gamble. Within just a few years he could have easily been making a six figure salary, but for some reason he didn't feel great about it. He loves Salt Lake for many reasons, particularly because his whole family lives here. Despite this he really wanted to accept the job. However when he prayed about it, he got a definite no, which kind of surprised him. But being the humble and obedient man that he is, he turned down the job and accepted a job in Salt Lake for the summer.

After graduation we discussed our relationship and what we wanted and agreed to continue dating through the summer. I could only bear to stay in Provo for about a month and a half before I put my housing contract up on Craigslist and started looking for housing in Salt Lake. Our relationship was really taking off and we were getting tired of driving 40 minutes back and forth 3-4 times a week. I figured that I would be moving up to Salt Lake eventually for the Fall so why wait? Luckily I was able to transfer up to the Murray Olive Garden and maintain about the same hours a week for work.

Looking back at all of this, it is just simply amazing how things just seemed to fall right into place and worked out the way that it was meant to. Ryan knew he was supposed to turn down that job offer in Ohio and I knew that I wasn't supposed to go back home to Idaho for the summer and go to ISU. The Lord works in mysterious ways and I believe he helped bring Ryan and I together.

Our Story - First Date

Hello! We are the Whites and this is our lovely 

story of how we came to be. 

Well it all started before we even met. Ryan was serving a mission in Poland and his mission president gave him a rather unusual assignment to fill out a BYU application. Ryan was born and raised in Salt Lake City as a Ute fan, so you can imagine he was less than thrilled about the assignment, but because he was so humble and obedient he did it anyway. When he got home from his mission he had been accepted to the U of U and BYU. He prayed about which school he should go to and that he told me was how he found himself enrolled in classes at BYU for the next fall.

I am a small town girl from Southern Idaho who followed in my big brother's footsteps and also attended BYU. I think you can already picture where this is going, but I want to assure you that our story is NOT one of those crazy BYU love stories when a couple meets and a month later they are engaged and two months later they are married. I promised myself I would never let that happen so I took the four seasons and a road trip approach when it came to serious relationships. And you best believe I stuck to that promise.

Ryan and I met at the beginning of our senior year, in a rather typical BYU way which was through our ward, better yet our FHE group, even better.... wait for it.... I was his FHE mom aka one of his FHE group leaders. Although we met at the beginning of that Fall semester we didn't start dating until the end of January, but I remember distinctly thinking to myself during our first FHE activity that Ryan was a pretty cool guy.

Five months later just after my birthday, Ryan came over to my apartment for our FHE activity and then left after it was over. About an hour later I heard a knock on our door and my roommate came into our room to tell me Ryan was here to see me. I figured he had forgotten to ask me something. Turns out he came back after everyone left to ask me out on a date. I thought that was very classy of him to ask me in person.

As you can guess, I said yes of course and he took me out that weekend to a laser light show in Salt Lake. When I got in his car, I sat down and there was this ginormous U of U sticker glaring back at me on the dashboard and a crucifix hanging from the rear view mirror. Needless to say I was a little confused, especially with the crucifix, but Ryan explained that many people from Poland are Catholic and the crucifix reminded him of Poland.

Now you have to understand Ryan is a really funny and quirky guy so I guess I shouldn't have been taken too aback when he leaned over before the laser show started to ask me if I had ever experienced what it was like to be on drugs. I kind of just stared at him in shock for a second and then assured him that I hadn't and he replied with a simple, "well I hear this show is pretty darn close it"

We went to the famous U of U pizzeria called the Pie after the show and I honestly couldn't stop laughing at how whenever Ryan referred to anything about BYU he would simply respond to it as that one place.

Ryan is a business marketer and is very strategic, especially when it comes to planning dates. For example, on our drive to and from SLC for our first couple of dates, Ryan had a big bag of Starburst for us to munch on as we asked each other questions from this jar of questions he had made. Come to find out after a few months of dating him, he told me that the Starburst was a key element in a first date, that they are great because it isn't suggestive like handing a girl a stick of gum, but it still ensures that both the guy and the girl will have nice fruity breath if there happens to be a kiss at the end of the date. Like I said very strategic.

Well me being rather reserved I did not kiss him on that first date. In fact I don't even recall him giving me a hug, instead what I do remember was him telling me how much fun he'd had and then him sticking out his hand to give me a handshake. I was a little confused, but took his hand to shake it. I still give him a hard time and probably always will for giving me, now his wife, a handshake on our first date.