Sean, Melanie & lil Z

It's A Girl!!

2011-06-16T20:02:00.002-06:00

For Valentine's Day Sean surprised me and took me to get an early ultrasound to find out if we were having a boy or a girl! It was so amazing watching the baby moving around and kicking! It took awhile before the lady was positive if it was a boy or girl but she pointed at the screen and said "you see those three dots right there.... that means it's a girl!" haha Sean and I both thought she was going to say it was a boy. We were so surprised but SO excited! The ultrasound made it feel so real for me... that little baby was inside me and it was a girl! She moved around so much.

We showed our families the DVD but my parents were on a cruise so we put up a big It's a Girl sign in the kitchen for them to see when they got home. I'm so excited for our sweet little girl to come! And to get all sorts of cute clothes and flowers and bows!

Christmas 2010

2011-05-31T20:25:00.005-06:00

Our second Christmas together, first Christmas being pregnant!
My cousins acting out the nativity story on Christmas Eve. We announced that I was pregnant to my mom's side of the family at the Christmas Eve party. It was exciting!
Christmas morning! We both look so great haha. I got my cute new purse! And Santa brought our baby a stroller and carseat. I was totally surprised!
Here is us at one of our two Christmas dinners.

We're Having A Baby!!

2011-03-29T22:20:00.004-06:00

So it was on November 17th that we found out that I am pregnant!! We are both super excited!! Sean brought a pregnancy test home from work and and there was one dark line and the second line was super light. So I didn't believe that it meant I was pregnant even though Sean said I was. The pregnancy test came in a pack of two so Sean asked me if he should take the other test to prove that I was pregnant. So he took the other test and sure enough I was pregnant and Sean wasn't! haha! It's crazy and kinda overwhelming but we are so excited to start our family!! And my due date is July 24th! A little pioneer baby!
Here is my before belly picture I took in November.
We went to the doctor for the first time on Dec 28th. We have THE nicest doctor ever! I know I'm going to really like him! We got to have a little ultrasound which was so crazy! Here is our little baby bean!
I have been pretty sick which was not fun. That was not the best part of the pregnancy for sure. I threw up every day. Once I got to the second trimester though it got SOO much better and I really love being pregnant now!

Birthdays & Anniversary!

2011-03-28T21:07:00.012-06:00

On June 6th we celebrated our first anniversary! I can't believe how fast that first year went! It's been the most wonderful year ever and I'm so glad that I married Sean Pike last June! We celebrated by going to Lagoon and we had a blast!
On Sean's birthday we went to Cowabunga Bay and had a BBQ at home. We celebrated Sean and Shane's birthdays with root beer floats of course!
Sean took me up to Park City on my birthday. We went shopping at the outlets, went on the zipline and watched the ski jumpers practicing in the pools! We really liked watching the skiers. It was a great day!

Here are some more random pictures over the summer and fall. Here is us at the top of Ensign Peak. We hiked up with Brittany and Kyle. Instead of hiking up the trail around the mountain we decided to go straight up the side haha.
We ran a 5 mile "Steeple to Steeple" race. It started at the Oquirrh Mountain Temple and finished at the Jordan River Temple. I ran with Brittany. It was a fun race!
At the Lehi Rodeo!
The Mannings gave us tickets to a Real game! We had fun and awesome seats! Thanks Jennifer and Bill!
A date mini golfing at Mulligans
Mountain biking with Tyler for his birthday. I'm a pretty awesome mountain biker!
Here is our awesome Halloween costumes! Can you tell what we are?? We had fun making our costumes!
.... iPhone earbuds!

Summer has come to an end...

2010-09-19T13:40:00.012-06:00

So I haven't been good at keeping up my blog lately. Life has been crazy and summertime is always busy. As my last post said I graduated from UVU at the end of April. I started a job at CentralPoint Systems in Salt Lake the next week. CentralPoint is a web design company and we have a big variety of clients so I'm always working on something different. I love my job! I'm doing exactly what I wanted to do and it has been so fun! It's a small company...like 5 people. I have my own cubicle and phone number so that is cool. Check out the portfolio on our website!

Sean is starting his last year of school at UVU...2 more semesters!! He is taking 15 credits and still working full-time at Chick-fil-A so he is BUSY. We don't see each other very much anymore since our schedules are not the same. I am always so tired by the time he gets home from work at 11:00! It was nice last year because we could usually meet on-campus to eat lunch together between classes. Sean usually gets at least Friday or Saturday night off so that is good! Sean is hoping to get his own Chick-fil-A within a year or two of graduating so he is working towards that. He is such a hard worker!

Summer was a lot of fun! We had 4 family reunions this summer..... Utah, Oregon, Idaho, & Wyoming! All four sides of our family. I love spending time with family so it was a blast!

My mom's family has an annual campout over the 4th of July. We camped close to Causey Reservoir up past Ogden and we spent lots of time swimming, canoeing and cliff jumping! The boys were obsessed playing "Smoochy Ball" (football) every spare second of every day. The Williams family campout is always one of my favorite things of the year!

In July we drove up to Oregon for Sean's dad's family reunion. We don't get to see this side of the family very often since they don't live close so it was fun and I got to meet new relatives. We had a lot of fun hanging out, eating good food, and sight seeing in Oregon. We went to the Oregon coast and it was FREEZING! But all us Utah people were crazy and played in the water anyway! We don't get to the ocean very often.

Next reunion was the Brown Family reunion in Idaho! I love the Brown Reunion because I have so many cousins around my same age. We have so much fun together. It was fun being with everyone and there were SOOO many cute babies to play with! It was also my cousin Aaron's homecoming from his mission.

And last but not least was the Carpenter Family Reunion (Sean's mom's side) Labor Day weekend in Wyoming. Part of the reunion was a half marathon/5k. Sean trained up and ran the half marathon! He did awesome! I did the 5k with Lexi...I am not a runner. We camped, hung out all weekend and played games. We had wheelbarrow races and the driver was blindfolded...I guess I am not good at giving directions.

Graduation!

2010-05-02T13:31:00.010-06:00

I graduated on Friday from Utah Valley University! What a great feeling. I'm done with school forever! It was a fun day. I'm sure graduation was long and boring for my family but it was fun for me. My family, my grandparents and Sean's parents all came to my convocation. We went to In-n-Out for lunch afterward. We were all so hungry!

Friday night my parents threw a big party for me. So many people came to celebrate with me. It was a ton of fun! Thanks for the great party!

Rachelle graduated last week from BYU and we had a little party while her family was here from California.

Now time to move on and find a job. I have interviewed with 5 different companies for positions as a web designer recently and I have a few offers. Now I just have to decide what I want to do...

One Week More!

2010-04-22T21:48:00.003-06:00

Graduation is one week from tomorrow! So much to do....projects, finals, job interviews..... I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.... Can't wait till April 30th!!

Easter

2010-04-04T13:30:00.006-06:00

Amy, Rachelle and I had a great little roommate reunion during priesthood session yesterday! Love them! And then after priesthood Seany, Patrick and Rachelle's friend Eric came over to party! We played Wii, Sean made us awesome shakes, and we had a lot of fun dying Easter eggs!

I was totally surprised this morning when I woke up and saw that the Easter bunny had come and left a trail of candy everywhere! I guess he had a hole in his bag! He even came in my bedroom to make sure I was sleeping! And he brought me all my favorite candy! Love the Easter Bunny!!

The best part of the weekend was watching general conference on tv! Of course it was full of wonderful talks and music. We had fun playing conference bingo on Sunday at my parent's house. One of my favorites!

Spring Break Skiing

2010-03-19T21:50:00.007-06:00

We got yesterday off school for spring break and I told Sean that we should do something fun. I have been wanting to go skiing for awhile now. We found some discount tickets to Sundance on KSL and decided to go! We rented skiis (well Sean got a snowboard) with some 50% off coupons, got a subway foot long and headed up. Sean has been boarding twice but not since high school and I went skiing on a field trip in fifth grade so we are not the most experienced... I had no clue what the heck I was supposed to do...but we rode up the lift.

We were getting to the top and I got a little scared. As soon as we got off I started screaming and then me and Sean both crashed right there on the ground.... supposedly I tripped him with my pole... The lady working at the chair lift comes out and says, "skier, do you need some tips?" HAHA yeah... not sure what gave it away. So she taught me the pizza and french fries. The first time down the mountain I went super slow...no french fries for me... but no falling. The next few times I got faster and faster. I was feeling pretty confident. It was so fun! Sean had a few good falls and rolls. Eventually we tried the "more difficult" hill. My turn for a few crashes. I would just get going too fast and I couldn't seem to slow down. Sean was good at getting right up after a fall but it would take me like 10 minutes. It was just so hard for me to get my skiis back on and stand up for some reason. Sometimes I would resort to sliding down hills on my bum... I felt a lot more confident on the other mountain! I could go fast on that one. One fall though I jammed my thumb or something. It hurt pretty bad. Later Sean played doctor and pulled it back into position. Today it still hurts and has a nasty bruise. By the time it was like 3:00 my legs were so tired. We went to the car and ate our sandwiches for a break before we did our last few runs. It was such a fun day! We had a great time! Skiing is fun. Beautiful day! Today we are pretty sore and have bright red faces but it was all worth it! :)

Nine Months

2010-03-06T21:13:00.013-07:00

We have already been married nine months! Super crazy! The past nine months have been so great and gone by so fast, and yet so slow at the same time. Sean and I are both busy working and going to school. I officially have 13 days of class left until I GRADUATE! WHOO I'm super excited! I will be done with school. That's a crazy thought. Graduation is April 30th. I applied for a full-time job here on campus doing web development and fun stuff like that. Right now I have a bunch of random jobs:

I work on campus part-time doing web stuff
I clean a ladies house twice a week
I teach two boys piano lessons
I teach two tap dance classes
I teach two little kid intro dance classes
I'm the assistant director for my mom's dance studio
I run the Chick-fil-A facebook page
and I occasionally babysit for 3 different families

Crazy life! I'm really loving teaching dance and piano right now. It is so fun!

Sean works full-time at Chick-fil-A as the night manager. He is also going to school full-time. He works so hard. It makes a busy life for him. He is at work or school all day everyday till like 11:00 at night. Except he usually gets Friday nights off and we have a date night! After this semester, Sean has one year left. He will graduate a year from April in business management.

Sean and I teach Sunbeams together. Best calling ever! I really love it. The little kids are just so cute. Man, sometimes they say the funniest things. Here is a picture of our class from last year. In January we got a new group.

Somewhere in all our free time these last nine months, we have gotten hooked on two TV series. First it was the Office. We watched all 5 seasons during the summer. Now we are caught up and every Thursday night when Sean gets home from work we find the new episode and watch it online. Pam and Jim just had their baby!!! YAY!! ps Sean IS Michael Scott.

Our new obsession is Lost. All the episodes are online. We started season 1 about a month ago and now we are in the middle of season 5. We are totally hooked. We planned to be caught up by the season finale in 10 weeks. Season 6 is the final season. It's looking like we should be caught up in a few weeks. LOST is so crazy and intense and weird. But we like it.

One last update... We now own 2 cars! Much to Sean's delight, we just bought the Miata (Sean's first love) from his parents. I do love riding around in that car in the summertime! But I am mostly happy that I don't have to go pick up Sean from work every night. That is nice.

Valentine's Day

2010-02-27T12:29:00.010-07:00

It's our first Valentine's Day as a married couple. Lots of firsts this year! We went to the Valentine's Dance for my parents stake. It was really fun! (For me at least!)
On Saturday, I decorated our table and set up a candlelight dinner for Sean when he got home from work.
For dessert we did white chocolate fondu. It was a really fun night! I love Sean! I'm so glad I married you Seany!

Our First Christmas!

2010-01-10T15:20:00.005-07:00

Christmas was so much fun! It was so fun to spend time with family! We partied with the Williams family at my parents house which of course was crazy and fun! All the little cousins acted out the Nativity and there was lots of singing and dancing. We also went to Sean's house and had a ton of fun playing Disney Scene It, opening presents and eating good food! Sean and I came home, left out milk and cookies for Santa and went to bed!
It was fun having Christmas morning here at home with just the two of us. This is me coming out to see that Santa brought me Wii Fit!
We opened all our presents from each other. Sean did a great job picking out clothes and shoes for me and Sean finally got the iPhone that he has been DYING to have!
We spent the rest of the day visiting both our families, eating food, and playing games and lots of Wii! It was such a wonderful day!

December

2010-01-10T15:06:00.003-07:00

We went and saw the lights downtown with Sean's family. You have to go see them once every year!

It was fun setting up our Christmas tree and decorating for our first Christmas together! Sean got our tree and decorations last year on clearance. That should have been one of my clues that he was going to propose to me.... Why would he need a Christmas tree? Our tree is so pretty! I love it!

Argentine Empanadas

2010-01-10T10:37:00.003-07:00

Sean has been wanting to make empanadas for a year and a half since he got home. We finally decided to try them. We found some recipes online that Sean thought were good. The dough was a little tricky... but it turned out alright. Sean says we made them too big for Argentines. Sean was really good at folding them and making the edge look perfect....I was not so good at that. I thought they were delicious! We learned a couple things and next time they will be even better!

Black Friday Craziness

2010-01-10T10:18:00.003-07:00

I love Thanksgiving! One of my favorite holidays! I just love relaxing with family! Because of my cousin Chris getting married in Utah Thanksgiving weekend the Brown family Thanksgiving was at my parents house for a change. Everyone came down from Idaho. We spent the day with the Brown's then we had pie over at Aprille's house that night with Sean's family. Sean and I have been looking at prices on tvs for a little while and there were some great deals at WalMart on Black Friday. On our way home from pie we decided to just stop at WalMart and check it out, fully intending to come back early the next morning. Well we found the beginning of the line for tvs. There were just 3 people there so far but we found out there were a small number of tv's available. We figured we wouldn't get one if we came back in the morning so we just decided to wait. The line for our tv was in the frozen food section of all places. We got blankets out of the car to wrap up in. At midnight some of the sales began. We went a little crazy and got a whole bunch of movies for $2 each. At 2 or 3 Sean went and got his computer out of the car and we opened one of our brand new movies and watched it sitting next to the frozen vegatables. It was a fun crazy night. We made friends with all the other people in line. I even got paid $20 to save a tv for a man who had to run to Toys R Us. At 5:00 we got our golden ticket for our 50" plasma! The store was madness! We hit up a few more stores after we got our tv before finally going home to sleep. It was a crazy night!

Halloween

2009-12-29T16:34:00.002-07:00

For Halloween we were a Bronco football player and cheerleader. We made Sean's football pants out of a pair of my capris. I added orange to my outfit and made a glitter bronco logo. I thought we looked pretty good! It was super fun dressing up!

We went to a 3D haunted house for a Chick-fil-A party.

Our First Summer Married!

2009-12-29T14:06:00.007-07:00

Summer was so fun! We didn't have school so we packed in as much fun as we could when Sean wasn't working!

Watching fireworks on the 4th
The river at Lava Hot SpringsBowlingWe got to use our new tent and camping stuff at my family campout in July and Sean's family reunion Labor Day weekend. They were both really fun vacations!

For Sean's birthday we went to a Secondhand Serenade concert with his brothers and sisters. Chick-fil-A also had a boating trip that weekend that was really fun. Sean was good at skiing and wakeboarding....I tried...

On my birthday we went up and rode the tram at snowbird and hiked down the mountain. It was so fun! But man, we were sore the next day. We went to lunch for my birthday at Cheesecake Factory. So good! We also got tickets to Brad Paisley for both of our birthday presents. It was such an amazing concert!

We had such a fun summer!

Rollerblading at the Gateway
7/11 Free Slurpee DayFireworks on the 24th

Honeymoon

2009-12-29T12:55:00.018-07:00

Our honeymoon was absolutely amazing! It was SO fun to be together all the time and no work or school! We had many fun adventures. Like going to the wrong hotel on our wedding night..... Our keys wouldn't open the room....oops....wrong hotel. We stayed in Salt Lake after our reception then flew to San Diego the next day. We had a wonderful time in San Diego! Watch the movie I made to see everything we did, including: Wave Rider, Knotts Berry Farm, Beach, San Diego Temple (gorgeos), the San Diego Zoo, and ocean kayaking. We had the time of our lives!

Another hotel mishap..... the front desk worker just came into our room while we were sleeping to check our bathroom or something....awkward. We found an Argentine restaurant for Sean to eat at and we even found 7-eleven for some slurpees. Oh and of course we found an In-and-Out! It was so good we had to go again the next day! It was such a wonderful week! And it was also fun to come home and set up our apartment! So fun!!

Watch the movie!!

Wedding Day!

2009-08-18T21:00:00.021-06:00

Life has been crazy these last few months, but I'm finally making a wedding blog! The day was wonderful! Everything went so perfectly. Our sealing was so beautiful. It was great to have so many friends and family members in the temple with us.

Here is the little slideshow of all our pictures I made for the reception!

David Perry made my wedding video. I absolutely love it! Dreams come true....I have wanted David Perry to make my video ever since I discovered him about 5 years ago. He's amazing! (Watch it full screen!)

Here are some reception pics. I loved the reception! Everything looked so great! Just what I wanted! I loved having it outdoors... weather was perfect! And of course my favorite part was the dancing! So fun!! I'm so glad everyone danced! I had a blast! Thanks everyone who came and helped us celebrate! We love you!

Weekend Adventures

2009-05-31T21:27:00.003-06:00

Last weekend we started our Friday morning off with a trip to the Salt Lake Temple. That was a cool experience because about two weeks from then we would be getting married.

Then I was hoping to have a picnic up in the mountains but the temple took longer than planned so we ate some food at home and then headed up Big Cottonwood Canyon. I did buy some cool sunglasses on the way though. So as we are driving up we tried to find out where the Doughnut Falls trail was. We found it and hiked the trail. He got to the river where we could see the fall but then had to do some rock climbing and balancing on slick logs to get closer to the fall. Sadly we could never make all the way up. We will have to try to get there later in the summer! ~Sean

Classic Skating

2009-05-31T21:15:00.003-06:00

A few weeks ago we went to Classic Skating for this big regional singles activity. It was way fun! It totally brought back memories of fifth grade and snowball! We tried to take a picture of ourselves with our skates in the picture. I like it! Then we just got someone to take a picture of us. It was way fun skating!!

Friend Shower

2009-05-27T18:49:00.005-06:00

I love my friends so much! Rachelle and Celestie threw me a shower and it was a blast! They are so awesome! They made a whole bunch of yummy food and pies.

We had a toilet paper dress contest and I was the judge. It was tough....but Brittany won!

I love all my friends! It was so fun!

Easter/Wisdom Teeth

2009-04-13T08:38:00.010-06:00

I got my wisdom teeth out on Friday before Easter. It went well and I didn't even say any crazy things when I woke up. Sean watched movies with me and helped take care of me. We went to Aprille and Joe's and dyed Easter eggs with Marcus and Sean's family.

I didn't feel too great on Saturday and Sunday. We had double Easter dinner on Sunday. One at my Aunt Paulette's house with my mom's family and one later at Sean's house. We do double Sunday dinners a lot. We dyed eggs again on Sunday night with my family. I love dying eggs! Of course Sean had to make a red Utah egg so I made the Y one! You can see my swollen cheeks. Just so you know on my Utah egg it says that my kids bleed RED!! And I'm pretty sure that's how it will be!! Red or Texas!! haha!

Jump On It!

2009-04-10T18:27:00.004-06:00

We went to Jump On It for a ward activity! It's in Lindon and it is just this place filled with trampolines everywhere. We went with Shane and it was way fun! I tried to jump over the wall but I didn't quite make it...

My next try I got it!!

Sean jumped WAY higher than me.

And he would flip over it...pretty cool picture!

Holi Festival of Colors

2009-03-30T15:55:00.008-06:00

The Holi Festival of Colors is one of my favorite things ever! I told Sean we have to make it a family tradition! It is at the Krishna Temple in Spanish Fork. Everyone gets bags of colorful powdery chalk stuff and throws it at each other. It's awesome! This year there were 15 thousand people....so traffic was horrible. We were at a stand still on the freeway when the colors started and we watched the huge pink cloud come up over the temple. It was crazy! We still got plenty of color when we got there! They have bands and singers and everyone sings the Hare Krishna chant and dances. Watch the movie! It's craziness!

We found Lindsey, Jaron, Jenni, Christian, Emma & Nic!

Spring Break

2009-03-30T15:27:00.004-06:00

We tried to do some fun things over spring break. Luckily we had a warm weekend before it started snowing again! One day we went swimming. Sean taught me how to dive! Another day we rollerbladed around daybreak lake. It was so fun and such a beautiful day! For dinner we got 7-eleven slurpies and a hot and ready pizza and ate it at the park. It was so nice to have a week off school!

St. Patricks Day

2009-03-30T11:53:00.005-06:00

My mom made the traditional corned beef & cabbage and grasshopper pie for St. Patricks Day.

Family Bridal Shower!

2009-03-16T13:17:00.010-06:00

Last Saturday, Sean's sisters and mom gave me a shower for all my family and Sean's family. It was so fun to have all my family there! It was a morning shower and we had a delicious breakfast.

Aprille, Madelynn and Lexi asked me questions about Sean to see how well I know him. And I got a prize for all the questions I got right, and the ones I needed some help with...

The shower was a months of the year shower. Everyone brought me things for different months of the year. I can't believe how much fun stuff I have now. Now I just need an apartment to put it all in! Here are some more pictures of everyone at the shower.

Thank you for throwing such an awesome shower! And thanks everyone for coming!

Nickel Cade

2009-03-06T23:38:00.010-07:00

We went to Nickel Cade last weekend and it was way fun and we took lots of pictures! It's a fun date place! I liked the wave runner game.

I like playing the games where you have to stop the light that goes around on the jackpot spot. I got the jackpot on my very first try!! The tickets just kept coming out! I was pretty excited and all the little kids were jealous of me!

Sean's favorite game is the crazy taxi driver game.

Sean worked so hard to get the camera to balance so we could take this picture with the timer on the rafting rapids game.

Sean really liked watching me play the boxing game. It was a fun one but I was sore the next day... The pictures are pretty funny!

We got these sweet bracelets with all the tickets I won in the jackpot!

Registering at Target

2009-03-02T09:21:00.005-07:00

We registered at Target. It was fun picking things we want when we get married! You can look at our registry online.

Valentine's Day

2009-02-15T19:36:00.016-07:00

Valentine's weekend was so much fun! On Friday we went to the Draper Temple open house. It is so beautiful!

After the temple we went and babysat together at the Mannings. We played lots of Wii, Connect 4, and Guess Who. It was fun babysitting together! And we made $50 on our date! Pretty sweet! After babysitting we went to Sean's stake Valentine's Dance.

Saturday was actually Valentine's Day. Sean came to get me and I gave him a paper chain countdown to our wedding. I wrote something on the inside of each link for him to read when he takes it off. Look how long it is! 112 days!

And I made us some sweet matching pajamas!

Sean didn't tell me what we were doing for dinner and he made me play hot and cold to find out where we were going. I told him which way to turn and he told me hot or cold. We ended up at Sean's house. He had a nice little table set up in his basement with candles and roses.

Madelynn served us our dinner...chicken and tortellini...and we had creme brulee for dessert! It was really fun and everything was so good!

Sean gave me enough chocolates so I can eat one every day until we get married. He also gave me a straightener because mine broke at Christmas. Yay! We went ice skating with Sean's familia. It was way fun...Sean only knocked me down or dropped me a few times! Sean kept trying to do tricks and slide underneath my legs...it didn't work so well.

After ice skating we watched a chic flick with Madelynn, Aprille and Joe. Today is Sunday. My family had our traditional Valentine's Dinner with heart-shaped meatloaf and biscuits. We even had heart-shaped ice cubes this year! Andrea and Jeremy were here for dinner too. And our favorite neighbor Anna! Such a fun weekend!!

Our Love Story

2009-02-15T18:25:00.011-07:00

I wanted to make a blog about how we met and started dating. Sean and I both applied to be FCCLA officers for our senior year because we had friends in there. So we officially met at the end of our junior year and started getting to know each other the beginning of the next year. It was fun having FCCLA together! We got to go on fun retreats and always had reasons to get excused from classes for FCCLA business....

I thought Sean was pretty cute and I think I started liking him a long time before he liked me. I so liked her before she liked me. She even rejected me the first time I asked her out. I asked her to Christmas Dance by writing a letter to Santa saying all I wanted was for Melanie to go to the dance with me. I left that letter and some cookies, milk and carrots on her porch. I guess I was a bad boy that year because she turned me down the next morning. I couldn't go because I had a Minerette competition! I was sooo sad I couldn't go with him because I really wanted to! I told him I wanted a raincheck. After the many tears I finally cashed the raincheck and asked her to prom. Lucky for me this time she said yes. It was a way fun date. we had it downtown at the Union Pacific Building. She looked beautiful. It was a wonderful night!

We started dating a little bit after prom and Sean finally held my hand for the first time right before graduation. He was pretty scared... I was, it's true. I had never held a girls hand before. I'm a loser. I was even more scared to kiss her. That took another month or two of building up my courage and trying to figure out if she liked me or not. He kissed me the night before my 18th birthday and the day I moved up to Rexburg for school. I must admit though...I was scared for my first kiss too. We emailed while I was in Idaho and I found any excuse I could to go home for a visit. He even came up once to visit me for a weekend! We were pretty funny. I would call her once or twice a week and we would end up talking until who knows when. I think one night we talked until like 4:30 in the morning. It was ridiculous now that I think about it. We both got like two hours of sleep that night. Then it came time for me to prepare for my mission so I made the decision to break up with her so she wasn't having to wait for me, actually, also so I wouldn't get a "Dear John." I was sad but I wanted him to get ready for his mission. That is definitely what I wanted him to do. We still did things together during the summer before he left for Argentina so it was all good.

I missed Sean so much while he was gone! I couldn't wait for him to get home! I had no idea what would happen...but I was excited for him to be home again! I wasn't sure what was going to happen when I got home. I still liked her but I got way scared towards the end of my mission. Most of my mission I thought I would get home and if she was still around we would get married quick. But the last few transfers I was way scared and didn't know what to do. So when I got home I told her I wasn't ready for a serious relationship. I knew he would need time to adjust when he got home and I totally understood. But it didn't take him long to change his mind. I felt bad the rest of the week. So four days later I told her I did want to date her and that I had just freaked out a little bit. So we have been dating since August again and it has been completely wonderful! He makes me so happy! She is perfect. I love her. And now we're getting married!

We're Engaged!!

2009-02-08T20:48:00.006-07:00

Hi this is Melanie....and Sean! We just got engaged on January 23rd! I was completely shocked! Sean did a good job of surprising me. We had never actually talked about getting married so it was a big surprise. Sean told me we were going downtown to watch the Joseph Smith movie with Joe and Aprille. We had been wanting to do that for awhile. Their ward got tickets and everyone was dressing up and we were tagging along....but it was all a lie! I had bought the ring exactly a month before. So I just kept it in my closet so no one would know about it. I had picked the date I wanted to propose then. I don't know why January 23rd seemed like a good idea but it is what I chose. I made reservations two weeks in advance for the dinner. I wouldn't tell Melanie where we were going. When Sean turned into the Joseph Smith Memorial Building parking I knew he was taking me to the Roof. I thought he might have told me to dress up for the movie just so we could look nice for dinner...but I was not thinking anything else. We went to the Roof and ate dinner and during dessert at 6:50 her dad walked in with the video camera and I knew it was time to pop the question. He didn't even seem nervous during dinner at all! We had the perfect table right in front of the temple. It was so beautiful! It was the second most scary thing I had ever done. The first being asking her dad if I could ask her. When I saw that her dad was in place to record I asked Melanie if she was wearing the watch I had given her for Christmas. I bought it for the purpose of using it in this moment. She said no, and then I asked if she knew why I had given that to her. She of course said no. He told me he gave me the watch for a special reason and I was trying so hard to figure out what it could possibly be. I was trying to think what it looked like....maybe there was something on it....I couldn't figure it out. I then said that I bought the watch for time, then I reached my hand in my pocket, stood up, got on my knee with the ring and said, "I got this for time and all eternity." I was so surprised I could not even say anything. I just sat there staring at Sean and the ring. Seriously, I didn't even say a word. I just couldn't believe it! She was so shocked! She didn't even say anything for the longest time. I didn't know what to do or how to react to her reaction. Finally he asked if he could put the ring on me and I said yeah. I saw a flash and turned and saw Sean's dad across the room. A minute later I saw my dad with a video camera. Everyone knew about this except me! I had absolutely NO idea he was proposing....and that he had a ring for so long! Not everyone knew. Only our parents and my sister Aprille knew about it. The ring is beautiful! I love it! Sean did such a good job picking one for me! We went back to Sean's house and my family came over. We told everyone and celebrated with root beer floats! We're getting married!! I'm so excited! Best day ever!!

I put a little video together that you can watch. It's a little shaky but it's still fun!