John surprised Allison with a visit to CA in June!

Riding bikes across the Golden Gate Bridge in August

Beautiful St. George in October, visiting Grandma Shumway

Carolling in December

San Francisco Bay for the Holidays

Salt Lake Temple - Date night

Beautiful weather in CA at Christmastime

Our Engagement Story

My sister and mom were out visiting for parents weekend. Nat is applying to BYU this week actually, and they wanted to come out to visit so that she could get a feel for the school. Since I've been dating John for 6-7 months now, (and I know that might not seem like a lot of time, but if you're LDS that is a decent amount of time...) we planned to have dinner at his house on Saturday about 30 min away. To make it even better, he has a brother that is a senior in high school, so we planned a double-date for John and I, and my sister and his brother.


We went bowling, and we were all terrible but had so much fun! We had other plans past that, but it was getting late so Nat and Jake headed back towards the house, and we left a few minutes after.


Driving back to John's house, we drove past the Mt. Timpanogos Temple, an LDS temple (like the one in Oakland). Before a temple is dedicated, you can actually walk through and see all of the rooms. I saw this temple a few years ago when it was new and it was beautiful, so we slowed down a bit as we were driving past.


As we were looking at the temple, I notice red lights flashing, and a cop was behind us pulling us over! Not to mention, we had to go through a lot of construction on the way back, and we had seen an ambulance and a few cop cars, so I was thinking there was some kind of heist or something. The cop told us to pull into the temple parking lot, and then took BOTH of our licenses. I was nervous, but not too much because we hadn't been speeding at all. I texted my sister while we waited, saying we had been pulled over and I wasn't sure when we would get back.


When the cop came back, he told us to get out of the car, and then he took John over to his truck and had him put his hands on his head. He asked me, "And how do you know this guy?"


By this point, I was sure there had been a mistake since we had seen a bunch of other cop cars, and I thought maybe they thought John stole the car or something because he couldn't find the right registration. I answered, "Well, he's my boyfriend... we've been dating a while and we go to school together." Then he replied, "Well, did you know there is a warrant out for his arrest? I might have to take him in with me tonight, wait right here."


So then the cop had John put his hands on the hood while he went to go inspect the car. I was pretty confused, but John looked just as surprised as I felt, and I was sure it had to be a miscommunication from the craziness of that night. Well, the cop came back, and he asked me to go stand on the curb while he talked to John. When he beckoned me back over, he got an important call on his radio, which meant he had to be somewhere else to respond immediately. He said, "I'll deal with you later," and zoomed off. 


I thought he still had our licenses and was really confused, so I watched him drive off. With the temple in my view, I turned back to John to see what he thought about all of this, but to my complete amazement, he was on one knee with a ring!! Then the rest is history... I said yes, of course :). Though it may have not been my ideal proposal, we had gone ring shopping 3 weeks earlier, so I was expecting it, but he caught me completely off guard! And I was so happy that my mom and sister were able to be there, see the ring, and help plan the date with some of my extended family the next day!!

Picture taken after the fact - but this is his police friend's car!

How it All Started

Our story...

Turn the clock back about two and a half years to August 2009... John had just returned from 2-years of missionary service in Sao Paulo, Brazil for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  He had registered for his usual course load, and began practicing the piano again after a long break.

I had just come to BYU as one of the few brand-new freshman living off-campus instead of in dorms.  My family had driven me out to Utah with bedding, pots and pans, and other housing paraphernalia necessary for a first-time college student.  After meeting my roommates and making sure I had enough groceries for practically the whole first semester, my family left and I was ready to start life as a BYU student.

John and I met in the same ward.  Neither of us actually remember meeting... I just know that when I was in the ward choir, he was the ward pianist.  Sometime in October 2009 a facebook feud broke out between John and his brother Jake.  The competition?  Who could make the most facebook friends in the least amount of time.  Guess who popped up as a suggested friend for John Shumway?  You guessed it...me.

 John doesn't entirely agree with this story.  He says he saw this really pretty girl in the ward , but was so intimidated by her that he never had the courage to ask her out.  So he designed the competition with Jake as a ruse to add me as a friend... baby steps, I guess.  That's one of the stories he tells me, anyway.  So that's how we became Facebook friends.  We saw each other on and off after he moved out of the ward, but never got to know each other past that.

Fast-forward to April 2011

April Fool's Day

John had just finished accompanying a friend in a clarinet concert up on campus.  It had been a long week, but it was Friday, and his good friend Bryson invited him to play frisbee just south of campus on the grass.  John knew a few friends were going, and decided to join in on the fun.

That same day, I was trying to finish my homework so I could go outside and play in the newly warming weather.  I had bought a frisbee that Christmas, but the Utah winter hadn't allowed me a chance to play with it without using gloves and boots.  I texted my good friend Kylie and we headed out to that field just south of campus just as it was beginning to get dark.

As we approached the field, we realized it was already occupied, and these guys had a light-up frisbee.  Way cooler.  So we set down our stuff and threw our frisbee a couple times before Bryson came over and invited us to play.  We said yes because they had the cooler frisbee, hands down.

As we met the teams, I recognized John and said hey.  He didn't remember my name...(he's gotten a lot better since then...) but we established we had been in the same ward in Centennial, and I mentioned that I thought we were facebook friends.  He said something to the effect of "yea, probably, that always happens in a BYU ward."  

After the game, I was feeling bold, so we invited the guys over to my apartment for otter pops.  John and his friend Tres came over, and we had a fun time eating otter pops and chatting.  This was two weeks before finals, so John was practicing for juries during that time and needed to perform his pieces for a few people.  He asked if he could play for me, got my number, and called me to set up a time for the next week.  

Our first "date" was that Tuesday after April Fool's day (and yes, he did get my number on April Fool's day... luckily neither of us was fooling :-) ).  He played his piano pieces for me, I was very impressed of course, and then he walked me over to the library so I could finish my studying.  There he asked me out for Saturday night (yay!), I said I would get back to him, and we parted ways.  Funny enough, he already had a date for Saturday for a ward dance, but cancelled so he could go to a concert with me.  And I had to get back to him because I wasn't sure if my other date that weekend was Friday or Saturday.  It was Friday, so we were good to go :).
So, on our first real date, John introduced me to his whole family, minus the two youngest ones.  They were coming to the same concert that we were attending, so I met everybody, including Laura who was home for the weekend from BYU-Idaho.  He thought nothing of it, but I was kind of like, "whoa, never had this happen before...".  But the Shumways were super friendly and  I sat nest to Adam (he's ten) and he reminded me of my brother Jonathan.  As we were moseying out of the concert hall, one of John's music friends who also attended asked me, "So, are you guys...dating?" and I said "not really, it's our first date...".  While driving back, we had our *first* of many grocery store shopping trips.  We got peanut butter and cocoa to make no-bake cookies, and then we had fun making them at my apartment.  After the date, John asked if I wanted to go out again.  I said yes, and the rest is history!