What have I been doing for the last year?

Well, I've been pretty busy since the last time I posted anything on my blog. I went to New York to sell alarms with APX with a couple good friends. I didn't do very well, but it was fun to be there with a bunch of buddies. I came back at the end of the summer and started out right away at BYU. I did pretty well my first semester of college and even met a special someone ;) Her name is Rainah and she's from the Sacramento area. We met at the end of September, started dating on my birthday (October 8th), got engaged on March 22nd, and we have set a date for the 22nd of July to get married in the Sacramento LDS temple. I am really excited for that! We actually met through my sister, Rachel. They(Rainah and Rachel) had had a class together and got along pretty well. I was just chatting with my sister on campus and Rainah came up and started catching up with Rachel. Rainah and her friend, Candie, started walking away after they were done talking with Rachel and Rachel and I continued our conversation for a couple more minutes and then I started heading to my class, which happened to be in the direction of where Rainah and Candie were walking. I started to talk to them for a little bit and at the end of the conversation said that we should do something sometime(they seemed like fun) and I kind of assumed that Rachel would have their numbers and mentioned that, but... come to find out, they said that Rachel didn't have their phone numbers, so they both gave me their numbers and I said that I'd call them sometime. So...about a week later on a Friday, I "texted" Rainah to see if she was busy that night. I hadn't given her my number and so it just showed up as a text from someone she had no clue who it was. (I know...texting to ask someone out on a date is lame...much less anonymously...and I'm never going to live that one down...) Since Rainah didn't know who it was, she wasn't going to respond, she just thought it might have been a mistake and that someone had texted something to a wrong number. But the same friend, Candie, decided to call back in Rainah's place... So, when she called, my class was about to start, but I said that I would call back when class was over. I called back after and talked to Rainah and she accepted my date offer. I'm just going to warn you in advance...I AM LAME... So I didn't have a vehicle at the time, so I awkwardly asked if she could drive. She said that was okay, but when she got there to pick me up, I asked if we could "drop my camera off" at my brother's house... The truth, which Rainah is quite aware of, is that, due to my lack of sales skills, I hadn't made very much money over the summer and was kind of scraping by to make it...and so I was borrowing a couple bucks from my brother so our date wouldn't be completely lame. By the way, she was very beautiful as she pulled up to pick me up. I would say that she got way "flossy"(dolled-up) for our date that night, because when I met her, she had very wavy hair and when she showed up that night, she had straightened her hair and I've learned that she always dresses very well. She may deny that, but that's my side of the story. So then, we started on our ridiculously fun date! We had dinner at Panda Express and we both ordered one of the spicier meals off the menu and there were a lot of peppers in both of ours that were pretty spicy, so as I was telling her about how on my mission we used to eat a lot of very spicy food, I get a pretty spicy bite and since I haven't been eating much spicy food since my mission, I wasn't really used to it, so I wasn't handling it as well as I had hoped... Anyways, we then headed off to the Nickelcade, which ended up being quite a blast. We tried most of the games and had fun with them, but we really enjoyed this snowmobiling game and also Dance Dance Revolution. Neither of us had ever done it before but we surprisingly felt very comfortable around each other from the very first date. Well, I thought so at least... Rainah says that I just sat as far away from her as possible in the car and wasn't really asking many questions and she felt like she had to run part of the conversation, but who knows what the truth was... We were both kind of out of our comfort zones. So we had a very fun first date and as she was dropping me off, I expressed interest in a second date and she said that would be fun. So I asked her to come and watch a movie with me and some of my roommates after our FHE the following Monday. She came and we watched Secondhand Lions. It was fun and we talked some more that night. So we continued to see each other and talk about different things and got better acquainted with each other. And then one day on campus, I met up with her to talk between our classes and we sat up by the JSFB(the same part of campus where we first met) and talked for about five hours. At that point, I knew that she was a cool girl and really fun to be around and we had been talking about a lot of things(high school, interests, hobbies, etc.) and one of my mission buddies(Hawken) came by and introduced himself and we talked to him for a few minutes. I had mentioned to Hawken that I had been going out with this girl for a week or two and we had seen each other probably about every other day and that I was having a really good time. So about 15-20 minutes later, Hawken shoots me a text that said, "How is the DTR going?" and I(am lame) had never heard the term or it didn't exactly click, so I leaned over and asked Rainah what it was supposed to mean...(lame) And so she told me that DTR meant that we were "defining our relationship" or in other words, evaluating it and seeing if we should move up to the "next level." I knew that I liked her and that we were having a really good time spending time together and we were pretty comfortable talking about a variety of different things, so I decided that I was going to ask her to be my girlfriend. I'm a dork and so I kind of ran it by her first by asking her if I were to ask her(putting my dorkiest voice out there), "Should we date?" what her response would be. She said that she would say yes, so I repeated my question in the same dorky voice and she accepted my dating proposal. By the way, we still hadn't kissed, that waited until the next night, but you'll have to ask us about that...;) So about a month later, I commented to Rainah that we needed to be moving towards a "common goal," which was obviously marriage(the dreaded M-word at the time) and we both agreed to start praying about if that was the direction that we should go with our relationship or not. About a month after that, in December, I knew that Rainah was the person that I was supposed to marry. So we kept on dating and in March, her parents were actually in town and on the Wednesday before they were going to leave, I asked her father for his daughter's hand in marriage. He accepted and gave me some excellent advice about his daughter, marriage, priorities, and life in general. There was a Chewbacca that even visited that night... Her parents were planning on leaving on Saturday night to go back to Sacramento and I really wanted them to share part of the moment with us and so I bought the ring on Friday morning and planned to propose on Saturday morning. We actually had a very long talk Friday night and I had Rainah under the impression that I would probably have enough money to buy the ring in about a week or so, hopefully... The next day, I bought some flowers and called Rainah while I was at the flower shop and asked her if we could talk as soon as possible. She started to get way worried about a gazillion things and she actually was in Springville, a nearby town, getting some things... She said that she would let me know when they were on their way back. I was way way nervous about it all. I remember being at my brother's house telling them that I was going to propose that day and I was just kind of pacing around the house and my heart was racing. It didn't help that Rainah wasn't around at the moment and that I would have to wait another half an hour until they had eaten and driven back to Provo. So they got back and I asked her if we could go on a drive as we talked about what I was worried about. We drove past a few of the places that we had had experiences with each other, such as the Nickelcade, and tried to make it seem as much of a "appreciate our relationship" talk as much as possible and to remember the good times. So we ended up at the Provo temple parking lot and I went to the trunk and got the flowers for her and gave them to her and told her how much I loved her and appreciated our relationship and we went for a walk around to the back of the temple. I mentioned a few things about what the temple meant to me in my life and we talked about that for a while, which was pretty normal, we had already gone through a lot of different questions about if we were ready for marriage and what goals we each had for our family, and then as we were sitting on a bench behind the temple, I asked Rainah if she loved me. She said yes and I continued by asking if she loved me enough to marry me. She said yes and right after she said yes, I took the ring box out of my pocket, got down on one knee and said, "Rainah Diane Prestwich, will you marry me?" along with some other special things and SHE SAID YES!!!!!!!! So after recovering from all the emotion, we went back to her apartment where her family was all waiting and they had Rainah tell the story about how I proposed and took some pictures of us and the ring and everything. Then, almost immediately, they went to the bridal store and bought the dress! Within about four hours of being engaged, Rainah already had her wedding dress!!! It was very exciting to see the glow on Rainah's face, which I'm sure I had too, but you know, it's the girl's dream day... That was on the 22nd of March and we've been happily engaged since then and have our date scheduled with the temple for the 22nd of July. We finished up the school year and then Rainah went home to take care of a close relative that was about to go into a major surgery. I'm still in Provo working for the summer and I've been blessed to go up and see her twice. So, I guess that's this last year in a nutshell. You could definitely say that my life and situation has changed a lot since then, but it has been a very nice change. I am very excited for all of these blessings and I know that they will continue as we work hard and do what it right. I'll try to do better on keeping up with what's going on with Rainah and I and also maybe even posting some pictures of us, so you can all enjoy!