This is why I never made it to Printmaking today.......

Today was one of the happiest days ever! JESSICA GEORGE GOT ENGAGED!!! to Kevin Anthony who is absolutely amazing  :) 

Here is the story from all perspectives:

Me/Roommates
Jessica
Cherise


Kevin's perspective is at the end.

Enjoy! (I don't know what's up with the weird awkward spacing, sorry)

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It all starts when I had to go "potty". (Logan George says this is a fitting start to Jessica's story). I was washing my hands when Cherise called me out into the living room for a surprise. I was busy, so I told her to bring it to me. She told me to "wash faster!" and come see......."it's sparkly!" I thought she and Emily had found some glitter or something, so I wasn't all that excited, but as soon as I walked out and saw Kevin sitting on our couch, I screamed and got so excited! (appropriately enough, Jessica was in her Marriage Prep class at the time) We all knelt around Kevin's feet like little kids. He was so good to let us in on the proposal. We offered our assistance to be background dancers/singers as he sang Jessica a song he had written for her, but I don't think he was all that impressed with our performance.

No matter how hard Keving tries to be sneaky, I always figure out what he is doing. Kevin cannot keep secrets!  So I knew that he had bought the ring that morning. However, I figured that he wouldn't propose until the weekend or after I graduated. 

That night Kevin and I were studying at the Hinckley and he asked if I would like to take a walk with him later that night. This is something that we do often, so I agreed without thinking twice about it.  We went back to my apartment to visit teach, but the appointment ended up getting canceled, so I decided we should just take our walk now.

He wasn't planning on doing it until later that night, but Jessica wanted to take a walk earlier, so plans suddenly got moved up. Krista and Kandace (who had just found out seconds before because they were gone for the sparkly surprise) distracted Jessica in the back for a few minutes so Kevin could quickly fill me in on the plan. As soon as they left Kandace, Krista and I were to follow, plant the rose he had bought in the flower beds at the temple and place the ring in the rose. (He had left the ring and rose with Emily earlier when I was at a work party)

Kevin wanted to walk by the Temple because we had never done that before. As we headed down the hill towards the Temple there was a beautiful sunset. 


They walked out the door, and that is when the circus began! Emily and Cherise were both gone and I had no clue where the rose or ring was. I sent Cherise a text and then I called Emily. She directed me to the rose, but the ring was gone! We lost the ring! Kevin is going to kill me! It was a little tense, but then I realized I was looking for the actual ring, not the box, and I found it. Relief!

Meanwhile, I was stuck in a Math Lab Meeting.  I received a text from Allison that asked "When are YOU coming home?" I knew that the proposal time had been moved up, but I couldn't come home because of the meeting.

Emily wanted to come, but we were already running late, so we told her to run to the temple and we'd pick her up. She begged and pleaded all the way up, but we were on a mission! (sorry, Emily) We pulled over by the Temple, but didn't see any flower beds. I figured he must have meant the tree, so we dug a hole and planted the flower with the ring. Success! We texted Kevin to give him the green light.

We drove away feeling like we were the best conniving little roommates in the world. I looked behind me to see our beautiful handy-work, but what I saw struck horror into my heart! The wind was blowing the flowers over! Our masterpiece was being destroyed! I flipped an illegal U-turn in the middle of the road, jumped out of the car (parked illegally on the side of the road) and ran to the flower to save it before it was too late. Luckily I had a rubber-band on hand (no pun intended) that I tied around it just in the nick of time.

This is us being "successful"

I jumped back in the car and we drove away, this time sure that everything was perfect. Of course we were screaming this whole time. This is when we saw poor Emily who had dropped everything (keys, backpack, sketch book, purse, computer) and run all the way from the BYU-I Center. She said her lungs were on fire and she could taste blood in her mouth. (She would also like to add that she has not eaten since 1:00pm and this all began around 7:30) I picked her up by the temple (a few paces away from the rose), apologizing, and we made another U-turn to show Emily how well we had done. 

But instead of her bursting with pride at our accomplishment, she freaked out, telling us that we had planted it in the wrong place and that it would get stolen and Kevin was never going to find it! It was then that we looked up the hill to see Kevin and Jessica's figures walking towards us in the distance! Emily shouted that "we still have time! We can make it!" I told her to jump out of the car (because she hadn't run enough yet) and grab the rose so we can move it to the correct location. Emily, bless her soul, jumped out of the car (we were at the stop light) and sprinted to the rose. Kandace and I sent Krista out with her so at least she didn't have to run alone. We're thoughtful like that.

The Temple was beautiful against the sunset. Then, suddenly there were all these people flat out running in the Temple grounds. "That is one intense game of tag!" I thought. I was going to mention it to Kevin, but then he started talking about something and I forgot about it.

 At this point, there was a break in my meeting so I called to see what was happening with the proposal. I wanted to know how to help, but all I received was confusion. Kandace was talking to me on Allison's phone and saying that something had gone wrong. She said that there was quite a story to tell! I was extremely disappointed when I got off the phone - still stuck in a meeting and I wouldn't make it home for another agonizing hour.

We parked our car on the side of the temple (probably illegally again) and ran out to meet Emily and Krista who were frantically transplanting the rose. Even amidst the chaos, I was sure to document the experience, don't worry. Please pretend like the below picture is a beautiful in-focus work of art. Remember, We could see them getting ever closer to us this whole time, so I was kind of in a rush. Then we ran back to the car, making sure to be quiet so they wouldn't hear us as they entered the Temple grounds a few meters away. 

We reached the Temple and Kevin asked if we could walk around the grounds because he had never done that before. I thought it was normal.

We wanted to make sure they found the rose, so we went around to the other side so we could see and waited to see them come by. We knew they were on the temple grounds, but they were sure taking their sweet time getting there! Finally we saw them coming up the steps. This was it! But then they suddenly stopped and turned around! They missed the rose! We decided to "stay calm" and reasoned that maybe they had already gotten the rose and we had missed it. "Emily! Quick! Go run and see if the rose is still there!" And run she did! Emily is such a good sport. She returned with the news that the rose was still there, which left us wondering if we had still put it in the wrong spot after all. We decided it was more likely that Jessica had found a plant and was educating Kevin about it. 

I saw these rose bushes that I wanted to show Kevin, so we took a little detour. 

During this educational break, we took Krista home. Kandace, Emily and I drove back just in time to see them coming over the stairs - for the second time. I went to park illegally on the side of the road again, but I was so distracted by the romantic scene before me that I actually ran over the curb. I got into a suitable parking position and turned off my lights so I wouldn't draw any further attention to ourselves. This was probably not the smartest idea to do on a busy road at night in a black car parked illegally. Needless to say a car drove by and honked, giving away our position. Jessica and Kevin turned around and looked directly at us. "Maybe they won't notice us." I thought. I quickly evaluated the situation to determine which would be less conspicuous: staying where we were, or sneakily driving away. I decided to drive away with my lights still off to lessen the obviousness of our presence. (Probably not the smartest idea either)

We started walking up the side of temple and suddenly there was this car that was on the curb. All these other cars were driving by and honking at it really loud. I turned around and stared at it for a little while and was about to tell Kevin it was a cute couple stopping to look up at the temple, but he started telling to me about a dream that he had had on his mission about a girl....

He ended his dream with telling me about a rose that he had given to the girl. At this point he grabbed my hand and pulled me over to the flower bed on the temple grounds. There was a rose stuck in the ground and insde the pettals was my ring. He tried to pull the rose out of the ground, but it was stuck in so firmly that the head of the rose fell off and my ring fell I the snow. It actually looked really pretty! 

I was Completely surprised and had no idea anything was happening the whole time. I don't remember him actually asking me to marry him. I was in such big shock! But I do remember saying "yes". 

In the end, they made it to the rose! Mission accomplished!

It's a good thing I document these guys' lives or they would only have like three pictures! So, yes, I might appear a few times :)

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Kevin's Perspective:

The best day of my life so far

Jessica and I drove home from Wyoming and got into Rexburg at 7:30 pm. It had been a fantastic weekend. I got to meet much of her family, and I felt like they all were some of the nicest people on the planet. I felt so welcome and comfortable the whole weekend. We spoke to her parents about how we had discussed being engaged soon. They were delighted to give us advice and counsel.  We had gotten the green light from the parental units on taking things further with our relationship.

Coming into town we noticed a jeweler store was open and I thought it’d be fun to just have a quick look. Jessica got sized and was observing the rings when she lit up about one pretty looking ring with a “lil swirl” on it. I suggested we could look around other places and see if there were any other ones she liked. She continued to politely respond that we could if I wanted, but that one with the “lil swirl” was just so pretty! Well, I thought, if it’s the one it’s the one.

I told Jessica that I had to write a paper that next morning to buy me some time to go and purchase the ring. They told me it would take until Thursday to mount my mother’s diamond on the setting with the “lil swirl”.  Ok, I guess I would propose this weekend. The second I told Jessica I was going to write a paper, she knew I was going to buy the sparkly lil’ swirl.  I can’t keep anything from her…except for what happened next.

To preface the next chain of events, I should explain that I had a very special dream on my mission where I proposed to a very nice girl. In my dream I sang a song to whoever this girl was and pulled out a rose containing a ring. I always remembered that dream because I thought it was odd that I could remember the song I sang. I had never heard it before. It was short, only a few lines. I figured I had just written it while sleeping and remembered it when I woke up. I’m not saying this dream was a vision. It was just a nice dream I had, and I always remembered the song I had sung to this girl whose face I never saw.

After I took the ring in I went over to apartment 105 to say hello to Jessica and to have lunch with her. After my class and devotional was done, I went to go buy Jessica a rose and her favorite Starburst flavored Jellybeans. When I bought the rose, I had thought to myself, “Hey that’s funny. It’s like the rose from my dream. Wouldn’t that be funny if the ring was done today? I could just propose tonight…(hehe, funny thought huh?)”. But they had said Thursday so I didn’t entertain the thought. Until I got in the car to drive home and my phone rang. “Kevin?” “Yea?” “This is Justin from Jensen Jewelers. Your ring is ready.” It was four in the afternoon. I had taken it in just after 10 when it opened. …wow

…

So the gears started turning. I got really nervous because I felt like this was the day. If I was ever going to surprise her, I was going to need to propose “tonight!” I had a good prayer, talked to my parents, took a short nap, and went to recruit Jessica’s roommates to help me place the rose and ring on temple grounds. I didn’t know they were going to have an adventure of their own. I left them to take care of things and trusted that it would get done. I went to the Hinckley to study with Jessica as I normally do around six on a Tuesday. When we talked about what we could do later that night I suggested maybe we could go on a walk up towards the temple. She, without any suspicion, agreed. Besides, there was a beautiful sunset in the making. It had just snowed and the clouds were clearing up perfectly. 

We started our walk earlier because we didn’t have much to do. I didn’t know that would start a rat race with the accomplices, but it all worked out anyways. We had a very nice walk. I eventually brought her to the rose and told her about my nice dream. I sang her little song for her, and then explained how in my dream I pulled out a rose with a ring. She hadn’t seen the rose in the snow right behind us yet. I went over to pick it up and that’s when she saw the ring and the rose. She gasped as I picked it up letting out a whispered but surprised, "KEVIN!" and put it on her finger. I expressed my feelings for her and asked her to marry me. She said yes.