A semi recreation of our first date

Yesterday was the year anniversary of mine and Wolf's first date. (It's strange; he remembers these dates better than I do.) Wolf took the evening off work, very unusual for a Saturday night, and we headed off as soon as he got home.

On our first date, we went to Bombay House, headed over to see a movie, and then talked on my doorstep for a few hours.

On this lovely recreation, we headed to Mama Chus for some delightful Mexican food. At least we kept up the foreign cuisine. I love Mama Chus. It is a reasonably priced Mexican restaurant just up the street from the mouth of Provo Canyon. I went there for the first time in 8th grade right after our Spanish festival held at BYU. My junior high is just a half mile away. Wolf claimed that he indulged in the best bean burrito he had ever had. There is my plug for Mama Chus.

After we had our fill, we headed off for dessert. The Chocolate. I have known about The Chocolate for a long time but had never been until I started dating Wolf. They used to be my neighbors. Do you see the cart in the background, just behind the Chocolate? That is my beloved Katelyn & Co cart that I used to frequent on an almost daily basis. Now that I have moved higher on the totem pole, I just sub there occasionally (including this Black Friday).

The Chocolate has since moved to a delightful little location on State Street. I grabbed a chocolate caramel cupcake and Wolfie indulged in a slice of the Brooklyn Blackout. I do not understand how he can scarf down dark chocolate like that.

As for the final leg of our date? We grabbed the 8:00 showing of Puss in Boots. It was a clever and terribly cute movie that made me miss my cat and convinced Wolf that we need a cat someday... Okay. That last sentence may not be true...I would support your decision if you decided to go see that movie. Especially if you have popcorn.

We did not stand on our doorstep for a few hours talking. We decided to forego the cold and instead chatted inside our house.

Lovely date.

Reason #1 why you should get married

Your husband will probably make you applesauce when you ask for it on a Friday night, put away all the laundry, and then rub your feet while you do last minute studying for a test you have to take in the morning.

Am I lucky...or am I lucky?

I happen to have the best husband in the world. Ladies, do not be jealous.

1. I rarely lift a finger in helping him cook. He cooks everything and anything. If I crave coconut cake, he will whip out coconut cake for me. It will be light, fluffy, taste dreamy, and be the best coconut cake I have ever tasted. True story.

2. He cleans the house for me all the time. I will come home from work, dreading to think what the house will look like and wondering how long it will take me to clean and do homework. I walk in and see a happy, clean house that smells like the dinner he cooked for me.

3. He makes the most out of the time we have together. I see Wolf for an average of 1.25 hours each day with the exception of Sunday and Friday (and sometimes Thursday if we are lucky). He is great at making sure we go on a date Friday night and that on Sunday, we basically do not leave each other's sight. (We are trying to work out an arrangement for the third hour of church.)

4. He takes care of me. I am not used to this yet. I am used to being completely independent. When I wake up in the morning and he has already left, I will sometimes find breakfast and a packed lunch sitting on the table for me to take. He buys me the food I mention he should buy when I really want hot chocolate or saltines or soup (I had a small cold recently...). He drops off assignments I left at home without me asking him to do that. He bought all the seasons of my favorite TV show. He makes me laugh and gets really excited when we get to see each other. He supports my dreams even if "all I want to be" is a teacher and a mom. He will play with me when I am crazy but keep me serious when I need to be.

He is the best. Ever.

How it all began part IV

My relationship with Wolf was only the second one in which I dated the guy before we became friends. Wolf and I watched our friendship "blossom" at the mall. He closed every night and I often worked evening shifts so I would often meander down to the customer service desk when I was done with work and would stay with him until the mall closed. We also spent several hours after the mall closed just talking or playing card games.

Christmas came and went. I spent most of Christmas day at his house (even accidentally falling asleep on a couch while his family roamed around).

January came and went. We celebrated my birthday in a quiet way and he gave me the practical gift that I wanted (an OXO tupperware to keep my flour in). I was getting antsy. I was the one that said "I love you" first and I was the one that brought up marriage first, but I also did not want to go into a ring shop with him. (I had a pretty bad experience in a ring shop before with a different young man.) Wolf was worried because I laid out what I liked in rings but I wanted him to choose. The only time I went in a jewelry store with him was to check my ring size.

Once I asked him when he would propose.

"Springish."

Springish? What did that mean?

The first half of February came and went. We had talked about dates. Originally it was set for July but then I realized I wanted to go to summer term and it would be better to get married at the beginning of June.

Finally Wolf told me that he was ordering the ring and it would arrive in 5-7 days. I was ecstatic but still antsy. He could hold onto that ring for months before giving it to me...

How it all began part III

To read the first two parts, for your reading pleasure, here is part I and part II.

The next day was a Saturday. Saturdays are days that Wolf works for at least 13.5 hours. That particular Saturday was also a day that I drove down to Cedar City with one of my besties/roommate that endured me for the longest to see one of my other old roommates give her farewell talk. Julia and I enjoyed the ride down and had a blast dancing and eating and catching up with friends. Because it was a sleepover, we had to have girl talk and chat about boys and life.

So I chatted about Wolf. The girls thought he sounded cute and I completely agreed. Especially because before the sleepover part of the weekend, I texted him quite a bit. One thought I had about him was that it was really late to be up (around 1 am). I am very much a morning person and cannot do late nights. I wondered if he was the complete opposite and I worried about what would happen if we continued to date.

That weekend passed by, I gave a hug to my darling missionary Kyrie, I made up songs with Julia on the way home from Cedar City, and I continued to text Wolf when I got home.

Well, we continued to see each other and date. We went to the symphony and had a few dinner/dessert dates. Thanksgiving had passed by this point which meant a couple of things.

1. The mall hours were now longer than usual.

2. The mall hired a couple more people to work at the customer service desk during the crazy gift-giving season.

Wolf suddenly found himself working with Angie, a lady that just happened to live in my brother's ward. Angie is...talkative. She would talk to my sister-in-law about Wolf and then talk to Wolf about me.

One night after a family dinner, my sister-in-law in question approached me and described this unusual conversation she had had with Angie. Tricia (the sister-in-law) told me that Angie talked about a conversation she had with Wolf:

A: So, have you kissed her?
W: No

A: You need to kiss her soon or else she won't stay around.

uh...

Do I seem like the type of girl that would not stick around because a dude I started going out with had not kissed me yet? (Your answer here is NO!)

Well, that evening (December 5) I met up with Wolf. We made a delicious flourless chocolate cake. I still dream about it. We made the cake and then talked for hours.

As I walked him to the door that night, the topic of Angie came up. I mentioned that Tricia had told me an amusing story about her. I knew very well where this would lead if I told Wolf the story.

Wolf wanted to hear the story.

I told him the story.

He kissed me.

I stayed around.

It was a pretty good first kiss.

It has been two months

of wedded bliss as of three hours and two minutes ago.

Here is to an eternity of bliss.

The tragedy of the wedding cake

For anyone who knows Laura and me, you know that we love to cook. It's one of our favourite things to do. Most of our wedding presents were things for the kitchen. Laura got me a really cool cookbook for my birthday. Well, before the wedding I was feeling enthusiastic and confident enough to try my hand at a very daring project: The wedding cake.

But I love to cook. I wasn't going to make an edible version of styrofoam. No, this cake had to be delicious. To that end we decided to use one of our favourite cake recipes: America's Test Kitchen's flourless-chocolate cake (a fatal mistake as you will soon see).

It is a delicious cake. Extremely rich. But I couldn't just leave it at that. Between the five layers of said cake would be rich chocolate ganache and bavarian cream.

This was quite an undertaking. I started making the cake layers days in advance. Then it all had to come together the day before the wedding. Of course I was working right up until our wedding day, so I didn't get off work until quite late. By about ten o'clock on Tuesday night I started.

Everything looked like it would work. The cream and the ganache were ready. The first few layers had been successfully transferred to the frosted glass cake stand that my mom had let us borrow. Then disaster struck...

My mom and I stood there in horror as the third of five layers split in half right down the middle. The rest of the layers soon collapsed. In the course of a few seconds I was left with $40 worth of delicious chocolate blob. My mom asked what we could do. Nothing. It was dead. Cake making had failed. It didn't help that it was about two in the morning by this point. I kind of crammed it all together in the hopes of making something at least cake-like and went to bed.

This is what we had to work with on the day of the wedding. Unfortunately, the generous layer of icing didn't quite hide the disaster of the previous night.

This is where I want to thank my mom. She, on the day of the wedding and with only a few hours to spare, went out and bought a beautiful chocolate wedding cake from Magelby's.

The only thing left to do was tell Laura...