In a month from today, our apartment contract ends and it will be bye-bye Utah. As I was driving Dan to school today, I had a lot of memories from streets and buildings pop into my mind and I wanted to make a list of my favorite memories of my four years here. I was less than a week into being 18 when I came down to Provo to go to BYU and I was terrified and excited and terrified. I'll try to keep this list chronological ish.
Being friends with Janae and Michon (even though things went sour with Michon later, she was my first best friend here, and we had a lot of fun together). We'd do dumb pranks on people in our complex and jumped into the pool with our clothes on in celebration of silly things.
Janae introduced me to the first few Provo guys in my life. The very first being Chandler, who had a motorcycle. Yes. We had a fun few weeks, until I got freaked out by how much he liked me, and then ran away.
The second was Colby, aka Broccoli Cheddar Soup, because he always tasted like it, even though I never saw him eat it. He was friends with Janae, and she invited me to go to one of his parties with her. The day after that, Michon and I went over to his house and hung out with him and his friend all day, watching movies, making pancakes, and swimming. Eventually we ended up cuddling and holding hands (aw :P). The next night he came over to my place and we watched Moulin Rouge and then talked until 3 AM, before he kissed me. We went on a date about a week later. We were only together for about two weeks before he broke up with me because he liked Michon better. And that was the end of both of those relationships for me. But I still had fun with both of them before the end.
That was the first summer. Then new people moved in for Fall semester and that's when I really became good friends with Jackie and (a different) Janae and the guys in apartment 33 That was also when Stephanie moved in, but we didn't really get close until the next semester. We watched a lot of movies and played a lot of poker, and I was super hung up on Dan C for a few months, which was mostly an anxiety fest of confusion, but still mostly a good time (there have been like 9 different Dan's in my life since being here, but really only 2 important ones).
Winter semester came and that's when I decided to get over Dan C because that was going nowhere fast, and I started to get really close to Stephanie and Brandon. Our friendship is mostly built on making food and watching tv, but we had some of the most amazing blanket forts ever. The most memorable being the first one when were in it all night until around 7 AM and almost got caught by our insane bishop.
In April I moved into a different apartment complex and really forced myself to be social and make friends and be involved and that was probably the best summer I've ever had. I went camping all the time, I went to Goblin Valley with Brandon and Stephanie and some other guys I don't really remember for my 19th birthday.
I was invited to go stay on a house boat for a week in Lake Powell where I met Moon Child (not his real name) which led to a few exciting dates before we both decided we weren't actually each others types. But at the lake we went on a moon lit hike together (hence the nickname) and then he took me to dinner and a movie up in SLC the week after and on a hike though The Subway (where we very well could have died due to high flash flood risk) down in Zions a few weeks later.
In the middle of those two dates, I went up to Logan to be with JAACK-R for Bentley's wedding, and it was spectacular and stressful, but mostly fun.
We also had a JAACK-R camp that summer up in Idaho, before Bentley got married, which was super fun.
Melody, Angela, Millicent, and Makinsey were some of the best roommates I had here. I had many late night walks, talks, and too much foods with all of them, and I miss them a lot. This was Angela, me, and Millicent on Halloween 2010.
Around this time I also started my late night custodial job at the RB, which was far from glamorous, but I met a lot of awesome people there, and I actually still miss it sometimes. There were a few awkward times, like when a guy learned a Queen song on his guitar for me and made me sing a long to it in the women's locker room. And I had to walk home alone at 2 AM, and was certain I was going to be raped or murdered every night. And in the winter, if my pants were wet from using the hose, they'd be frozen when I got home.
The rest of that summer, and well into the fall, I was deeply infatuated with a guy from my ward who I went on a few dates with and texted all the time and talked with very late into the nights with, but eventually had my heart crushed by, but that's ok because I think I needed to be broken like that to really fix myself before I met the most important Dan the next semester starting in January.
In December Stephanie left on her mission to Poland and I was happy for her, but also pretty devastated. She had moved back to Colorado in the fall before that though, and Brandon and I went to Colorado to visit her and she and I and her friend Tom had to walk several miles through scary downtown Denver, through seas of homeless people to get Tom's truck back after it had been towed.
That Winter semester Cara came to visit me in Februrary and we had the best girls weekend ever, spending way too much money via shopping and eating and getting our hair and nails done, and I wish all the time that we could do that again.
Also that semester I tried very hard not to be noticed in classes, but in one archaeology class, a cute, nerdy boy claims to have noticed me from day one, from across the room. He moved over to my table for the rest of the semester after that, and sometimes I'd pretend to have to walk the same way as him after class, so that I could talk to him (if his sister wasn't there that day). One day the stars aligned (just kidding, sort of), and we ran into each other somewhere he never would have been if things hadn't worked out just so that day while I was on my way to a class. He asked me out (the very end of the semester) and we went to the Festival of Colors and to Rocky Mountain Drive In.
We had some more awkward dates and hard conversations, but eventually started dating seriously and got engaged and married that summer.
Five months into marriage, I got pregnant and sick and miserable, but somehow survived. We got sealed in the Manti temple in July, and our daughter Darcey was born the end of September.
I essentially became a hermit for about 9 months before going back to work at Harmon's where I've met some really awesome people and have made some good friends. And that about brings us up to date.
There have been times when I have absolutely detested living here, and times when there was no where else I'd rather be, and now that my time here is almost up, and I look back over all that has happened and how much my life has changed, and I can hardly believe it. I have had the highest and lowest times in my life so far here, and I think I really will be sad to go.
