My love waits there in San Francisco (part 3)

Where did we leave off?

Football...check.
girl code...check.
fall in love... uh let's begin there.

I've never been in love before (well other than now of course). I've dated some people, been through the ups and downs of dating, felt the hopelessness that comes with the crush that doesn't like you back, ya know, i've made the rounds.

Falling in love though? I think I could do that all day every day. And lucky for me, I get to. It is fun to fall in love with someone the more you learn about them- the quarks, the good, and the bad.  It is worth the wait, worth the journey, and so worth the ups and downs.

Ya know the whole rhyme, first comes love, then comes marriage...you know the rest. Well I feel as though they left out a pretty big part... What happened to the courting?! (and no that word is not just for the 70 year olds)

So, let the courting begin!

Lots of hanging out led to...

...my post about the fort. Remember that one? Well there is a picture I left out... ta-da! Jonathan!

Surprise! It was not just me and my roommates making that fort. We had some help, from an eagle scout, who may have helped our success in a big way... And just my luck, that fort was just small enough that of course I had to be right by him, and of course the only place for his hand was right in mine :)

I guess that gave him the courage to ask me on a date cause homeboy (which is what my roommates and I call him) finally asked me on one...three weeks after the infamous football game. But somehow he didn't need three more weeks to get up the courage to kiss me because it sure happened that day. And let's be honest, first date and first kiss in the same night? I wouldn't have wanted it any other way!

After that point it becomes a blur for a few weeks.

Lots of time together+finals+my reluctance to say yes to officially dating him because I was scared and lame and wanted it to all slow down+going home for Christmas vacation=what happened to the month of December?!

I do remember sitting on the floor with my sister-in-law talking about marriage late at night over the break. We talked as though I was going to marry him even though I was not even technically dating him. But it felt natural. So natural. Intuition is a beautiful thing.

So I came back from Christmas break ready to be officially his.

More dating, more learning about each other, basketball camp outs, intramurels, and water fights got us through the dreary month of January.

Then February came, and February became the month that officially changed my life.

One of his friends was heading to Northern California over President's day, and invited him to come in order to split the gas money. Well seeing as that is his home, it made sense. To be honest it totally caught me off guard when he invited me to come along though. We had only been dating, technically, for one month, it wasn't very serious yet, and meeting his family seemed like a big step. I was really excited to go though, and we decided that it wasn't going to be a big deal, just a fun vacation from Provo. Little did we know, it would be the vacation that proved that we loved each other. And would love each other for then, and forever.

His family is amazing but I was really REALLY nervous to meet them. I've never been in that situation before, especially when I was going to be sleeping at their house for a weekend. I didn't know if they would like me, or tell him to break up with me, or think that I was not good enough. And hello, anyone seen Meet The Parents?? So many things could go wrong! Burning the house down, breaking someones nose, breaking a vase of a dead persons ashes, so many possibilities.But, at least as far as i'm concerned, it was one of the best weekends of my life.

Yeah, it was just what I needed to prove that the things I was beginning to feel in Provo were true...

And one night after a picnic in the Redwood Forest, we were laying on the couch in front of a fire when he, out of no where says, "Have you ever thought of us getting married?"

To which I responded...