The Journal

Through a tiny little Christmas miracle I got a call the day before we left from the BYU bean museum telling me some of my husbands belongings were there. Strange, since he was never a student there, but the kid mentioned a leather journal and immediately I knew a tiny little prayer of mine had been answered. I gave Dan a journal when we were dating just before we got engaged, and he was actually pretty great about writing in it. It was amazing to see his perspective on things and I cherished having a record from that special time in our relationship.

Sadly, when we moved from Provo it disappeared. I assumed it had been left in the house we had been living in that was demolished very soon after. Although I did dump out ALL of our garbage and sift through it in our garage and look for it for months. I had even mentioned to a friend while driving past the intermural fields where the house use to be that Dan's journal was probably buried somewhere out in that field just a couple weeks before. When I got the call and drove down and saw it really was "the journal" I knew immediately I wanted to surprise Dan and couldn't wait to see his face.

So, I gave it to my brother to give him for the gift exchange and kept getting on everyone's case all Christmas morning to wait to open that gift until we were all paying attention. Apparently Dan doesn't read who gifts are from because I looked over amid the chaos to find him reading "the journal".I was disappointed I missed the reaction but it was still great to get it back along with his mission journal and two boxes of belongings.