Good morning to all of you! I’m currently sitting at my kitchen table listening to the crash of the early morning waves and soft puppy snores of Charlie, the little dog we’re fostering for the weekend. Oh, and did I mention I have a giant latte in front of me? Life is good.

I want to start off this post by extending a giant hug to all of you guys who participated in my poll the other day on what YOU guys want to see more of on the blog. The option of wanting me to write more about my personal life and give an insight on the “behind-the-scenes” workings of Apple of My Eye won by a landslide and that brought a huge smile to my face and made my heart get a little flustered. It makes me all sort of giddy and excited to know that you guys want me to invest more of myself into my blog and I’m going to do my best to get more personal on the site!

For today, I thought it would be fun to tell you more about my relationship with Kyle. He pops up on the blog from time to time and even has a small sub-section under my “About Me”. I guess you could say that means we’re pretty serious 😉 .

So how to start with this little love story? We met for the first time our freshman year, but didn’t end up “getting together” (aka him popping the WILLYOUBEMYGIRLFRIEND LYKE FOR REALZ question) until early November of our sophomore year. I was in the same classes as a lot of his friends and even had some smaller flings and crushes on them (hehe shhhh), so we oftentimes were in the same general area of campus during passing periods and lunch. And yes, our relationship was forged in the bustling drama of teenage lunchtime. #intense. I even distinctly remember trying to set him up with a few of my friends. We ended up going to one of our school’s formals together as “friends”, which helped spark the whole dating thing.

Update: he also just mentioned to me that he also tried to set me up with a few of his close friends, so I guess you could say we’re glad that neither of us are apparently very good at matchmaking haha.

Like all things high school, our relationship was a bundle of awkwardness, general not knowing what the heck was going on, and getting to know each other throughout the rest of our time in high school. Highlights include having the WORST (we laugh about it all the time now, he actually apologized for how bad it was after it was over haha) first kiss ever, many more formals and proms, homecoming court, our school’s senior Europe trip, and more.

I captioned this “Eiffel for him” on Facebook and was pretty damn pleased with myself ;)

While it feels a bit strange for me to describe a relationship that started in high school as a “love story”, we’ve been able to grow up together through those crucial teenage years and because of that, we have an incredibly strong bond (he’s without a doubt my best friend) and a shared history full of happy memories. And the most unbelievably wonderful thing that still blows my mind is that it doesn’t stop here. Throughout the upcoming years we’ll only continue to grow closer and closer and more deeply and sincerely in love with each other. A lot of gross, sticky-sweet love talk, but my sentiments completely resonate with Brad Paisley’s song “Then”:

 Towards the end of our senior year of high school, everyone was frantic over applying and choosing colleges. At that time, Kyle and I had only been dating for about a year and a half and we agreed that we weren’t going to base our college choices off of each other. We both had a pretty clear idea on what we wanted to do (he has always been set on engineering and I’ve always loved biology) and neither of us wanted to hinder or bias the other in choosing the best college fit. We were planning on staying together and trying to manage a long-distance relationship, but life had other (happier!) plans for us.

At the time, I had absolutely no idea that Kyle had even applied to UCSB. I was pretty sure that I wanted to go to Santa Barbara because my parents had met there (more on that later!), my sister was currently enrolled there, it has a great biology department and gorgeous campus, and it was close, but not toooo close, to home. It wasn’t till Kyle randomly texted me that he had committed to UCSB that I even had the faintest idea that he was considering it! I read the text, promptly screamed and dropped my phone, then frantically called him. It turns out that he had decided on a whim to send in his application to the school as a “why not” kind of thing and once he got his acceptance letter, he started to look into the school more closely and realized that UCSB was ranked #7 in the WORLD in Engineering/Technology. We had both been offered spots in their  honors program, which also helped sway his choice. That upcoming academic year, we both were placed only a floor apart in one of the huge dorms and, instead of trying to work out a long distance relationship in which we would have been miles upon miles apart, he was a 30 second walk up the stairs and down the hallway. Go figure 😉 .

Ever since then, we’ve been inseparable and have been tackling the college world together! We’ll be graduating next year and have plans to find our first official apartment together (even though we lived literally 5 steps away from each other last year in apartments with our friends) and to continue with our education as Kyle pursues his masters in Material Engineering (he has a FREAKING AMAZING internship at SpaceX this summer, so we’ll see where that takes him) and I work on my higher education as well *being vague on purpose, this deserves its own lengthy post*.

To end this, I thought it would be fun to bring a little bit of Kyle into the post. He pops up often, but I don’t think you guys have ever heard much from him directly. I’ll try to describe him a little before he takes the reigns!

First off, please excuse me while I gush a little. Kyle is wonderful and amazing and great and I could go on and on and on incoherently with love-y adjectives, but I’ll try to slow down and describe him a bit more thoroughly. To say that Kyle is supportive and loving is a huge understatement. I have honestly never in my entire life met someone as genuinely kind, understanding, altruistic, trusting, honest, supportive, humble, intelligent, committed, dependable, responsible, gahhh if you haven’t quite grasped it yet, he’s almost weirdly perfect. I also think he’s pretty cayuutteeee and I’ve never been known to complain about those broad shoulders 😉 . He’s the kind of guy who always opens the door for you, insists on carrying anything weighing over a pound (seriously, it’s like he doesn’t think I have arms or something), brings me coffee without me having to ask, laughs and goes along with my obnoxious and terribly corny puns, spends hours searching through sites like Etsy to find that one personalized gift he knows I’d love, is patient and understanding when I’m being irrational and hormonal, and so much more. He makes me feel unbelievably loved and makes me a better person on a daily basis.

So without all that sappy-ness, here’s the boy!

Kyle:

I tend to have a harder time writing than Christine does, especially coming up with smooth intros (this being a perfect example). First let me say she is incredibly loving, fun, kindhearted, intelligent, hardworking, driven, exciting, passionate… the list goes on and on. She brightens up every part of my life and makes me strive to be better. She more important to me than I could ever hope to write down. And yes, her corny puns are actually funny. And in case you were wondering, yes, all of her recipes are as absolutely delicious as they look (I’ve tried pretty much all of them, be jealous). She is amazing at so many things and I am SO lucky and blessed to be able to have Christine be a part of my life and to be a part of hers. She’s one of those people you know will go far in life within the first minute of meeting her. She’s the kind of friend you always want by your side. I can go on and on, but I’ll cut it short by saying she is everything I could ever ask for in a girl and I love her very very much. She asked me to write a short snippet on why I think we work so well together, and I guess it’s because, in addition to sorta kinda liking each other, we can literally do anything together. From running, eating, cooking, watching netflix, going to the gym, doing school work, which we do way too much, we are always happier together. 

So there you have it! A brief look into our relationship. In short: we’re both incredibly happy each other and very much in love.

(A big thank you to this guy for loving me unconditionally and putting up with all my craziness!)