Happy Valentine's Day!

Love, 

M & D

really loving my husband today.

Today, I'm feeling extra grateful for D and what a wonderful husband he is.

I had a pretty rough day yesterday, but he knew how to make it all better.

I'm so glad I married someone that I could stay up all night talking to and laughing with.

Thanks for being the greatest husband, D! I love being your wife.

P.S. I read the most inspiring blog post today about not placing blame in your marriage. It was a great reminder to me to only do things that will bring peace into our home. If you're married (and even if you're not) I think it's a great read!

One Year.

August 16, 2011

Dear Daniel,

I can hardly believe this day is here! Happy anniversary sweetheart!! It's crazy to think that an entire year has passed since our perfect wedding day last August. We've been married for a year! When we first got married, I always thought that a year would be such a huge milestone, and it definitely is. We've experienced so much together already, and I wouldn't change a thing. Being sealed to you has been the greatest blessing. You make me want to be a better person every day. You are always so supportive of me and my endeavors, and I'm so grateful for that. Thank you for being so patient, loving, and kind. Thank you for being worthy to take me to the temple, for honoring your priesthood, and for helping us put the gospel first in our lives. Thank you for the wise, calming spirit you bring into our marriage. Thank you for being so honest and hardworking. Thank you for your sense of humor and for laughing with me all the time. Most of all, thank you for loving me every single day and for making me so, so happy. There is no one I'd rather go through life with than you. Happy one year anniversary, Daniel! I love you so much. I can't wait to see what the next years have in store for us!

Love always and forever,

Mandy

p.s. Coincidence that the wedding album we ordered four months ago just happened to arrive on this very day? I think not ;)

lately.

Just a few things we've been up to lately.

1. Wandering around the Salt Lake Arts Festival.

2. Sipping Jamba Juices.

3. Learning to cook artichokes.

4. Playing guitar (or if you are M, getting serenaded by the guitar).

5. Going on little dates to the Bountiful Temple.

6. And perhaps my favorite, attending beautiful weddings!

Thanks to Mel Nash Baucom for letting us be a part of your special day!

What have you been up to lately?

Today, I thought I'd share our love story.

This is the story of how Mandy and Daniel became M and D.

Did you know that D and I went to the same high school? Don’t worry, neither did we! Even though we shared more than a handful of mutual friends, our paths never crossed until one fateful night in July of 2008, after we had both graduated. It was a warm summer evening and I was out with my best girlfriends looking for something fun to do. We ended up at our friend Adam’s house to watch him film a funny video for his fraternity. I remember a tall, dark, and handsome guy walking in with his friends shortly after we got there. He was kind of shy, but I could tell by his infectious sense of humor that he was someone I wanted to get to know. He introduced himself as Daniel.

It’s funny how you remember little details from important events in your life. D still remembers that I was wearing short denim shorts and a yellow tank top. I remember what he was wearing, too. Except that’s probably because he was wearing a gorilla suit for the video they were filming. After the video was done, I remember we went to get frozen yogurt at Spoon Me. When it was time to go home, I was hoping that we’d get to hang out with those guys again soon.

I definitely got my wish. Our little group of friends got closer and closer as the summer went on. It definitely helped that D was couch-ridden for a week after he had surgery on his ankle. We brought him his favorite Butterfinger shakes and watched the Olympics 24/7. When D got his cast on, his mom told me that he requested a specific spot to be saved for me to sign it.

Toward the end of the summer, I went on a vacation to California with my family. D and I exchanged about a million text messages while I was gone. I was beginning to think that I might actually have a crush on this Daniel boy.

As things went on, I was beginning to get the hint that D just might like me back. I had really wanted to go to the Secondhand Serenade concert, but I had no one to go with. All it took was a mention of the concert to D, and we were driving all over the city together trying to find tickets. We turned up empty, but that didn’t matter to us. Our first adventure together was a total blast. We even discovered that we shared a mutual love for Jimmy Eat World – our favorite band to this day.

When school started, D and I signed up for an Institute class together – just the two of us. Even though he didn’t have any other classes that day, D still walked me all the way to my next class every day after Institute.  Then one day, he finally asked me on our first official date.

Our first date was classic. D had called my friends to see what I liked, and he everything planned out. He was so excited to take me to Color Me Mine to paint our own pots, but when we got there, it was closed. I think it’s hilarious, but D still hates talking about it. I’ll have you know that the rest of the evening went perfectly. We had dinner at Friday’s, and then we went back to his house to watch a movie.

Our first kiss was also classic. D was just a little nervous about it, so we had about ten of those awkward hugs where you both know you want to kiss, but you’re both too scared to make the first move. Then, one beautiful August evening, D finally kissed me for the first time. It was on my front porch after one of our dates, and it was perfect. I was so happy.

I could just end our story here and say “it was all downhill from there…” But that actually isn’t true, and it wouldn’t be honest. So I’ll tell you what really happened.

The kisses and dates became more frequent. But the more I started to like D, the more I afraid I felt. I couldn’t explain the feeling back then, but eventually I sorted it out. I realized that I was falling for Daniel. I’d fallen for people before, but nothing had felt like this. I wasn’t in high school anymore. I was in college. These were the “big leagues.” You date people in college to get married. Married? And he was a returned missionary. He was intelligent, mature, driven, kind, and perfect. And I was terrified.

I was terrified because I could see a future with Daniel. I knew that if I kept dating him, I’d fall in love and want to get married. But I wasn’t ready to get married. I felt young. I felt inexperienced. I needed time. I didn’t know how to explain this to D, so I told him that I thought we needed to date other people. I tried to keep my distance and when that didn’t work, I told him I wasn’t interested. I don’t know if D saw though it or if he was just crazy, but throughout all of that, he never gave up on me.

I remember one conversation that we had one evening. I fed D my classic line that I wasn’t ready for a relationship. I will never forget what he said to me that night. It may seem like an odd response, but it was exactly what I needed to hear. He said: “Mandy, if we were ever together, I can promise you that I would never, ever hurt you.” And I knew he was telling the truth.

Things cooled off for several weeks after that, and I was beginning to think that D had finally given up on me. But then, out of the blue, I got a phone call one evening as I was driving home from work. It was Daniel. He said something like “I know we said we’d date other people and all that, but there’s this date night on Saturday, and there’s honestly nobody I want to go with. I want to take you. It’s probably a slim chance, but would you like to go with me?”

I surprised myself when I said yes. I surprised myself even more when I realized how excited I was to go with him. I had missed going on dates with D. All at once, everything I liked about him came flooding back to me and I absolutely couldn’t wait for our date. We had so much fun together. After that night, I threw caution to the wind. I shrugged my shoulders and decided to go with it. So what if I fell in love with him? I didn’t want to miss my chance with a fantastic guy because I was too afraid to give it a chance. So I took a leap of faith.

And it was was, hands down, the best leap I’ve ever taken.

We said "I love you" in November, and started talking marriage early the next year. Even though we both knew we wanted to tie the knot, we didn't see any harm in spending another year dating each other. I never regretted it because we learned a lot about each other over that year. D got down on one knee and asked me to marry him on March 31st, 2010 on the same very same doorstep that we had our first kiss. We were married for time and all eternity in the Salt Lake Temple on August 16th, 2010. But as, you know, that was only the beginning.

M+D+Cars=Death

We have had the absolute worst month with cars. It's getting kind of ridiculous. D and I are on a first-name basis with half of the mechanics and insurance agents in the Salt Lake Valley. Every single one of these things has happened to us in the last 5 weeks or so. Ready? Here we go.

1. Early in May, I got in a legit car accident in the Corolla. It had to be in the shop for like 2 weeks, so I had a to drive a rental car.

2. The same day that I got into my car accident, D got pulled over and got a ticket for having one of his tail lights out (soooo lame, right?!) Turns out, his tail light was cracked and it had filled up with water, so it wasn't an easy fix. We had to take it to a repair shop and pay to get the entire thing replaced.

3. The day after I got the rental car, I was driving to work and a giant rock hit the windshield and chipped it. Welp, there goes the deposit...

4. When my car finally got out of the repair shop, it started steaming and smoking everywhere while I was driving it home. Overheated. No one could come pick me up, so I had to wait for a guy from the repair shop to come rescue me. Oh, and this all went down on a very sketchy part of State Street, mind you. On the hottest day of May.

5.  Two days ago, D and I were driving his Saturn around on a few errands. We went to park the car and get out, but the keys would NOT come out of the ignition. They wouldn't even turn. We tried for half an hour, and had absolutely no luck. All of the repair shops were closed because it was like 10:00 at night. Finally, D ended up driving the car to his friend's house, and they figured out some way to shut the engine off with the keys still inside. We had to borrow a car from D's parents so that he could drive to work until we can get the car fixed.

6. Cut to today. We finally find some time to take D's Saturn to a repair shop. We got it there just fine, but as we were coming home from the shop in my Corolla, we noticed that the car we borrowed from D's mom had a flat tire. And no, I don't mean just low on air. The tire is legitimately FLAT.

And there you have it, folks. Currently, the Saturn is at the repair shop, D is outside changing a flat tire, and I am blogging about our ridiculously terrible luck with cars. I can't wait to see what happens next.

Thank you.

Dear D,

Thank you for texting me in the middle of the day just to see how I'm doing.

Thank you for choosing to go to the store with me instead of watching your basketball game.

Thank you for always supporting me in everything, even if I'm being a little irrational.

Thank you for working so hard at your job so that I can go to school.

Thank you for always getting me extra blankets when I'm 'too cold' to get them myself.

Thank you for giving me the wisest advice.

Thank you for laughing with me every single day.

Thank you for always being the first to apologize.

Thank you for hugs.

Thank you for kisses.

Thank you for loving me exactly the right way.

D, you're the perfect husband. Thanks for being all I ever dreamed of.

I love you.

Love, M

love.

only thing i ever could need

only one good thing worth trying to be

and it's love.

- sara barellis

One Month

Today is our one-month anniversiary! It's probably not that much of a milestone, but everything sort of feels like one when you're a newlywed. To celebrate, we have decided to follow the sound advice of some of our friends and family and eat our wedding cake tonight instead of freezing it for a year. We kinda hope it'll taste better.

In light of this one-month "milestone," I thought I'd share a few of the highlights from our first month of marriage.

• Mandy washing a few brand-new beach towels with a load of other clothes. I have never seen so much lint in my life.
• Daniel and Mandy setting off the smoke detector on two separate occasions while cooking dinner.
• Mandy and Daniel living for an entire week without the most basic of necessities: Internet and a microwave. (Special thanks to the Roos-Lawrence family for fixing the microwave problem!)
• Mandy and Daniel walking side-by-side into church with President Thomas S. Monson, and then hearing his personal testimony on Fast Sunday.
• Mandy officially changing her last name from Jacobsen to Sorensen.
• Daniel and Mandy (okay...mostly Daniel) starting a new exercise/eat-right kick.

I also read a quote today that I think describes our marriage perfectly so far:

"Our marriage has always been a 50/50 proposition - with the possible exception of closet space."

-- Gene Perret

So true, Gene. So true.

Brand-New Sorensens!

Well, we did it...we're finally married!! In fact, today marks three weeks for us as Daniel and Mandy Sorensen. I have so much to catch up on! Bear with me; it may take a few posts.

First of all, thanks to all of you who were able to come to our wedding! We were so blessed to have you share the day with us. Our wedding day was absolutely perfect, and I truly mean that. Everything went off without a hitch, and was exactly the way we planned it. I know, I know...we got really lucky, but I have to attribute most of it to our fabulous family and friends who made it the best day ever. Thanks also go out to our excellent caterers from Good Day Catering, the staff at Red Butte Garden and The Lion House, our darling florist from Brown Floral, and our absolutely amazing photographer Sarah from Lindsay Jane Photography! We're so grateful for their hard work.

Without further ado, here are some pictures from our wedding!

I know there is a way to make these bigger, but I wasn't in the mood to figure it out. If you want to see them larger, they're all posted on Facebook. I also have the passcode to the gallery of all the wedding photos our photographer took for whoever wants to see them! Just e-mail me (mandyj17 @ gmail.com) and I'll send you the link. =)

To make a three-week-long story short, married life is the greatest. We're loving every new adventure - from the cooking fiascos to the laundry disasters (more on this to come). Mostly, we just love being together. If I had to pick a favorite part of our wedding day, it would be getting sealed to Daniel in the Temple for time and all eternity. We had the privilege of having Daniel's Grandfather as our sealer, and it made the ceremony that much more special. I've never felt so right about anything in my entire life, and I can't wait to see what forever has in store for us!

Google Search Video

So a little while back, Google came out with this adorable commercial that told the story of a couple through their Google searches. (You can see it here if you want.) So after, they put together a website that allowed you to create your own Google search video! I think they're pretty cute, so I thought I'd share the one I made for Daniel and I. Enjoy!

Engagements!

Yay, pictures!! I am happy to announce that Daniel and I got our engagement pictures taken on Saturday. It was so much fun!

Our photographer was Sarah from Lindsay Jane Studios. She was absolutely amazing! Even though she's about 9 months pregnant, she was still moving all over the place and even laying on the ground to get her angles! Very impressive.

Anyway, we had been anxiously awaiting the release of the pictures. That may be an understatement - we basically checked her blog 7 times a day. And yesterday, we were excited to see that she had posted some samples!

Here are a few of them:

some kisses.

let's try to make Daniel not look like he's a foot taller than me.

this is one of my absolute favorites!

i love the reflection in this one.

and of course, the candid.

We could not get over this one!! We look like the world's angriest couple. Our darling photographer tried to take some more serious pictures, but it's obvious that Daniel and I can't do serious. She kept telling Daniel not to wrinkle his forehead so much, and you can definitely see him concentrating on that...haha.

We really do love each other, I promise.

**********************************************************

In other news, my family is going on a vacation to Hawaii this summer!! I can't wait to lay on the beach and go surfing and snorkeling.

We've definitely waited a long time to go on this trip. It was originally planned for last year, but my younger brother Steven decided to get his foot run over by a car just a few short weeks before our departure date.

A couple of plates and screws later, we decided we needed to cancel our trip. Luckily we were able to reschedule.

Unfortunately, we only bought enough tickets for my family (since we booked it last year, before we were engaged) so poor Daniel gets left at home. I'm going to miss him while I'm gone! Hopefully he'll settle for some truly awesome souvenirs, and a few epic picture messages that will come to him and random hours of the night due to the time difference.

Until next time...

Much love from Mandy

A New Beginning...

Well, here we are! We've decided to join the blogging community. The title seemed appropriate as Daniel and I are encountering a lot of new beginnings lately, and loving every minute of it!

To start off, I thought I'd share a little trivia about us.

1. Daniel and I met on July 25th, 2008 at a mutual friend's house. I won't go into too much detail, but I will say that Daniel wore a gorilla suit to Spoon Me that night. Love at first sight.

2. Believe it or not, I was kidding about the last part. And no, not the gorilla suit part, the part about love at first sight. We didn't actually start dating until several months after we met. I needed a little convincing, but luckily Daniel stuck around long after most people would have given up. I'm so grateful he did!

3. One of our first dates was to Color Me Mine. It was closed.

4. Our first kiss was on my front porch. Daniel basically ran away afterward. It was perfect.

5. He proposed to me on March 31st, 2010 on the very same porch where we had our first kiss. Needless to say...I said yes!!! We will be getting married in the Salt Lake Temple on August 16th. We have never been happier!!

And so it begins! We are excited to start our new life together, and to share some of our adventures along the way. We hope you'll join us!!

much love, M