The Story (by Sharon):
So, at BYU-Idaho they put us into “FHE” (family home evening) groups. We plan cool things to do together and meet Monday nights. When you have a good FHE group, you usually end up doing a lot of stuff together on other nights of the week as well. This is how Kyle and I met; in our awesome Fall semester 2008 FHE group. He was always my favorite “FHE brother” . . . he was just so much fun & the life of the party in my eyes for sure!
Fast forward to near the end of Fall semester. This is when Kyle asks me on our first date. I got out of class and had a message on my phone asking me to lunch. I called him back, sang him happy birthday (yep, he asked me out to be his birthday date!) and told him I would love to go to lunch with him.
By this time I was hearing rumors that Kyle liked me. And, I honestly liked him too! It just took me a long time to recognize and accept it . . . :)
At the end of the semester he gave me a ride to Utah (I always fly in/out of the Salt Lake airport) and we hung out some that weekend. By hanging out I mean: he bought me a nice dinner, took me to meet the artist Greg Olsen, took me to this crazy-nice friend-of-a-friend’s mansion home with indoor pool, treated me to ice-cream . . . He pulled all the stops and I found myself wishing we were together.
Over Christmas break we happily chatted on Facebook (honestly, now that we are together, I rarely get on Facebook). And then came the new semester.
I was going back to school not knowing what to do. I knew that Kyle liked me a lot and that there was potential he’d want to date me seriously. However, I also really felt at that time that I wasn’t capable of being a good enough girlfriend to him. For instance, I had already made plans for Valentines Day weekend. You can’t start dating someone and then leave for Valentines Day! Of course, there was more to it than that (a guy I had dated before was going to get home from his mission in a few months), but mostly I was just an over-thinker with the philosophy of “I’d be too much of a risk for Kyle to date; things might not end well. . . I don’t care if my heart gets crushed but I refuse to crush Kyle’s.” I worked myself up into such a worry that I called Kyle over and told him everything I was thinking . . . “Kyle, I can tell you like me a lot but I don’t think I’d be good enough for you so you should probably not focus your dating on me.”
Well, we were still in the same FHE group so we were still seeing a lot of each other. For a little bit I felt awkward being around him. I also really missed going on dates with him. Gradually, things were back to normal. I started making excuses to be around him. I got him to go for a run with me, telling him that if I were alone I was restricted to jogging around campus since it wasn’t safe for lil’ ol’ me to be running alone elsewhere. That’s kind of the big turning event for me – when we started really being together again a lot, and just the two of us. We would ride bikes, play tennis, etc. Finally, the day came when Kyle said “we need to talk.” We arranged to go to dinner that evening. The whole day I was in a panic that he was going to take me out and tell me to leave him alone. But, instead, we went out, had a great time, and then after he’d driven me home, we sat in his car and he spoke to me this beautiful soliloquy (that’s probably not the right word, but it was sweet like poetry). He simply told me how he felt about me. He told me that if I was a risk then I was worth taking and that I was very “special to him in a good way.” So, that’s the moment my heart melted. For the last couple weeks of the semester we were happily, officially dating. Then, home for me for the summer. Silly summers, always interrupting romances.
Luckily, I was only going to be home for half of the summer. Still, I left telling Kyle that he could date other people while I was home for summer. I couldn’t help but think that someone as wonderful as him would end up finding someone better than me. BUT, much to my surprise, we talked a ton while I was away! The distance didn’t really seem to separate us. :) When I came back for the second half of summer Kyle picked me up from UT and drove me back to ID and right to a surprise “welcome home” party (he’s so good at throwing me surprise parties).
For the rest of the summer I was working as an EFY camp counselor. Pretty much we got to be together every-other week when I had off. The weeks I worked I was with the youth all day long, so Kyle and I just got to talk on the phone at night . . . It was a very fun, but still somewhat rocky summer relationship-wise. I couldn’t stop being my over-thinking, scared self.
Kyle first told me he loved me one evening as we were walking home. It was dark, raining lightly, he gave me a squeeze and just told me, right there as we were walking. Due to the darkness, I don’t think he knew it, but I grinned ear-to-ear. I love how he said it so naturally in such a perfect moment. Over the next several days, and after a couple more times of telling me he loved me, I still hadn’t said it back. When I finally told him, it didn’t come naturally and in a perfect moment. I could tell he was frustrated so I sat him down and said something like “Kyle, do you just need me to tell you I love you? Because I do. I’m happy when you’re happy and it would kill me to do anything to hurt you. . . I’m pretty sure that adds up to love. I love you Kyle.” For me, even though I botched it and it came at an inopportune time, it felt really good to finally tell him; I said it and I knew it! I remember him cracking a half-smile, so I guess he didn’t think I was completely pathetic. :)
Needless to say, things progressed. I’m so very grateful that Kyle stuck with me through it all, I feel so blessed to have him in my life!!
The Proposal (by Kyle):
I knew early on that Sharon was special, each date that we had reaffirmed that idea. After a few months of dating I had a pretty good idea that we were going to get married. The only problem was that I had not talked to her about it yet. So I decided to invite her to spend a week in San Diego with my family. I thought that this would send the appropriate signal. I mean after meeting someone’s family what’s next? On the long drive home from San Diego I brought up the topic of marriage. She was surprised and not quite ready to talk about it. As we drove through Utah we stopped at an outlet mall in park city. At this mall there happened to be a jewelry store of some sort and I asked her if she would like to look at rings. These remark caught her so off guard that she couldn’t watch where she was going and stumbled into an open door stubbing her toe. I knew that she was not ready and that she was going to need a lot of time to think about marriage.
We both decided that we should pray and ask our Heavenly Father what we should do. As time went on we grew closer together and were able to receive the inspiration we needed. It was sometime in October of 2009 that we decided we were going to get married. We began to shop around for rings and discussing wedding plans. We decided that we would get married in April of 2010 and that I should propose in January. The only problem was that in January Rexburg would be covered in snow and she did not want to have our engagement pictures in snow. So she scheduled our engagement pictures for Saturday November 7, two months before I was to propose!
I didn’t like the sound of that so I went and bought a ring, made a nerve-racking phone call to her father, and began planning out how I was to propose. On Thursday November 5 we had planned to do a hike to the top of a mountain so that Sharon could take a panoramic picture for one of her classes. I thought that this would be the perfect time and place for a proposal. I picked her up after class and we started to drive toward the mountain. The weather was not good and Sharon said that she did not want to take her picture there. I thought to myself, “Oh no! What am I going to do now?” We were driving around Rexburg when Sharon yelled, “Stop!” We pulled off to the side of a busy road and she started to set things up to take her picture. This was not a good place to propose, so I said, “this is ugly” and we got back into the car. I took her to a nice place where we could climb down to the river, the sun was setting and it was beautiful.
After she had taken her picture I told her that I had something I wanted to do. We sat down by the river and I explained that if we were going to be taking our engagement pictures, before we were engaged, we would need something to show our commitment to each other. I brought some string out of my backpack and told her that we would be making commitment bracelets. The bracelet would have three strands of string and each strand was to represent a commitment we would make to the other. Sharon made my bracelet and told me her commitments to me as she tied it around my wrist. It was funny because she was nervous and even commented that it felt like she was proposing. When it was my turn I pulled the bracelet that I had made the night before out of my backpack and told her my commitments to her as I tied it around her wrist. I told her that I promised to always protect her, provide for her, and preside over our family. Little did she know that I had sneakily tied the ring onto the bracelet and that it was hiding behind her wrist. I slid down to one knee flipped the bracelet around, revealing the ring, and asked her to marry me. Sharon was so shocked. She did not know what to say. She exclaimed, “Is that a ring?” After a while she said yes and we were officially engaged.
After six long months we have finally made it! We hope that you will enjoy the evening and are grateful that you could make it. Thank you so much for coming to celebrate our special day with us.
self-timer shot of us at a basket
kyle has great form! just look at how his jacket is swishing from his rotation!
I, on the other hand, look like I am trying to fight someone, gotta get that arm down
just trying to show how steep it was at parts, we t-off at the sign and the basket is up at the far-side of that dirt pile. the picture doesn't really do it justice.
us by the famous antler arch, there are actually 4 arches and we couldn't decide which one to pick but after we picked one we realized we chose the right one, the only one with the "Jackson Hole, WY antlers :)
kyle sitting on a bear. there were lots of random things like this between shops/on the sidewalks.
