Happy Howes: April 2012

I Just Really Like Dogs

So I have a small obsession with furry 4 legged animals that bark. I received an e-mail that MADE my day! I wanted to share the laughs! There's a photographer who got a group of dogs together, a ball, and a waterproof camera :)

I love the panic in their eyes.

This dog scares me.

I think this one's my favorite.

March Madness

So our work does a little March Madness competition every year. We do team building activities where we can elect "Team players". Those are people on our teams who we want to recognize for all the hard work they do. When you're elected for a Team Player Award you get to be in a shoot off with everybody else on your team who was also elected. From there, the winner goes on to the shoot off between the whole department (which is a combination of several teams) and get to participate in a shoot off to win a pizza party for their team. Well, I won the team shoot off and went on to the department shoot off. I didn't do too shabby. I made it to the third round and lost by one basket. Our manager ended up winning the shoot off between all the managers so our team still got a pizza party! yay! All the team MVP's also got a cute little basketball gumball machine.

Notice the tape around the middle of mine? That's because as I was sitting quietly in the back of the room, nervously awaiting my turn to go shoot, I tilted my gumball machine ever so slightly. The top flew off and gumballs went EVERYWHERE! I was mortified! I looked up at the room full of people, (around 130 people) staring at me and laughing. Why do these things always happen to me!?!?

Overall though it was fun morning. Chic-fil-a catered breakfast and our team won pizza! Not a bad Wednesday if I say so myself.

Steve was one of the MVP's too. He's the one who beat me and won pizza for his team.

Thunder storms and a Missing Recommend

People kept telling me that on the night before my wedding I wouldn't be able to sleep very much. They were wrong. I got a solid 7 and a half hours and even hit snooze when my alarm went off. They day before my wedding was easily the busiest day off my life, not the actual wedding day, but the day before. We had this to pick up, or that to drop off, I was running full speed from 7:30 AM-11 PM. I was exhausted! There were so many errands to run and people to see that I didn't even have time to paint my toenails. Hence the reason I slept like a rock.

My friends, Aimee and Vic, spent the night with me. Vic is my lovely hairdresser and old time friend from Las Vegas. When I woke up everything was going smoothly. My sweet father made us breakfast, my hair was curling the way I wanted, I wasn't having any weird skin issues and my make up was looking awesome... great start to a bride's morning. I got ready with plenty of time to spare and everything was going extremely well.

As we were leaving we were running through our little checklist of everything we needed. Dress, check. Shoes, check. Recommend and Marriage License, check. Now here's where I need to give you a bit of a back story... I was endowed about 3 weeks before we got married so we had a couple opportunities to go through the temple and do a few sessions. I had picked a specific spot in my wallet that I ALWAYS put my recommend in. About a week before we got married we decided to go to the Salt Lake Temple since we just work across the street. The Salt Lake Temple only does sessions every hour. I was supposed to be off at 4:30 but ended up getting stuck on a phone call at work and didn't get off until 4:40. We needed to be to the temple, dressed and ready by 5. We were rushing. We ran to the Temple and when I handed the sweet little old man my recommend he scanned it and handed it back and let us through. Well I ended up dropping my recommend into a side pocket of the purse I was using and told myself I'd put it away in the dressing room... Well I didn't... And I changed purses before my wedding.

As we were pulling up to the temple on my wedding day I went to get my recommend out so that I'd have it ready and wouldn't have to stop and fiddle through my purse. The second I saw that empty spot in my wallet I was overtaken by shear panic! It clicked, I knew exactly where my recommend was and it was 40 minutes away. I tried calling my friends who were back at my parent's apartment and of course they didn't answer any of my frantic calls! At this point my make up is no longer perfect, my tears are streaming down my face and I'm a big, blubbering, hot mess...

My mom rushed me out of the car towards the temple trying to avert a full fledged breakdown. I walked into the temple and saw Steve sitting on the couch waiting for me. He looked so peaceful and handsome. I walked towards him with shaking hands and tears in my eyes trying to explain that I didn't have my recommend. He hugged me and told me everything would be ok. He took me over to the desk where the bride and groom are supposed to sign in and told the lady I forgot my recommend and wanted to know what we needed to do. The sweet little temple worker cracked some joke about not being able to get married... not a good time for joking... after she got her little chuckle in she took us past the recommend desk and handed us off to a worker after explaining how ditsy I was who then handed us off to someone else who handed us off to someone else who handed us off to someone else. I was beginning to feel completely humiliated. Did we have to let everyone know that I forgot the recommend. Finally this cute little old man took us into an office and let us sit down. He explained that this tends to happen quite often and they can call my Stake President to get everything straightened out. He was so kind and had me back to joking and laughing by the time we were walking out of the office (which was no easy feat). All three of us were walking out of the office when Steve turned to Brother Poelman (the kind little old man) and said, "You might not remember me, but I'm Steve Howe, Geniel Kuiper's son." Come to find out this sweet little old man was the man who baptized Steve's grandparents in the Netherlands and helped his family immigrate to America.

After we got everything straightened out we were patiently waiting for someone to come get us so we could be sealed. Guess who came to get us? That's right, Brother Poelman. Turns out he's also a sealer and rearranged things so he could seal us. Suddenly my forgetfulness seems like a blessing in disguise. It was such a beautiful little ceremony. I wish we had gotten a picture with Brother Poelman but neither of us had that thought until just now.

After the sealing we got ready and went out for pictures! Courtney Allphin, our photographer, came up to me right after we came out and informed us of the imminent rain. She said we needed to hurry. It stayed dry just long enough to get all the pictures we wanted! When we went back into the temple to get dressed we were starving and all our family had already left to go get something to eat. (Lame I know) Steve and I ended up eating at the Temple's cafeteria and it was sooo good! We had prime rib. :) When we came out of the temple it was pouring. Seeing as we were still scheduled to have an outside reception it was a bit troubling. Our reception was in fruit heights, which is about 20 minutes north of SL, and we were told it wasn't raining in Fruit heights. Seeing as storms usually move West to East we decided to stick with the outside plans. Our reception was scheduled 6-8. Guess when it started raining? Right at 6. haha. Oh well... We had our reception at the Bates' house and they were so awesome. They got tarps up and over more than half of the area so incredibly fast. I was impressed. We're so grateful to them. They're the main reason our reception went so well. After the tarps were up everything was flawless. Those were the fastest 2 hours of my life and I was sad to see them go so quickly. After meeting with all our guests for about and hour and 45 minutes we cut our cute little cake, had our first dance, changed and left. Even though the day had little hiccups here and there, it was easily one of the most fun days of my life. I wish it would have gone by slower. I'm so glad to be sealed to my best friend for time and all eternity.

The Proposal

Well, It's official! He put a ring on it! On the morning of July 8th I woke up to a text that said, "Go look on your front porch." Sitting on my front porch were 10 envelopes. The first one said 101 reasons why I love you and went from #101-92. :) I got to work and there were 10 more sitting on my desk. All throughout the day he had random people delivering them to me. At lunch we went into the break room and we sat at an empty table. I didn't realize it at the time but it was the exact spot where we met and he gave me another twenty envelopes. :) Up until this point I wasn't sure if he was going to propose or not. I thought he might just be making a grand romantic gesture! :) After work I went out to my car to drive home and sure enough there were 15 more under my windshield wiper. On the drive home Steve called me and nonchalantly asked if I wanted to drop by his mom's house and maybe we could go for a walk or play with Maghie or whatever. haha. I went to his mom's house (we were down to the last 5 reasons at this point) and when I got there the doorknob on the front door had a giant red bow on it. The door was opened a crack and the red ribbon went from the front door and was draped all throughout the house. There were rose petals and candles EVERYWHERE!!! It was beautiful! Clipped along the ribbon were reasons number 5, 4, 3, and 2. I got down to reason number 2 and the ribbon ended. Steve came up from the basement, walked over to me and said, "Do you want to know the number 1 reason why I love you?" At this point all I could do was nod. He said, "The number 1 reason I love you is because I can't live without you" and then he dropped to one knee and asked me to marry him!