life in the fast lane.

if you would have told me a year ago that in a year i would want to be a nurse, i wouldn't have believed you.

and if you would have told me that in a year i would be looking for a house with my fiancé, i would have laughed in your face.

yesterday one of our best friends, madison beyers (soon to be nash), took our engagements. we all had such a fun time doing them and even though they aren't done i am already in love with them!

& let's talk about how much i love conference. watch it and listen to it, then go back and listen to it again. what have your favorite talks been?

www.lds.org

-kandi

i want to be married.

19-year-old kandis shook her head and said, "no way, may is way too soon."

i wish 20-year-old kandis would have been there to whack her in the head and say "are you kidding me? do you know how far away may is?! get married in april, or march!"

at least 19-year-old kandis was talked into may.

-kandi

we ♥ instagram.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

spring break was fantastic, filled with our families and our closest friends. home hunting, playing killer at dawson's with all our friends, allie's and taylor's wedding reception, laying out at the pool in st george, steve's and sue's sealing, a crappy trampoline gym, a redbox movie and homemade popcorn, and introducing daws to supernatural...it was a good week. and now it's time to go back to school and study my brains out for the next five weeks. cheers.

-kandi

st george. where magic happens.

the last week of december, daws and i went to st george with his parents, his brother steve, and steve's wife sue. this trip was amazing and it was filled with so many fun times. spending five straight days together was a really good experience for me and daws.

on this trip, we all played games together (steph and al destroyed us all in cranium), we went out to eat, watched inception, went hot tubing every night, the girls went shopping while the guys went golfing (if you're unsure of how to bond with your boyfriend's mom and sister-in-law...a five hour shopping trip would do the trick), hiked, rock climbed (my first time ever and i loved it), and just had so much fun.

before this trip, dawson and i had started using the "L" word. he had also told me he wanted to marry me, but i avoided talking about it because even though i was pretty sure i was going to marry him, i was a little scared and wanted to take things slow. while we were in st george, the things we did together were the things i want to do with my husband when i'm married. we spent time with his family, worked out together, started reading the book of mormon together, went to the temple to do baptisms together, and i crossed rock climbing off my bucket list and he was able to be my belay and coach me through it. the more i was getting to know his family the more i wanted to be apart of it. dawson would come into my room every morning and cuddle with me. i guess what i'm trying to say, is with all these things we did together, i fell deeper and deeper in love.

the last night that we were there, dawson and i sat in the hot tub and talked. we talked about everything. we talked about the best things and we talked about the hardest things. i felt closer to him than i have ever or will ever feel to anyone. 

and we talked about getting married. we were going to get married.

 

so i kinda love st george. i mean, i loved it before but even more so with this boy.

i couldn't be more excited to be heading down there tonight. dawson's whole family will be there for the weekend because steve and sue are getting sealed in the st george temple!

i also couldn't be happier to be going anywhere else after we get married. 

-kandi

i think his tractor's sexy.

for work, daws will be mowing a lot this summer. so he got this baby:

 

k it's not a tractor, but it's probably the closest we'll ever have to one. let's be honest, i think this mower is the coolest thing ever. and let's be honest, i feel like the coolest girl ever to be marrying a man who operates a riding lawn mower.

i love planning my life with dawson. it's crazy to me that around six months ago we sat in my car, in front of pat's house (WHO IS NOW ENGAGED TO MY BEST FRIEND! WOOT WOOT CONGRATS GUYS!!) talking about school and careers. we were both trying to decide what we wanted to major in in school and it was such a relief to be able to talk to someone who was kinda going through the same thing with trying to choose a major. our conversation also led to family. it was almost comical to me how much the two of us wanted the same things in life. we had extremely similar views on working hard and raising a family. we even wanted the same number of kids. although it totally freaked me out to be having that kind of a conversation with a return missionary-a return missionary who i was developing feelings for, for that matter- it felt so good to be able to talk about the future- my hopes, my fears, and my desires- with someone who listened to me and cared.

and now we're looking at homes together and storing his riding lawn mower in my mom's garage. i guess that's just how life works.

-kandi

pernonin noobs.

since our siblings are our best friends and i have two younger brothers in high school, a fair chunk of our time consists of prank calling and watching youtube videos. 

i don't think most of the videos kason shows us are funny but i couldn't stop laughing at this one.

-kandi

the perfect dress & other deets.

there have been moments when i've thought that planning a wedding might be the death of me. there are so many tiny details involved in a wedding, and i am not a detail-oriented person at all, so a lot of the things i need to decide on, i really could care less about. then there's the big things, that i do care about. and that's where my indecisive-ness kicks in and makes things really complicated.

but after a month of being engaged, i have a day and place, a dress, a photographer, wedding party apparel, decorations, and the cake and flowers in order. pretty much in order, at least. and when i say i have those things in order, i really mean that because of my mother-in-law, my mom, and my cousin, these things are in order. they are all so dang incredible. without their help this whole thing would be a mess and i would be a raging bridezilla.

since i started planning my wedding, everyone would tell me that when i found the right dress i would know. everyone made it sound like when i tried on "the right dress" i would have this breathtaking moment of looking in the mirror at myself and receive with swelling emotion revelation that this dress was the one, and everyone in the room would cry. like love at first sight i guess?

well, that's a bunch of bull. when i went shopping  for a wedding dress, i found nothing. everything, and i mean everything, was either not something i would ever wear, way above our budget, or would have to be altered a thousand different ways to even remotely fit me. i didn't think any of the dresses i found would be worth the time and money of altering. i mean the dresses were all pretty, but none of them stood out to me and none of them i even liked enough to spend money on. i wasn't super impressed with anything i saw, and after trying a couple on, would end up going to chick-fil-a because there was one in the area, or going home early to be with dawson. 

i'm kind of a weird girl, i know...

for a long time there was the possibility of me being able to wear my mom's wedding dress. it's a beautiful and super unique dress and i was pretty excited about this option, but there were a lot of things we would have to have altered on the dress for it to work out, and it turned out that we weren't able to use it- parts of it had yellowed and couldn't be restored. so i decided  i was just going to borrow my sister-in-law's dress. it was pretty and it actually fit me. i was perfectly happy with this decision.

well, my mom wasn't. i hadn't had my "aha dress" moment. she found a handful of dresses for sale on ksl and emailed me the links to them throughout the day. i was completely uninterested in all of them, except one. i simply emailed my mom back, "i kinda like this one," and then forgot completely about it. i wasn't really interested in finding a dress, i had one that i could borrow and i had begun to think this "perfect dress" stuff was a bunch of bologna. i had found the perfect lingerie before i had found the perfect dress, for crying out loud! but my mom convinced me on saturday to go down to provo with her to try on the dress i had kinda liked from the pictures she sent me.

and, well, i loved it. i didn't receive revelation or burst into tears when i tried it on, but i simply loved it. so we got it. and the more i look at pictures of it, and the more i see it hanging in my bedroom, the more i love it.

kids, the right dress is out there.

i don't mean to sound like i hate planning a wedding, because i don't. more often than not, i absolutely love planning a wedding and i love being engaged, like when i catch a glimpse of the centerpieces dawson's mom is making, when i see one of my bridesmaids try on their dress, when people tell me how cool going through the temple is, when my dad tells me he's proud of me for choosing dawson, and when daws and i are laughing and i realize i'm going to be with him forever. those are the moments it hits me and i get filled with this ridiculous, indescribable happiness.

 that's what all these wedding details are for anyway, to celebrate dawson and i being together.

hands down, there's nothing better than knowing you're marrying your best friend.

-kandi