Engagement Photos

Found the pic of my eye after I got stitches in it. If you look close you can see above my left eye the stitches and it is a little bruised.

Jonathan's cousin took our engagement pictures for us in April 2004 in Idaho. We went up to his grandma's house for LDS General conference weekend and stayed at his sisters house one night in Ogden the night before we headed up to Idaho. Then we spent the weekend in Idaho. We got up early on Saturday morning to have our pics taken. I had a long sleeve shirt I was planning on wearing, but it was so cold the morning that we were taking pictures that I had to have my jacket on too during pics  because I was freezing!!! We just had them taken on Jonathan's grandmas family land there in Idaho. They turned out great, and this kind of started the wedding planning process for us! These were the only "formal" pictures we had taken the whole time we were together and the only ones I have of just the two of us that are not candid's or from our wedding day. Here are a few of my fav's! You can kind of see in the second photo my left eye still a little swollen from my fall!

Feeding the Calf

A few weeks before we were going to get our engagement pictures taken, Jonathan and his brother left out of town. I want to say they went to Elko, Nevada, but I am not positive. Anyway, when they left they had a baby calf at their house that they had been bottle feeding because something had happened to the momma cow and so she couldn't feed this calf. So, they needed someone to feed it for them while they were gone. Jonathan asked if I would do it???? Sure, to be honest, I thought I would kill it while they were gone. My experience bottle feeding animals all resulted in them dying when I was younger, so asking me to bottle feed another animal made me nervous. I only had to do it for a couple days, so I just hoped that I could keep it alive for a couple days. Well, I did fine keeping the calf alive, it was what I did to myself in the process. Let me first tell you the process of feeding the calf before I tell you what I did to myself. The calf was in the horse trailer that was in the driveway, so I would have to go through the garage inside the house to prepare the bottle, then come back through the garage back out to feed the calf. After you were done feeding the calf, you would walk back through the garage and back into the house to rinse the bottle out etc., then it was back through the garage out to my car to go home. Well, I had got done feeding the calf and I was taking the bottle back in to clean it out, as I was walking through the garage, my clumsy self somehow tripped and I fell flat on the ground and hit just above my eye and below my eyebrow on this metal leg of a chair. It split it right open and was gushing blood everywhere. I went inside the house, got a paper towel and pressed it against my cut and tried to clean out the bottle best as I could one handed. I then proceeded to drive all the way to American Fork from Orem holding the paper towel on my head. I got home and asked my mom if she thought I needed stitches, "....UM, yeah", she said. So, she called the doctor and I drove up there once again by myself because she was teaching piano. When the doctor came to stitch me up, I said to him could you please stitch it good so it doesn't scar very bad. I am getting engagement pictures taken in a few weeks and I don't want it to look horrible! Doc said of course! That was my main concern is an ugly scar for engagement pics! How pathetic was I! Anyway, the doctor actually did an awesome job, you can hardly see the scar today or the day of my engagement pics! :) Above my eye was still a little swollen when I had the pics taken, but you can't see the scar! :) Jonathan had also had something done to his hand shortly before I biffed it in the garage and split my eye open, and had to wear a brace on his hand for awhile, so we joked about our injuries we had at the same time. I have a picture of me somewhere with my eye, but I can't find it, but here is a pic of Jonathan sporting his awesome brace!

Branding

Something I looked forward to doing with Jonathan every year was branding and dehorning calves. I had never done anything like this, and luckily was able to do it a handful of times with him between their own calves and helping others brand theirs. I seriously thought is was so fun, don't ask me why. I loved the company and watching Jonathan work. I also loved being outside all day and just sending the calves through the chute, it's pretty fun to watch. Jonathan always let me try, or more helped me doing a branding on a few calves and also let me de-horn a few. Super fun times that I really miss doing that with him too! Whenever it starts to get branding season, I always want to go find someone branding their calves so I can watch, I probably wouldn't be the same because Jonathan is not there, but still reminds me of him whenever I see branding sessions going on.

Ride out west with Jonathan's brother

I have to laugh at this story, because it just shows that I know nothing about horses! So, me and Jonathan went on a ride out west of Utah Lake with Jonathan's brother Michael, on some horses that they had been breaking. Anyway, they put me on this horse that had been broke but they were still working with it. Let me tell you what, I was scared to get on that thing but I didn't say a word and I got on it anyway! If they wouldn't have kept saying "which one we going to put her on" and "yeah, he will probably be the best", I probably wouldn't have thought twice about getting on the horse they were putting me on, but they were making it sound like all these horses were newbies, and here they are going to put a city girl on it! Anyway, the ride went really well, and I didn't have any problems with the horse until we were almost back to the truck...the horse started laying down and Michael is yelling at me to get off, and I had never seen Jonathan move so quick in his life off his horse running over to me. I didn't see a problem, but apparently they were worried about the horse rolling over onto it's back with me still on it since I didn't know to get off the thing when it starts laying down. So, that's why we never let the city girl ride a greenie horse again!

Horse Ride in the Uintah's

One of my favorite memories I have of Jonathan after we were engaged was a horse ride we took up the Uintah's. I loved going on horse rides with him. It gave the city girl the opportunity to ride behind her cowboy and just watch him. I loved watching Jonathan ride horses! He was so good with them and you could tell he really enjoyed working with them and riding them. I was so far from being any cowgirl, I didn't know how to ride or anything, but he was always so patient with me and encouraging and always helped me. We went on a long ride just him and I and we came across an old outhouse that had 3 seats in it. If anyone knows me really well, they know that I was pretty excited to come across the outhouse. I had to get a picture of me and Jonathan in the outhouse and this is where Jonathan learned of my weird "bathroom humor" obsession. I really enjoyed going up to his parents house to hang and while we were dating an engaged. It was always so relaxing. He grew up in a small town and so it was fun to go up there and get away from the city and just relax. That is something I definitely miss about him too. He was always so relaxed and calm and wasn't in a hurry to do much, which seemed to make my life more stress free! This picture was taken on this particular ride I am talking about to the Uintah's.