Dear Benny and Sariah,

Dear Benny and Sariah,

I wanted to share some great news with the two of you - Steve and I are engaged!!!  Little did we know when we were your counselors at EFY that the participants would be more inspired than the counselors at SLC-04.  Apparently you guys saw this coming from the very beginning, but it took us a little longer to figure it out for ourselves.  It seems that your ceaseless efforts to discover and perfect as many pick-up lines as possible paid off - at least for us.  Benny, when you made Steve use them on me to see how they worked, I just laughed.  Since it wasn't "legal" - according to the "For the Strength of Youth" pamphlet - to use pick-up lines on Sariah (tell me again, when do you turn sixteen?), I acquiesced and played along.  I figured that someday in the future you'd realize that pick-up lines are, in fact, completely unnecessary.  Eventually, you'll figure that out - be sure to let us know when you do.

Anyway, things picked up between the two of us when I headed back to BYU in September, and he did the same, but at WSU, to finish up school.  It was a somewhat-long distance relationship, and Steve affectionately became known as my "weekend boyfriend" since that's when I mostly saw him.  It was nice though.  Enough contact to keep me wishing for more, but not so much that I couldn't focus on school in order to graduate in December.  September flew right by, with fun dates like the demolition derby in Logan, and gelato with dear friends in Bountiful.  October slipped away too quickly, but we did manage a chair-lift ride under the stars at Sundance, and domino-Sundays with both our families.  November was Thanksgiving, December was Christmas, and all of the sudden, we found ourselves in 2009.  January was freezing - mostly because Steve left me behind in Bountiful while he went on a vacation to Ohio and Canada with friends from his Taiwan days.  But then I turned around and took off on a trip to the UK to visit a dear friend in London, so I guess that made things equally chilly for both of us.  February was great though - Valentine's Day alone made up for not getting to spend February 30th and 31st with Steve.  Maybe it is because Valentine's Day is so awesome that those other days were seen as expendable back when everyone was figuring out how to downsize the calendar.  March was lucky.  I found out towards the end of the month that I'll be going to graduate school in England this fall, and since Steve was really excited about it too, I figured I'd eventually invite him to come with me as a "permanent fixture in my household," which, as it turns out, he was already planning on for quite some time.  Sweet!  April has by far been the best - no joke.  The reason for sending this letter revolves entirely around the events of April 27th, 2009 - the day when Steve asked me to marry him.  At some point over the last nine months, though I can't tell you the exact time or place, I fell in love with him, which explains why I happily said "yes!"  We both have our own versions of how the wonderful event happened, so I'll let you enjoy it from the two of us.  I only said yes in one of them, so you'll have to watch them both to find out what went down.  I, personally, am a huge fan of Steve's version - it's priceless!  Thanks so much for all your efforts - we are truly grateful.  See you September 17th!!!

All the best you two,

Kristen

Steve's version: Kristen's version: