Mrs. Stogsdill and the Blustery Day

I'm not sure how it can be 70 degrees one day and be a blizzard the next. But of one thing I am sure: Thursday's weather knew that Holly was getting married that day, so it told all the weather in the valley to be respectful and honor her on the happiest day of her life. And it did until about 5:30 p.m. when it became so blustery that we couldn't see straight for the hair flying everywhere. But that's okay.

A lot of things have been changing and ending this week - wards, classes, jobs - lots of things. But the biggest and most important change this week was Holly.

HOLLY GOT MARRIED.

It was the happiest day for her, and it was pretty dang happy for the rest of us, too. I'm having wedding day withdrawal right now; I would relive that day over and over again if I could. And that may be the girliest thing I've ever said, but I mean it.

There was a wedding dinner on Wednesday night, the night before the wedding. I got to give a toast because I've known Holly since we were barely old enough to blink, and we've been each others' best friend for nearly 22 years. So all week I've been thinking about Holly and all the things I love about her and all the memories that I have with her. And I discovered I have more memories with Holly in them than with her not in them.

There was a time when we were seniors in high school, and we skipped our art class to go skiing, and we thought we were being so sneaky, but our teacher and my mom and Holly's mom all knew what we'd done the moment we got home.

There's the summer after we'd graduated high school when we decided to pull out our 15-year-old roller blades and roller blade around Holly's neighborhood, and she went straight down a really steep hill, and I zigzagged down it.

There was one time in elementary school when we were playing in my bedroom and started jumping on the beds trying to catch the fruit flies that were flying all around my room by clapping them between our hands.

There was the time she came to Lake Powell and Jackson Hole and Lake Powell again and again and again with my family, and we ate tons and tons of chewy caramels and played Egyptian Rat Screw and Speed until our hands hurt.

There are all the seasons we played soccer together, her on offense, me on defense, and she would dominate even though she was so small because everyone underestimated her feistiness.

There's the time we were late for our history class, so we were running through the halls, and it was a snowy day, and the halls were really slippery and as we rounded a corner, Holly slipped, fell onto her knees and slid across the floor, all the while trying to grab the lockers for support, and we barely kept straight faces when we walked into class.

There was one time in the St. George temple waiting to do baptisms for the dead, something funny happened, and we laughed and laughed and couldn't stop laughing until I left to get some water, and the woman in charge came in and thanked us for being so reverent.

There were the times when we would go on choir tour, and Holly would lend me her hairspray because I always managed to forget mine.

There's the time we were in our art class and Holly was playing with a stapler, putting her finger right where the staples shoot out. Next thing I know she's jumping up and down holding her finger and I'm dying of laughter because she had stapled her finger.

There're all the times we went to Holly's house for lunch during high school, and she would make us cheese quesadillas while we ate dill pickles and drank chocolate milk.

There's the time that Stacy, Caroline, Holly and I played a piano quartet together and then went to Wendy's after we performed it.

There are all those times we would hang out with just each other or only a few others instead of going to parties because Holly never needed to be doing something extraordinary to feel extraordinary, and she never needed any validation from anyone because she is who she is and why would she ever change that or need someone else to substantiate that?

And there are all the phone calls, the lemonade sales, the excursions in the barbie cars, the bike rides, the rule-breaking, the tennis lessons, swimming at the Spa, eating watermelon, macaroni and cheese, pretending to be Nancy Drew detectives...I could go on and on.

I have gone on and on.

The best part about this whole thing is that Holly married Troy. Someone who will always appreciate Holly for who she is and never ask her to change because he knows doing that would go against everything he believes her to be and everything she believes him to be. And when they are old and wrinkled, the knowing looks they give each other now will be even deeper, their hugs even more natural, their "I love you's" even easier, their consideration even more sincere. They get to be together forever.

I can't wait for their life to happen.

Today it's Easter

"And now as pertaining to this perfect atonement, wrought by the shedding of the blood of God, I testify that it took place in Gethsemane and at Golgotha. And as pertaining to Jesus Christ, I testify that He is the Son of the living God, who was crucified for the sins of the world. He is our Lord, our God and our King. This I know of myself independent of any other person. I am one of His witnesses, and in the coming day, I shall feel the nail marks in His hands and in His feet and shall wet His feet with my tears. But I shall not know any better then than I know now that He is God's Almighty Son, that He is our Savior and Redeemer, and that salvation comes in and through His atoning blood and no other way. God grant that all of us may walk in the light, as God our Father is in the light, so that according to the promises, the blood of Jesus Christ His son will cleanse us from all sin."

Elder Bruce R. McConkie

Never once have I had this dream before

Last night I had a dream that I was about to be abducted by aliens, and that they were going to make me learn ballet, because all aliens believe ballet to be the purest and most sacred art form there is (don't they?). The worst part was that a day before they were to abduct me, the aliens tagged my wrist to track me like an animal, so I knew what was coming, and when I told my dad and my family, I couldn't get anyone to listen. It was perhaps the worst nightmare I've had in months.

Dream Central's Dream Dictionary says, "If you dream you have been abducted by aliens this shows your fear of changing your surroundings or your deep seated fear of losing your home and family."

So, this means one of two things: either I'm really not ready to get married (or as Chelsea pointed out, not ready for everyone else to get married) (yeah okay, maybe), or I'm not ready to get out of Utah next month. Mostly because if either of those things happen, Andrew will for sure take over my room and the car I drive and make them smell like boy, and then where will I go?

It's like a really super technologically advanced Harry Potter world

Just imagine how many times a day you'd have to Windex all that glass to clean off the dirty fingerprints.

Missing in action

Holly here. Remember me? Yeah, it's been a while. This next story will help explain why I've been M.I.A. for the last few months. In case you haven't heard my engagement story yet, here's a long, very detailed description of how it went down. I wish you the best in avoiding readers fatigue. If the task of reading this post seems daunting, feel free to skip to the paragraph in purple where you'll find the juice of the story.

I headed up to Salt Lake late on a Thursday night since I had work the next morning. On Friday, November 19, my brother-in-law texted me and said he had run into Troy on campus and wanted to invite us to a dessert and game night with Heather and him. I called Troy to ask if he’d like to go. He said yes, so I let Brad know we'd be coming over around 9. I knew Troy would be picking me up from work to take me out to dinner, but he surprised me by coming in early. After I got off work, he took me to Olive Garden. He acted perfectly normal to me, but I found out later that he was actually pretty nervous.

After we finished eating, he drove me back to work to pick up my car so we could go to my house and change before going to game night. While I was turning the heat on in my car and getting situated, I looked over at Troy, who was parked next to me, and watched as he gripped the steering wheel while mouthing words and what not. I thought it was a bit strange and it made me laugh. I rolled down my window to ask if he was ok and he said yes so I thought nothing of it. After I changed clothes, I ran upstairs to find some games to bring. My mom asked if I was going to bring a jacket and I told her no because I thought we were going to be inside the whole time. She asked if I was sure and I said yes. I was unaware that in about half an hour, I would be on the top of a mountain in the freezing, gusting wind.

We hopped in the car and Troy drove us to Heather and Brad's house. While pulling into their neighborhood, he didn’t see a speed bump coming so I warned him, but instead of pushing the breaks, he pushed the gas! I told him he needed to calm down or I was going to get car sick. Still, though, I didn't really suspecting anything because he had told me the week before that he still didn't have enough money to buy the ring. I honesty wasn’t expecting to get proposed to for a couple more weeks. We pulled up to their house and their car wasn’t there. Their lights weren’t on either. I thought that was really strange, but we went and knocked on the door anyway. No answer, as was the plan, but I found this very frustrating.

Troy called Brad who explained that they'd gone out to dinner downtown and the food had taken longer than expected so they wouldn’t be there for another 20 minutes or so. Troy and I were already 20 minutes late and now we were going to have to wait for another 20 for them to get there?! I expressed to Troy my frustration and told him that was very rude of them. He told me not to get too riled up about it because we had been late too, so we sat back in the car and after a few minutes, he suggested that we just go on a drive to kill some time and go to a lookout point in Draper where Heather and Brad had taken us to a few months before. I agreed. He asked me to help direct him there because he wasn’t sure if he remembered how to get there. What I didn’t know was that just a couple hours earlier, he'd driven up there to make sure he knew how to get there. For a while, I thought we were going to wrong way until I spotted a landmark I recognized.

We pulled into the lookout point and I wasn’t expecting to get out of the car since it was so blustery and cold and Troy knows how much I hate the wind. As I Ieaned over and laid my head on his arm, I could hear and feel his heart beating unusually fast. That’s when it hit me. I knew he was about to propose. He said he was going to get his jacket out of the trunk and grab a blanket for me. He had me stay in the car while he did that so I wouldn’t see him grab the ring as well. I was getting pretty excited at this point. He came and wrapped me in the blanket and took me out to get a better view of the city lights. He went on the explain how this was a central point in our dating life. We had memories in Provo, Salt Lake, Park City and Midway and these were the places where we had fallen in love. As he was talking to me, I heard him accidentally click the ring box. Apparently he was trying to find the hinge on the box so he wouldn’t open it the wrong way when he proposed. The suspense was building and he finally knelt down and asked me to marry him. I exclaimed, “Of course I’ll marry you!” and wrapped my arms around him before even looking at the ring. After we hugged (and maybe kissed), he asked if I would like to see the ring. I was so excited, I hadn't even looked at the ring yet! It's such a beautiful ring and it represents so much love, devotion and hard work on his part.

We got back into the warm car to take a better look at the ring. After laughing about how all of this had been set up and I had fallen for everything, I called Rose and I didn’t even have to tell her we had just gotten engaged, she could just tell in the way I said hello that something had happened and we laughed and squealed in celebration for about three minutes. I was so blissfully happy. I was going to marry my best friend who I was madly in love with. Life couldn’t have been any better. We went back to my house to celebrate with my family and I invited Rose over to join us.

I have now been engaged for 4 months and will be marrying this smokin young lad in exactly 38 days.

I perhaps can write a longer run-on sentence than you can

Today, as I drove home through the puddle pretending to be a freeway, it was so dark that I thought the night sky was raining down into the night, and I turned off my lights, and turned them back on...off, on, off, on...no difference (no cars were near me), but there was no difference, which left me wondering at the quality of lights the individuals over in Honda-land make, when I realized that I couldn't tell which lane I was driving in and the cars behind me were catching up.

I remember in high school a boy who would always complain that during rainstorms in Utah, it's impossible to see the lines for lanes on the road, and ever since then, whenever it rains and I'm driving, all I think about is how I cannot see the lines on the road; it really is impossible.

I remember one summer at Lake Powell looking straight up into the clouds while rain pounded the water and the rocks, and waterfalls flowed, molding the sandstone, making it shine like silver, like newly fallen snow.

I remember one spring, during track practice, a thunderstorm began, and we stayed out there because the wet rain was an enormous relief from the dry heat, but the lightening bolts came closer and closer until too soon one struck feet from us (just a baby lightening bolt) and our hair went staticky, and our coach howled at us to get inside.

I remember one of the first nights in Thailand when it was pouring rain and we didn't want to go to bed, because we were in Thailand and it was pouring rain and how could we go to bed...so, instead, we played a game of barefoot, midnight soccer in the mud in front of our home, and we slipped and tumbled around, t-shirts soaking through, hair dripping wet, eyes brimming joy, mouths laughing softly.

Which reminds me, watch this:

People with this magnitude of musical talent just make the world a place worth living in.