Day 9: A Photo You Took

This picture is from a visit to Dom's house while we were dating. I must have taken it 3 or 4 times because it kept coming out blurry due to the lighting and when it did finally come out I loved it! I loved how we are holding hands and it shows us touching the water to show we were officially there. I know, I know OMG more info. about Dom? Obsessed much? I bet you said this in a 13 year old girl's voice like I was thinking it but yes, more about Dom and how I love the man. I mean you're learning a little more about me and so he is bound to show up time and again. :)

Anyway, there is a little river or maybe more of a stream over by his house and we took a walk to see it. Dom's little theory is that if we are by water then we have to touch it or else we weren't there and by this time in our relationship I thought it was more of a, if we didn't swim in it then we weren't there kind of thing, since we always ended up that way, voluntarily or not.

Side story, Dom used to throw me into water.................a lot, or at least tried to get me as wet as possible when near water. The picture below is when he came to visit me for the first time and threw me into our pool, fully clothed. He did this again at the river near Folsom, fully clothed and then picked me up and ran me through the water fountain stream thingys at Marine World, again fully clothed. Bathing suits didn't matter much to him and thankfully he has grown out of this and now all I have to do is touch the water when we go somewhere.

The first picture shown is hanging up in our home because of how much I love it and probably always will be. :)

Day 8: A Thank You Letter To Someone Who Has Changed Your Life

Dear Dominic,

I love you. I love that I know exactly why I love you and the reasons are foundational, not conditional. You know that, obviously, you're an important person in my life but how important may not be clear. Let me explain. When I fell in love with you it changed me and when I found out you loved me back that change became irreversible. This is a good change, a great change in fact. I got to see what God's love is like so much better, that unconditional, never failing love and I still get see to everyday because you loved me enough to commit your whole life to me. Thank you for that, by the way. ;)

What I really want to be thanking you for is that change I was talking about. Loving you made me want to become a better person. I wanted to treat my family, friends and neighbors better, I wanted to become smarter and well kept (it was hard to ditch the UGGs everyday look) and mostly, I wanted to live up to the love that you showed me. This is all wonderful and definitely deserves a thank you but what I am truly thankful for is the fact that you brought me closer to God. I finally understood what true justification meant. You were patient enough to explain it to me time and time again and work through my warped understanding of God's grace.

It's as simple as believing in Him and that He died on the cross for my sins, past, present and future and that I don't have to and can't do anything to repay Him for that. A works based faith doesn't work and this was my natural reaction to the good news. Now I've got it right and it's all because of you. Thank you! Thank you for your love and showing me what grace is. I love you more than you know and always will.

Sincerely,
Your Grateful Wife

Day 7: Five Things You Couldn't Possibly Live Without

Hmmmm, that's a good question. Let me think....Alright, here we go. These are in no particular order:

1. Yarn & Needles
(technically that's two but they really go hand in hand)

I live to knit. If you didn't already know that then this is your first time reading my blog.....nice to meet you. :)

2. Prayer

I'm not a prayer warrior or anything but this is how I stay most connected to God. I love being able to talk with Him all day long and ask for his help and know He is listening and loves me so much it's incomprehensible.

3. Movies

I LOVE T.V. but whenever I haven't had cable I have gotten by just fine popping in my favorite movies and watching them over and over again. I love getting lost in a story and exploring a new place visually along with the characters.

4. Books

Books are a step up from movies for me. I get to picture the perfect setting and actors and I get to know the characters more. These two quotes give you a glimpse of how I feel about books.

"A good book should leave you... slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it." ~William Styron, interview, Writers at Work, 1958

"I get absolutely and undeniably attached to book characters to the point where I cry and laugh with them, and physically miss them when I finish reading the book." -author unknown

(Seriously, I don't usually quote)

5. Junk Food

Chips!!!!!!! Dense, moist brownies, soda, cheeseburgers, onion rings.......MMmmmmmmmmmm! It's all SO good.

I hope you guys share in some of these and if you do, I would LOVE to chat about them with you. :)

Day 6: A Moment You Wish You Could Relive

I have been thinking about this one all day. I mean how do I approach this? Is it a moment I regret and want to fix or a moment that was highly embarrassing that I want to turn around? I know that relive and not redo usually indicates that it would mean a moment I loved so much I want to do it twice but is that how I want to answer this? Taking into account all three options, I had a hard time narrowing it down to even a few choices.

Uh, do I want to do the obvious and talk about moments from my wedding or those times when I thought I would suffocate I was laughing so hard with friends or how about playing with puppies? Who wouldn't want to have a chance of playing with their dog in the puppy stage again? Volleyball games/practices, moments I made my mom laugh, getting awards, every brownie sundae I've ever had from CPK.......And then there's the entire dating period Dom and I had. I replayed those moments time and time again after Dom dropped me off for the night that I might be ok to skip this option but it was just SO good that I'm having trouble ruling it out. I guess I should be feeling pretty blessed right about now that I have so many moments in my life that I want to relive because they were just that good. :)

So what's it going to be? What moment did it for me that, if asked by a genie tomorrow, I would be completely prepared to relive? I'm going with: When Dom proposed to me. I don't know if you know our proposal story or not but it was up on our wedding website but that's gone now so I'll put it here. It's kinda long so you can skip down to the bottom if you'd like.


The Proposal:

Well you guessed it, he proposed and the joy that I experienced before was childs play compared to the complete and utter happiness that I am experiencing now. Let's just say that life definitely got better. There is a bit more to it than that though so let's start off at the beginning. Dom and I try and go on a big date at least once a month if we can and then little dates whenever possible. Well, we had not done either in a while and so he told me to prepare for a big date soon. I was super stoked and started counting down the days, seeing as how he told me about two weeks in advance.

Now when we do dates the one who plans it doesn't tell the other what is going to happen. We try and keep everything a surprise as much as possible. This date was of course going to be a surprise but I did get to know one thing, we were starting the date off at the beach.

Well, the day finally arrived, Nov. 15, and I was so excited that I hopped out of bed before my alarm went off. He picked me up around 11am and we headed to Huntington Beach. Now there had been fires in our area and so there were heavy smoke clouds looming over La Mirada which we were able to escape at the beach. It was a perfect day, 90 degrees, not too crowded, we found a great spot and set up camp. Laying on the blanket, we took in the glorious rays of sunshine and reminisced about our relationship. We eventually wandered to the water where we dipped our fingers and toes in just to make sure we had been there and then proceeded to make a sand castle. It was quite the amazing castle if I do say so myself, comparable to the Taj Mahal. After that we played volleyball and threw a Frisbee around.

By the end of our beach adventure the smoke clouds had caught up with us and had started to take over the sky. As we were packing up we were in admiration of the beautiful reflection that the clouds had on the water. We got a couple pictures of it. After this, we moved into phase two of the date but not before an intermission. Normally if we have to split up in order to get all ready and beautified we only take the time necessary to do so, this time around Dom said we had an hour and a half to get ready because he didn't want to rush me. He also said I could get as dressed up as I liked. I love to get dressed up so I took him up on his offer and put on a new dress that he had never seen.

After the hour and a half was up, he came to the door and we exchanged comments about how great the other one looked and then we were on our way. Seriously though, he looked good! Suit, tie, watch...he pulled out all the stops. Due to the fires some freeways were closed and so we had to take an alternate route, which put us a little behind schedule. This was fine with me since I had no idea what we were doing. We finally arrived at our destination, P.F. Changs. This is my favorite restaurant! He said we could order whatever we wanted and so we did, appetizers, entrees, and dessert.

After our meal was complete we went on to our next destination, the movie theater across the street. Once we got there I realized he had just recreated our first date. We had gone to dinner and a movie at the same locations and then went to the beach afterward. It was a cute realization. Unfortunately since we ordered desert we had made ourselves late for the movie which didn't matter since it was sold out anyway. We tried the old buy a ticket for another movie and just sneak in anyway trick but it didn't work, they wouldn't let us in. We ended up going to the movie Changeling. It was quite the opposite of what he had originally intended us to go see (James Bond) but we had a ton of fun joking around and laughing about how it was such a bad date movie. :)

This is where I thought the night was going to end. We had mentioned going to get coffee earlier but we never stopped anywhere and I figured the date was so much fun anyway, it was a good time to go home and smile about it while getting ready for bed. Well, Dom had other plans. As we passed my street and I began to get suspicious he said that he wasn't through with me yet and that we should go and see if they had put our bench back.

I will have to pause to give you some important background information about our bench. There is this little park by school that we always take walks in and there is a bench at the end of the park where we have had many important and long conversations. No matter where we are in our relationship we always seem to be able to talk here for hours. Well, at the beginning of the semester when we took our first walk after Christmas break we noticed that they had taken our bench! We didn't know why or when they would replace it. After many more disappointed trips to the park we began to give up hope but it seemed Dom wanted to try one more time on our date.

So, we parked by the entrance and started walking. As we were strolling through the park he stopped and pointed out something in the concrete, it turns out he was just killing time but it was fun nonetheless. We talked and danced and hugged for a while before we moved on to our spot. As we got closer I saw something glowing in the distance. I thought someone had put up Christmas lights on the fence and how that was odd, thinking where did they plug it in and would the city allow that? I then realized, after several more steps that the glowing came from tea light candles in white paper bags that outlined the walkway up to and around our bench. There were also two huge vases full of beautiful roses on either side of the bench on the ground and flower petals lining the walkway and all over the bench.

As the wheels started turning I began to smile thinking this could be it!! He walked me through the flower petals and sat me down on the bench. Taking both of my hands he stared at me and said how much he loved me and how he couldn't imagine being without me and that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. Then he took a box out of his pocket and opened it up to reveal my gorgeous ring and stood up and said, "Candice Ann Clark....(got down on one knee) will you marry me?" At this point my brain stopped working and I went into shock. I remember him saying my name clearly but everything else is a little hazy. I eventually stammered out a yes and he sat down with me and put the ring on my finger!

I am pretty sure that I said, "Are you serious?!!" about a hundred times and his handsome, patient faced smiled back saying yes. I smiled so big it hurt and I began to laugh and cry into my hands. I have never been so happy in my life! We hugged and smiled and then prayed together. It was all so wonderful. We were then greeted by his roommates a little later since they came to clean everything up for us. They set everything up as well, they are so nice. After this we scampered off to celebrate. We couldn't really think of anywhere that would be open at 12:30 at night so we went to a 24 hour doughnut shop we had seen. I was too giddy to eat but it was fun being able to talk about spending the rest of our lives together!

He dropped me off around 1:30am and I ran to my room to wake up my roommate a.k.a. one of the maids of honor, Mindy. After a quick dispute of unbelief from my half-asleep Mindy, we screamed about the news for about an hour and a half before I drifted off into a dream land that wasn't nearly as good as my reality. :)

Well, you made it to the end. I applaud you! I hope that you enjoyed the journey as much as I have. :)

So, when he asked and I said yes I basically broke down. I put my hands to my face and cried through my giggles and smile. It felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders and the happiness was almost unbearable. Pretty much every time I was with Dom I would be shouting in my head, "I want to marry you! I want to marry you! I want to marry you!" and because he wanted to keep everything a surprise we never had a serious discussion about our future together. To know that he felt the same way I did and all my dreams were coming true and I no longer had to wonder and hope, it was greater than any happiness I had ever known. So yeah, I would definitely love to relive this moment. :)

Day 5: A Favorite Quote

Ok, I swear this whole challenge isn't about my favorites. There are actually other questions I have to answer that have nothing to do with random things I like. In fact, this is the last favorite one. Anyway, I'm not really a big quote person, I mean quotes like this. I quote movies, T.V. shows, and friends constantly but quotes where you can either gain some knowledge or teach something, hardly ever. I asked Dom and he agreed that I don't do that sort of thing so it was hard to think of one for today. I was even looking up quotes but I thought, no, I don't use this and then a light bulb went off. I have actually quoted this before and even though I got it from someone else, I still love it. Here it is:

"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one." - C.S. Lewis

My Friend Mini (Mindy) quoted this on her facebook page about our friendship and I couldn't have agreed more. We met in college, we were assigned to be roommates and one weekend when our other roommate was gone (we did miss you Sam), we decided to rearrange the entire dorm room. It took a while and we even had to take a break and eat dinner, this was pretty much our first quality time together and that quote sums up how the entire weekend went. She is now one of my best friends and was my roommate all through college. So there you have it, a quote I love and have used. :)

Day 4: A Favorite Television Program

Friends......duh. What else is there? JK. I do like myself some Office, as well as, So You Think You Can Dance and a lot of Bravo competition shows but they are all easily surpassed by Friends. I mean who do you know that can't hum along with the theme song? Or know at least half of the character's names and their main personality traits? My favorite character is Chandler. I can't even count how many times I have cried from laughing at the things he has said. His physical comedy is also top notch.

I have watched through every single episode and then after I got all 10 seasons for my birthday, I watched through them again. It's safe to say that my favorite episode is from Season 4 titled, The One With The Embryos (episode 12). That's where the above picture is from. This show is just SO good. I love the characters, the comedy, the plot, and even how it ended. If anyone wants to sit through 10 seasons of Friends with me, I'm totally down. :)

Day 3: A Favorite Book

Easy peasy lemon squeezie, my favorite book is Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers. She is also my favorite author because she writes this series that is just wonderful but anyway, Redeeming Love is AMAZING! It's based off the book Hosea from the Bible and at times can be heartbreaking but the growth, love, and redemption you experience with the main character is awesome.

This book has helped me to see that no matter what shameful things I have done in my past, God still loves me. He doesn't love me like how we love people, He loves me like He created love to be. 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8: "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails......"

I don't know about you, but my love fails often, like when I'm easily angered or when I won't apologize because I know I'm right. God is love and He does all of these things at the same time, perfectly and He forgives and continues to love me when I mess up. Redeeming Love helped me see that my past is forgiven and even though I know God has forgiven my present and future as well, it was hard for me to let go of what I had done in the past. I am redeemed and it feels SO good. :)