As we enter the holiday season and the weather gets colder, the coats and scarves come out, and heaters turn on, the same feeling comes every year...and I love it. As winter nears I am reminded of the moments Shawn and I spent together during our year and 4 months of dating. It's this time of year that memories come flooding in... Shawn on the other hand is usually preoccupied with ski thoughts! I thought I would share a few fun, brief facts and memories that you may not have known ... You can read the story of how Shawn and I met on the right side of our blog...
Our first date: Shawn took me out to Formosa, a Chinese restaurant in Logan, UT. After dinner we went to see Ladder 49...I think Shawn was a little nervous in the theatre because I am pretty sure he kept his puffy coat on during the movie (it was the middle of winter, but we were inside). Shawn was the one to hold my hand first, but I did help him out. I remember reading somewhere about "how to let someone know you want them to hold your hand" type thing ( I know, lame) but I kept my hand out and visible :) Our first date didn't end until 4am...I guess we both just didn't want it to end!
I made the first "move": That's right, I kissed Shawn first, but he definitely kissed back! (and that was on our first date :-/ while watching Napoleon Dynamite.
We've danced in the rain. Just the two of us, late at night, outside of Merrill Hall (where I was living on campus at USU).
I once told Shawn...and I still feel bad about this...that "I just don't see us getting married"...boy was I wrong, and I realized how wrong I was shortly after I had said it, when I looked up and saw the look on his face.
Shawn and I "broke up" or "took breaks to date other people" a number of times for a number of reasons. I would drive around in my car listening to the CD mix of "our songs" that Shawn had made me, and cry. It got to the point that the last couple of times we did take breaks, I would laugh a little because I knew we would be texting later that night, and back together within a few days...we couldn't live without each other and we both knew it!
We went "ring shopping" 5 months into the game (May of 2005) I was planning on an October wedding (I really wanted those cool looking Cinderella pumpkins for decor at the reception...) But Shawn didn't pop the question until January of 2006 and we were married in April. It couldn't have been more perfect.
From day one I never touched a door handle when I was with Shawn. He opened every door for me, even the car door...and still does (now with a baby carrier in hand it gets a Little tricky for him sometimes).
We spent Thanksgiving day with friends from the same program Shawn is in, whom we met in Texarkana, and are now living in Virgina. It was a ton of fun with a TON of good cookin! It was great to meet up with part of "the gang", but missed the ones that now live in other far away places! Us girls (Rebecca, Carin, and Aubrey) went to CVS/pharmacy to MAKE some money and walk away with some free stuff. Thanks to Rebecca and Aubrey for showing me the ropes on how to do some serious money saving shopping! I bought about $25 worth of stuff and only paid about $6..plus walked out with $6 to use on a future purchase at CVS! Not bad for a beginner! Good times! *Click on the collages to make them bigger and easier to read to captions 
Before we had been invited to the Cook's for Thanksgiving, we had bought our own Thanksgiving feast...so I cooked it on Friday and we had our third Thanksgiving feast this year!...not to mention the left overs, which we are still eating! After dinner we set up the tree...Trixie's favorite thing to destroy! You can see in the pictures how high she climbs up in it, we can't keep her away! Victoria LOVES to look at the tree and gets so excited! I love our Christmas tree and how each ornament tells it's own story!
constant unexplainable noises and we constantly have things to blame "the ghost" on. And I sometimes see things out of the corner of my eye. Shawn makes fun of me for it, especially when he comes home to find that I have locked myself, the baby, and the cat in our bedroom (it happened once when he was gone at night to a meeting... okay and there was that one other time he left at night for priesthood session and I called him crying because I was so scared and asked him to come home-BUT that was when we had JUST moved in to an unfamiliar place ha ha). Maybe I will just say it's a Christmas elf..they like it cold too right? because of the North Pole?
baby! For the longest time she just sort of ignored Tori (maybe that was her way of coping with the change). Trixie still acts like she owns the house though and will occasionally sniff Tori's head or play with Tori's feet when she kicks them! Since we've moved into the townhouse, Trixie has lost a little weight from having more room to run and she loves the stairs...I think she just likes hearing herself sprint up and down them! For those of you who don't know our kitty Trixie, you're missing out...she's not your typical cat, and has quite the personality!! Some of her favorite things are ice cream, yogurt, apple sauce, playing hide-n-seek, letting everyone know she owns everything in the house, and 
a recently added
favorite...Ranch dressing! We love Trixie, and I am still so grateful for that day when I finally got Shawn to agree to get a kitten (only because he thought the kitten would make me less baby hungry) and we rescued
her from that cold garage...actually I think it was a hot garage because we got her in the middle of summer. Anyway here are a few pictures of our baby kitty! The little video is a short film Shawn put together when we were in Texas (make sure you pause the music on my blog before playing the video) Enjoy!
