Engagement and Tornados!

My friends! A lot has happened recently… a whole lot. Remember how the last time I wrote was January 15th, and now it is April 14th? Yeah well in that little gap there I met myself a pretty great guy and got engaged. No fooling!!!

I threw a dinner party on January 24th for my roommate’s birthday (actually, I had invited the missionaries over for dinner and when I told my roommate to expect guests for dinner, because she hates it when she comes home and I have people over that she doesn’t know about, and she said “Oh yay! Missionaries over for dinner on my birthday!!!” and I thought “yeah….. that’s the reason….” and frantically made some phone calls in order to make it a birthday dinner party.) I digress. So anyway, I threw a dinner party and one of our neighbors brought his new roommate, Benjamin. I had heard of Benjamin once or twice but since I hadn’t met him and didn’t know who he was, nothing stuck. Well he walked in and I thought, “Well, that is 6 feet and 2 inches of pure yumminess right there!”

He was so quiet and so kind and handsome, and he kind of glowed. Those blue, blue eyes and dark hair with a little side part (did I mention he’d just gotten home from his mission 3 weeks prior?) were just too perfect. We had only been expecting Will, not Benjamin, so we did a little shuffle of chairs and scrounged up another plate and fork, and Benjamin became out Pleasant Surprise. I tracked down his number and texted Benjamin the next day, “I’m glad you came Benjamin… you really were a pleasant surprise.”. Now, Benjamin got that text and thought I was telling him that I liked him. I, on the other hand, had sent a text to everyone who came, and was even talking to another boy that I was hoping to go out with later that night at the same time that I was texting Benjamin. I did, however, like Benjamin and made sure to invite him to all the little activities I hosted at my apartment, like worm painting and movie nights and stuff, and things just progressed. On our first date, I knew I wanted to marry him, and our first kiss sealed the deal. He proposed on March 20th at 4:00 in the morning. We were in Utah visiting my family. Side note, yeah, he met almost my WHOLE family and survived! Not only did he survive, but he seemed to like them. And they liked him!!! AND he loves babies! Any time I had a baby in my arms, he’d come and steal them away. I think he’ll be a terrific father! Ok rampage finished. So anyway, he came to tuck me into bed after we finished chatting with a good friend of mine, and plopped the ring box in my lap and said, “here, I want you to have this… cause I like ya.” I turned to look at him and said a=sardonically, “…really? That’s how you’re gonna propose?” To which he replied with his devastatingly handsome dimpled smile while laughing and said “No. Erica, I love you. You make me happy. Will you be my wife?” and slipped the ring on my finger after I said yes.

The ring is his great grandmother’s. Benjamin’s great grandfather didn’t have enough money to buy an engagement ring and a wedding band, so he had the band specially made with diamonds in it. So now we are scheduled to get married in the Logan temple on June 1st and I tell you what, the time is moving SO slowly!!!!!

In other news, we had our first tornado of the season yesterday. Friday the 13th. Does it get any better than that? I was at work when the rain started, and then it started to hail.

"The Wall" just minutes before the tornado

All the workers from the strip mall were all outside watching the sky when one of the ladies from the shop next door opened her door and hollered out “Tornado Warning!!! Everyone get into your bathrooms!!!” so all of us scattered back to our various shops and locked the doors. You know, just in case some wacko decided to shoplift during the storm. Now, there is something you need to know here; Tornado Watch and Tornado Warning and two VERY different things. Tornado Watch just means the conditions are right for a tornado, and Tornado Warning means that a tornado has actually touched the ground. So anyway, the three of us working run to the bathroom and shut the door and not 3 minutes later the Tornado Sirens started going off.

We stayed in the bathroom for about 20 minutes until the sirens turned off, and then peeked our heads out to check what was going on out the windows. I didn’t understand what I was looking at at first… it looked like it was snowing outside… and then I realized it was rain. Rain moving so fast, and sideways, that it was just a white blur. Not 2 minutes later the sirens started going off again, so back to the bathroom we bolted. I was getting updates on my phone, and we discovered that the tornado was only 3 blocks from us. Honest to goodness, we heard the rumbling. I was fine… until I head that a tornado was on Campus, and realized that Benjamin was on campus, and then I freaked out. My eyes welled up a little bit, but then I pulled it together when he texted me and said that he and all our friends were taking refuge in his apartment.

We ended up sitting in the bathroom at work for a good hour, then emergency closed the store as soon as the Warning lifted, and headed home. We think it was only an F2 cause only like 19 people had to go to the hospital, and only a few buildings were demolished, trees uprooted and power lines downed (let me tell you, driving home from work was a joke).

The sky just after the tornado

The street after the tornado

Thankfully though, we’re all safe. I’ve definitely determined that we need to get our 72-hour kits packed up and food storage started, cause no one out here has anything like that. I actually got told I was “one of those Doomsday people” when I started talking about it all.