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.