How It All Began

Life has been busy around here lately! We've been completely preoccupied with yard projects and the like. I'll post some pictures later (we're not quite done; Logan needs to finish wiring the landscape lights). Anyway, I was talking with some people the other day about courtship stories, etc. I thought I'd share ours for posterity's sake...


Logan was born in San Diego but has lived pretty much his whole life in Utah. His very early years were spent in Provo while his dad finished a master's degree at BYU. After that, the family built a house in West Jordan. He enjoyed a pretty typical upbringing (paper routes, bike-riding and scouting -- as you can see). When Logan was 12, his family built a house in Centerville. The stars began to align...
Little could Logan have known that only a mile or so away, little Kara Baker was ekeing out her existence. I was born in Vernal but moved to a condo in Centerville at the age of three. Not long after that, my family moved to the house in which I spent pretty much all my growing-up years. Here I am with my sisters on the porch of that house. We were having a contest to see whose hair was the most triangular. Little Krista was quickly eliminated, leaving Lisa and me to duke it out. I put up a good fight, but who could really compete with her?

Anyway, the years went on. Logan and I both embarked on illustrious educational careers at Centerville Junior High School and Viewmont High School. Logan graduated in 1998, and at that time, he and I were still completely unaware of one another. I was just completing my sophomore year and, as the result of a recent heartbreak, had sworn off boys forever.

In August of 1998, I got a phone call from my friend Hillary one day saying that there was a group of guys who wanted to put a musical number together (not for any particular reason -- just for fun). They had just graduated, she said, and she didn't really know any of them. One of them (Logan's friend Clark) knew she was an alto, and he asked her to bring along a friend who was a soprano. That, as fate would have it, was me. I thought it was a little strange; why would a bunch of college-bound guys have any interest in random musical numbers with high school girls? After the first practice, I was even less enthusiastic. The song was difficult to sight read, and I wasn't at all convinced that it was something anyone would want to listen to (not that there was a performance in mind). Oh, and there was the conversation that went like this:

Me (interrupting everyone in their attempts to sight-read through the song): "Wait, wait, wait. Somebody is singing my part, but an octave lower (I'd like it noted here that singing the soprano part one octave lower is the hallmark of an inexperienced male singer. I was already irritated by the fact that these weird older boys wanted to sing this weird song, but asking me to endure someone else's musical baby steps was too much)."

Logan: "Yeah, that was me. That's the way it's written in the music."

Me (after quickly checking my copy): "Oh."

Well, if I wasn't already completely annoyed by this entire situation, the red-headed kid pointedly proving me wrong (a terrible thing for someone who dearly loves to be right) had done it. I had no desire whatsoever to continue. However, I couldn't see any graceful way to back out. In hindsight, it's a good thing I didn't. It didn't take too many rehearsals for me to develop a huge crush on that red-headed kid. He seemed so mature to me -- far more than any of the boys I knew at the time (in their defense, they were only 16). I soon learned that he would be attending USU in a matter of days (on a four-year academic scholarship, no less) and would be leaving for a mission to Brazil in January. It was disappointing to think that the fun we'd been having was all going to come to an end. However, we used the music as a reason to get together on the weekends when Clark and Logan came home from school, and we e-mailed one another during the week (e-mail was a very new invention in those days, and I thought it was just about the greatest thing that could have happened to me at that time in my life). The photo at right was taken on Halloween in 1998. I had celebrated my 17th birthday two days prior. Let me just say right now that Richard, on the far left, would make the world's most unattractive woman EVER. Not that I make a very good-looking man, but whatever. Anyway, by the time Thanksgiving rolled around, I was seriously infatuated. During Thanksgiving break, we spent a lot time together -- singing, putting up Christmas decorations at each other's houses, etc. -- and I just kept falling harder and harder for him. That Christmas season was one of the happiest times in my life. When I think back on those days, there is a glow, a warmth, that surrounds them. He was just so wonderful to me. He was smart (really smart), he had a beautiful singing voice, he opened the car door for me, he brought me soup and played board games with me when I was sick. . .he was PERFECT! There was absolutely no understanding between us; we had never discussed our feelings for each other and hadn't even really been on an official date. But by the time the new year rolled around (pictured at left; we went to the Utah Symphony New Year's Ball), I knew that I loved him and that I wanted to marry him if I could figure out a way to make it happen!

Logan went to the MTC in mid-January. Almost up until the moment he left, we were together (often with Clark and Richard, too, but sometimes just the two of us). The day before he left, we went to get ice cream one last time. I had been wanting to know for some time what our "status" was. He had held my hand a couple of times, which was a big deal to me (I'm what you might call a prude). But I didn't know if it was a big deal to him, or if he thought of me differently than he thought of any other girl, or what. I was determined to know before he left, because once he donned that black nametag, I knew there would be no discussion of it whatsoever! Well, he pretty much shot down my attempt at a DTR (Define The Relationship). There was one thing, and one thing only, on his mind: MISSION. And so he went to Provo, and I was left knowing -- knowing -- that little high school girls just don't ever end up with the missionary they "love."

But even knowing that, I couldn't ever stop thinking about him! Don't get me wrong; I had a great time while Logan was gone. I was in the high school show choir (below); I went on dates and to dances; I got a scholarship to Snow College and participated in the music program there (I was cast as Bianca/Lois Lane in Snow's production of "Kiss Me Kate"; here I am with my counterpart, J.R.). I made friends and memories that I still treasure today, and I did it with ony a few regrets. But I can honestly say that I thought about Logan every single day that he was gone. I couldn't ever meet a guy and not compare him to Logan. I used to run a scene over and over through my head, like an old movie reel, about how I could make it work out for us; how he would come home and none of his friends would be home yet; how I would be his new best friend and the person he would turn to; how I would somehow make him see that nobody could possibly care for him more than I did; how he would eventually figure out that he really did love me and want to be with me, too. But even in the midst of those thoughts, I felt very silly for hoping. My logical mind told me that it just wasn't likely to happen that way, and I felt stupid for thinking about it as often as I did. I wanted to be done with it; I wanted to forget about him so that it wouldn't hurt when he came home and fell in love with someone else, and that I could be genuinely happy for him instead of feeling sick inside. And though it was a very adolescent thing to think, and I knew it was, I had to wonder if I could ever be happy -- really happy -- without him in my life.

Logan came home from Brazil on January 31st, 2001. I had just started my second semester at Snow. I had sent a final letter (our letters averaged about once a month over the two years he was gone, though sometimes it was in fits and starts) to his home with a phone card in it so he could make the long-distance call to Ephraim. And then I waited. I didn't expect to hear anything within the first day or two, but three days, four days, five days went on. . .and no call. And then one night I came home from editing the student newspaper to learn that he had called while I was gone! We talked the next day, and he asked if I wanted to come listen to his homecoming address the next Sunday. And since I would already be up in Centerville, he wanted to know if I'd like to go out on Friday night. Um, yeah! Now I had all sorts of new anxieties. I worried that he would think I was a freak show (which I was and still am, but I didn't want him to know that at the time); I worried that he would have really bad MW (Missionary Weirdness); I worried that we wouldn't have anything to say to each other. Most of all, I worried that I had created this perfect person in my mind that nobody could really ever be; I worried that I wouldn't love him after all, and that I'd have to re-evaluate the past two years of my life -- not to mention my entire future. I reasoned with myself and decided that I didn't have to worry if I didn't feel it all come whooshing back to me the instant I saw him. I decided I could give it some time, that we could get reacquainted, and that we could start as friends -- just like we did the first time. I think this was a good thing, particularly since I was in a sort-of relationship at the time, and there was a lot going on in my head. It was probably good that I was in Ephraim and he was in Centerville; e-mail came to our rescue again! It didn't take long for me to realize that I really did still love him, that I really did still want to marry him. It also didn't take long for that scenario I had played over and over in my mind to

actually start happening pretty much the way I had imagined it! By the time April rolled around, Logan and I were dating each other exclusively. I had come up from school in the middle of the week to go to a Jazz game with him, and he was driving me back

down the next morning before my first class. At this point, we were both pretty much aware that this relationship was either going to end in marriage or a break-up; it wasn't going to be one of those go-on-dating-forever things -- though neither of us had said as much out loud. So there we were, driving through the middle of nowhere in his pickup, talking about some of our friends who were planning on getting married. I don't know why I chose that moment, but I suddenly got it into my head that I had to know right then where this relationship was going to end up. I had already wrestled with my feelings for him for almost three years; if he didn't want to marry me, I wasn't going to stick around and put myself through that for another second. And so, gathering up all the courage I had, I asked him, "Are we ever going to get married?" Silence. For a split second, I thought, "Why, WHY did you have to say that when there's still an hour to go before you get to Ephraim?! Why couldn't you have waited until you saw the Wal-Mart to drop that bomb?" But then he smiled and said, "I hope so." And that was that. Instead of spending the remaining hour in stony, awkward silence (which is what I imagine would have happened if his response had been, "Heck, no! What, are you crazy?"), we spent it discussing which temple we should get married in and when, the right time to get engaged, etc. By the time he dropped me off at my apartment, we were both in absolute disbelief regarding the conversation we'd just had. We had just decided to get married!

Well, the rest is history, as they say. We were engaged on May 25th, 2001 and married on September 27th of the same year. We're coming up on seven years of marriage. Crazy! I still sometimes wonder what on earth would have become of me if I hadn't been allowed to have Logan Toone in my life. I'd probably be face-down in a gutter somewhere.

P.S. Lest you think that I am an obsessive crazy person because I essentially stalked the man who eventually became my husband, I'd like the record to show that I wasn't the only one who was thinking about marriage early on. This excerpt from Logan's journal is dated Oct

ober 28th, 1998:

"Clark, Rich and I have been singing a song with a couple of girls, Hillary Cheney and Kara Baker. Now these girls are quite a bit younger than me (they were sophomores when I was a senior), but I find myself looking at Kara as a potential wife. It's kind of scary to think that I'm already in the "find a wife" mode, but something in that girl just grabs me. . .I find myself thinking about her all the time. I tell myself not to get involved before my mission, but I feel really good about her. . .Anyway, I was saying that Kara is definitely a possibility to look into after my mission. Well, look at me, I'm pitiful, I haven't even been on a mission and am already picking a wife. That's terrible. Oh well!"

And this, from December 24th, 1998:

"Then there's girls. Man I want girls. Man this is a bad time to want girls. I really like Kara as much as I think that I've ever liked a girl before. I think of the fun she's having and wish I could be there to enjoy it with her. I look at myself and see a dork; what do I have to offer her? I'm a dork going on a mission. . .She is so interesting to talk to. I like to be with her, and would be interested to know what she thinks of me. Obvioulsy she's not going to tell me my faults, but I'm always over at her house, and her parents seem to like me, but I wonder if her parents are warning her about me. I wonder if her mom is sick of me being over. I hope not, and don't get me wrong, I've never felt unwelcome. I just don't want to cause an uncomfortable situation. Needless to say, I like Kara, and am hoping to be friends with her for a long time. . ."