2013: This Crazy Roller coaster we call Life

2013 was a roller coaster, with some of the best good that has ever happened to Nick and I and also the greatest adversity We have ever faced!

 January started the year with a car accident that should have been fatal, Kimberly Zavala Knowles and I were lucky to be alive. It also featured the Sundance Film Festival where Nick played at The Hotel Park City.

February brought my first full time job at Belliston Jewelry which changed my life and taught me so much, even though I had to leave school that semester.

 March brought my engagement to my best friend and soul mate Nickolas Whitesides.

 April had me say farewell for now to my amazing grandfather Arch Reidhead.

On the bright side of April Nick was able to have his band open for the Rocket Summer

 May brought owning our first apartment, Nicks 27th birthday, my associate’s degree, and my being able to go through the temple for the first time. 

 June 1, 2013 Nick and I were married for time and all eternity in the Bountiful Temple, which started the first day of our new lives with a new fantastic family, I received 15 nieces and nephews and they have brought so much joy and love. And we went on an amazing California road trip honeymoon. When we came back Nick was able to open for the band Cartel!

 July brought the beginning of my new fight with IBS and Anxiety, along with what we now know are some other infections. On the bright side Nick was able to have an awesome audition for American Idol! He's too good for that show!

 August allowed my sister to go be a missionary in Portugal for the LDS church!! We miss her but will see her soon. 

September started the worst semester of school I have had in my life!! But I learned so much about what I didn't want, and I made it through alive.

And we got to shoot a paint balls at zombies 

 October brought my 21st birthday, and the departure of my incredible Aunt Valerie Porter she will be greatly  missed, but her family is wonderful and I am so grateful to have them in my life. 

November was filled with tests, the beginning of this blog and delicious Thanksgiving with my two wonderful families.

 December brought a wonderful first Christmas with all my amazing family as well as a new niece named Ruby :D

Through it all I was so blessed to go through all of it with my wonderful husband Nick. Some big changes are coming and they will be difficult, but through it all everything will happen the way it is supposed to be.  There is no one I'd rather be than us.  Happy New Years Everyone.

With Love Reb and Nick

One Brick at a Time

Baggage is an interesting concept that has a major impact in relationships. I think that how a couple handles and helps each other with baggage will define and determine whether or not the relationship, especially a marriage will go the distance.  Nick and I developed an interesting approach to our baggage that helped us to fall even more in love with each other while helping unpack our bags. (Which are full of heavy bricks).

Nick and I developed a concept called ONE BRICK AT A TIME. We knew that our past experiences had caused us to build walls around our hearts, feelings, emotions and comfort zones.  Those separate walls were what were coming between us and our happily ever after.  We knew we not only needed to tear down each other's individual walls, but we also needed to build a wall or fortress around both of us together in order to protect us, from the forces that would want to tear our relationship down (THE BIG BAD WOLF your familiar with the three little piggies right).  We knew we needed to build our relationship with strong bricks, and in order to do that our personal walls needed to come down. If not our relationship and future marriage would be susceptible to all the forces in our day trying to tear marriage family and relationships apart! ( Porn, immorality, war, chaos, anger, pride, poverty) THE BIG BAD WOLF called LIFE in MORTALITY. And from the three little pigs, we knew that straw, and sticks weren't going to make the cut.  We had to do things the right way, and we needed to use bricks, from our personal walls. For your entertainment and enlightenment here's Disney's Version of the Big Bad Wolf Story. One of the pigs major problems was that they were so into putting up there own personal walls to protect themselves, which put them in danger, instead of working together in building a strong house for all of them.  The two first piggies were lucky they had a great friend in the smart Brick Pig, or they would have been lunch. I believe that working together is one of the first steps to building a strong foundation for a family, marriage, or friendship. Also as the third pig new, building a strong foundation (relationship) takes time, effort and COMMITMENT, but the results are worth it.

 Nick and I decided that slowly every day we would take one brick from each others individual wall and use it to build our fortress of our love protecting and uniting both of us in the same circle. I hope that visual makes sense.  We wanted to turn our past hurt and weaknesses into strengths that we could build our lives around.  A brick could be a fear, or a bad experience, or a mistake, or a regret.  We would remove them by communicating with each other, not judging, and explaining why that brick was even there, why that fear was there, and what kept it up.  We are still slowly tearing bricks down.  During our engagement I think our structure looked like it did above, a skeleton of a house, but starting.  Our goal is to be able to build a sturdy relationship fortress like the one below. Making our Marriage our home, our comfort, our security, and where we could finally let our guard down.  This process has not only helped us to get closer as a couple. But it also has allowed us to know what we need to do to protect our relationship, and what we need to do individually and together to always be growing together. It is not always easy some days are hard and we end up putting part of our personal walls back up, or having one of the walls of our fortress fall down.  But as long as we keep building and trying we will build a life for ourselves that the big bad wolf won't be able to tear down.  One day we will have little ones and I want us to be able to protect them in a house with a strong foundation, which will be our marriage in family.  To help them know what a strong family is, and to give them the best shot at love and life possible. To build around us ONE BRICK AT A TIME, and when that big bad wolf (life) comes to huff and puff and blow our relationship to the ground. He won't be able too! 

Who's afraid of the big bad wolf.........NOT US :D

With LOVE, REB&NICK

The Last of the Firsts

When you get married you realize how your, first date with your spouse, your first kiss, and the first time you said I love you becomes the last of the firsts. The best of the best, the finale, the ones that lead you to your success as a couple. Your last set of firsts setting the stage for each and every couples beautiful love story.  

09/24/2012 The first message: Mr. Whitesides finally made good on his offer to have us hang out sometime.   What finally made him decide to after five months since we first met? This picture, taken by his brother Dave Whitesides! That man gets all the credit for bringing us together. I guess Nick thought I looked good or something, because he messaged me with the above message to hang out.

What did I do when I saw that message. I literally  jumped up and down on my bed, with his CD cranked up on high with my roomates. Then we kindof drove near his house with his CD still on high in the car and the windows rolled down. IT WAS AWESOME!!  

So he then facebook messaged me for my phone number, we started texting and finally set up a date to "Hang Out," but to this day we both decided it was our first date.

09/26/2012 OUR FIRST DATE: Nick came and picked me up from my apartment at 10 pm, which was after he got off work. We then went to his house and watched BBC's SHERLOCK

Which I seriously recommend because it is amazing, and we ate icecream sundays that Nick made. We then watched SCRUBS which became one of our favs to watch together as well. After the show we just started talking about everything from life, love, religion, food, zombies, and future dreams.  He played a few new songs he had recently written, and we end up snuggling close.  I remember him saying how I was making it hard for him not to kiss me........Which we didn't then (go us for not kissing on the first date!). I ended up showing him my British accent, which he liked. (I'm have British as my mom is from North Wales). We talked for what seemed like forever and we were both so comfortable that we both just fell asleep in each others arms. We didn't even realize that we fell asleep until we woke up and it was 5am. This was especially a crazy phenomenon for me because I have a hard time sleeping, especially while snuggling, even though I'm married. So for it to have worked then is something. We were both just so comfortable with each other, and could really be ourselves.  Nick then drove me home. Best first date/sleepover ever!

11/13/2012 Our First Kiss: All I remember is we had finished watching Sorcerer's Apprentice, and it was during the credits and I kind of leaned in to kiss his cheek, but ended up kissing his lips!! And then we kinda just went crazy! We waited almost two months since we first started dating to kiss! I guess I just couldn't wait anymore, I stole it! We were in my apartment, which is where I said we were not going to have our first kiss. I wanted it to be somewhere romantic like the temple. But it was still the best first kiss I had ever had! 

11/27/2012 I LOVE YOU: Nick was really depressed that day as he had some hard news. He had gone out to see Skyfall with one of his friends to try to get it off his mind, but he couldn't. So he came over to my apartment.  I baked him cookies and gave him hot chocolate, I then told him that through rich and poor, through the good and bad, that I would always stand by him.  I then said I LOVE YOU! I've known it since I first met you, and that I was supposed to be here with you. He just hugged me tight and very emotionally let out I LOVE YOU TOO REB.  It was the moment we both knew we were going to be together for a long time. We also officially established me as his girlfriend, which I had considered myself to be for a while before that. I love that man so much, and I am so grateful for the trials and circumstances that brought us together.  One thing I always tell him is "I would rather everything go wrong, as long as we are going right, because there is nothing else I want or need more than us. You mean the most to me, that is what is important."

So that is the last of some of our firsts, with many more new firsts coming soon, such as our first baby, and our first Christmas as a married couple. Engagement story coming soon.....:D

 With Love, Reb&Nick

How Reb Met Nick

04/22/2012

Our meeting story is very close to my heart as it was a very spiritual and emotional experience for me.  I had that day just left a relationship that wasn't going in the right direction, it was difficult for me as I loved that relationship and the person I was with.  But I knew deep down in my heart that it wasn't right so I had to leave it behind.  The thought of facing the future alone, trying to leave my feelings in the past was one of the hardest experiences of my life. Until I met Nick and was given the hope and inspiration I needed, to start taking my life in the direction that led to my happy beginning.

I had known Nicks brother Dave for a while as he was good friends with my roommate Kim. When Kim found out about the breakup she said that Dave good give me a blessing to help me move forward. So we started driving to Dave's house and we were listening to Kim's Ipod, a song called "Next to Me" by Double or Nothing.  I had recently heard them at the Weber State Winter Special Olympic Winter Games Closing Ceremony and had loved them so I was super excited that she knew about them too.  I exclaimed to her how much I loved the song and she said, "This is Dave's brother's band, he's the lead singer. He's probably at the house right now if you want to meet him." My heart started pounding I was totally shocked!! In my head it didn't make sense, Nick was white and Dave was Hispanic how are they brothers. Kim then explained to me how half of Dave's family including Dave was adopted. So I frantically started fixing me hair in the car, as I was about to meet my current favorite artist.

We walked into the house and Dave introduced me to Nick and I was completely star struck, I don't even think I said anything for a couple minutes. Gosh he was attractive up close. We did the whole my names Nick and my name is Bekah thing, I told him what a big fan I was, and how I had his songs on my ipod. (Looking back on it now, I was probably being really creepy). He then offered to play me a song he wrote called "She," which is one of my favorites. It was beautiful and in my head I was totally thinking that I was the girl in the song, and that he loved me....you know silly star struck girl thoughts. It was absolutely a dream come true.

Kim then came into the room saying that we were their so Dave could give me a blessing, but he had disappeared. Nick, being the great man he is, then offered to give me the blessing instead.  I remember that he said a little prayer before he started, and that I started crying the minute he put he hands on my head. He then gave me the most detailed, profound blessings that I have ever had in my life, he quoted sections of my patriarchal blessing, promising me the deepest desires of my heart. After the blessing with tears in my eyes I said, "How did you know," he replied "I didn't God did."  It was absolutely incredulous to me how a man I had never even met before could say what he did to me in that blessing.  It was impossible for him to know things so personal to me that I had never before told a single soul.  It was an absolutely unforgettable spiritual experience.

So of course I was totally in my head thinking that he was the one and I was going to marry him. Seriously I developed the biggest crush on him! Which at the time, he in no way reciprocated unfortunately for me. But he burned me a copy of all his latest music, signed it and said we should hang out sometime. It was love at first sight for me. I knew I wanted to be with him, or at least someone like him. He had given me the strength to move forward, and I  needed that for the difficult months that were just ahead in the future.  It was five months later that he made good on that offer to hang out, which would be known as our first date, and the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

The moral to the story: When you finally let go of the wrong things, the right things will finally have the place they need in your arms, your life, and in your heart.

                                                With Love, Reb&Nick

Meet the Whitesides

I call him NICK he calls me REB and we are the WHITESIDES.  We have been married for five months now and I decided it was time to start recording our journey in life. I don't scrapbook, and I have a hard time keeping a journal up so we will see how well blogging works. As you can tell we are both dorks and love candy and ice cream, pretty much we're grown up kids.

 LOVE ME YOU is the title of the blog because it is the band name of mine and Nick's music project.  We both like writing songs and singing together so we decided we are going to share our talent with the world.  Nick currently is also in a band called DOUBLE OR NOTHING they are local to Ogden you may have heard of them before, if not check them out here http://www.reverbnation.com/doubleornothingmusic?page_view_source=facebook_app they are also on itunes.  Nick also does song writing for other artists such as the Inspirational Abby Smith from twistmepretty.com you can follow her work here http://www.twistmepretty.com/. Her upcoming inspirational album is fantastic, she also has the number one hairstyling book on amazon.com so her hair and beauty tutorials are amazing.

This blog will mainly feature the work Nick and I are doing, as well as our story, and the inspirational stories of those around us.  We hope to start working on recording an album together, as well as to start playing at weddings, which are one of my favorite things ever! I will also be blogging about our marriage and tips for what have helped us out so far. I think that is everything, so welcome and we look forward to sharing our thoughts and love with you.

With Love, Reb&Nick