The Wonnacotts’ January: On married life, new jobs, and wintry camping

Dear family,

The question I get most often these days is, “How’s married life?” in no other format than that. It’s always the same question, posed in the same way, because I guess it’s a common enough inquiry where I live that it’s one of the standard questions right up there with, “How are you?”

I find the question fascinating, since there is no situation in which I would confide in the person asking me that my month-old marriage is, in fact, already in shambles, thank you for asking. But I guess we have to do something to start conversations around here.

A less common but still prevalent follow-up is: “You haven’t started to regret it yet?” to which my verbal response is, “No!” with an awkward chuckle and a shrug and my (usually) non-verbal continuation is, “How many months was it before you started regretting your marriage?”

This first month of marriage has been lovely. It’s hard to tell how much of that is due to starting and ending each day with my wonderful husband, and how much thanks to the seriously decreased workload of this semester, but either way, I’m satisfied with all of my life choices up to this point.

There’s also the considerable factor of not having been responsible for any dinners since moving back to Utah. Since we flew back home, we have been living in Vineyard with my brother-in-law, his wife, and their two kids. This arrangement was proposed to Luke and me approximately an hour after he proposed to me when Carter and Brittany called us to congratulate us. During this call, they explained that they had been thinking of taking Japan up on its offer to have foreigners live within its borders and stimulate its economy (which is, being interpreted by Carter and Brittany, buying lots of cool Japanese things) with its brand new six-month work-from-home visa.

For a variety of reasons, now seemed like a better time than any to move their family to Japan for a six-month international experience, especially now that they were going to have a newly-married, destitute, and desperate (not their words, but I extrapolated) couple who would be willing to take over their rent at a discount while they were gone.

Of course, it would take a little while for all the paperwork to be done, and so they said we could live with them in their place for free until they were completely ready for their international adventure.

This living arrangement was one that several people (including Luke and I) thought might become awkward and or tiresome very quickly. (People assume that newly married couples need a lot of privacy for reasons no one will explicitly explain to me.) But honestly, this whole month has been complete bliss. I love Carter and Brittany and their darling daughters.

Well, I love Carter and Brittany and I ADORE their daughters.

The younger of the two started speaking a few months ago and she calls me “Fophie,” which I just really enjoy.

Brittany cooked dinner every night, we shared groceries with them, I procrastinated homework by playing with the children, and we didn’t even have to pay for rent. I haven’t felt like such a leech since my freshman year of college.

By now they’ve made it to Japan and I miss them terribly.

In addition to their house, we’ve also inherited their lovely ward. Sacrament meetings are loud with the cries of small children and filled with excellent speakers and perfectly competent organists. This past Sunday, we attended our first stake choir practice and are extremely optimistic for the musical talent of the area. I feel so lucky to be a part of this ward and I can’t wait to make more and more friends there.

I’m also excited to join their flock of music leaders, as I have been called to do so.

They don’t have a ward choir yet, but I hope to advocate for one.

Now that we have the house to ourselves, we can get up as early and talk as loudly as we want while making breakfast and packing our lunches for the day, as has become our routine.

From there, Luke and I either drive to BYU campus together, or he drops me off at one of various public schools and then drives himself to campus. This is because, while Luke works about four hours every afternoon at one office like a normal person, I now work as a substitute teacher on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and am in my practicum classroom on some Tuesdays and Thursdays. Which means that I am now officially a teacher more often than I am a student!

Substitute teaching has been enlightening and fun. It makes me really excited to be my own teacher in my own classroom, since I feel like there is so much baggage that you walk into a classroom with as a substitute teacher, the primary baggage being the label: “sub.”

A lot of kids really do not respect a substitute teacher, which, honestly, I get! I remember being them. I don’t know their classroom procedures and, despite the fact that I report to their teacher, I’m far enough removed that they don’t see me as capable of providing any meaningful accountability. What I’ve loved figuring out how to do so far is making quick, short-term relationships with the students to give them as productive and positive a learning experience as possible, and I’m excited for the day that I get to begin building long-term relationships with students that I know and understand better.

Luke also got a new job this month and seems to have only good things to say about it. Always looking for an opportunity to advance his career, he took a job with PROFi, a wealth management team in Orem, as an associate financial advisor. You would already know this if you happen to be connected with Luke on LinkedIn and look at with any regularity. Or maybe you wouldn’t, since Luke has recently taken to posting on my now third-most-opened social media platform on every weekday (or “business day,” as Luke calls them), and it’s actually quite easy to believe you might have missed any one post.

He posts often enough, in fact, that he’s become something of a celebrity among his peers in the BYU Finance program. Strangers will walk up to him and ask, “Are you Luke? I love your LinkedIn posts.” The other day, we learned from Luke’s brother that these are not limited to the Marriott School of Business, since someone, upon hearing Taylor’s last name, recognized it and asked, “Wait, Wonnacott? Are you related to Luke?”

So anyway, my husband is famous.

He recently posted about his new workplace and talks about his colleagues even more at home. His team sounds wonderful and I look forward to meeting them someday. For now, I’m grateful for how happy they make my husband and how well they provide for my living.

When we’re not at school, at work, or making LinkedIn posts, we try to visit family. Luke and I have a goal to visit a family member on every three-day weekend of the semester. I should clarify that this has actually been Luke’s goal for a little while now, and I’m always happy to tag along when it actually comes to it. This month, we visited Luke’s Uncle Ross and Aunt Elaine in Nevada. Yes, we went on the strip and yes, we saw the Hoover Dam. Two things that were very unique experiences, one of which I would be happy to do again sometime.

The main reason we went, though, was not in the least disappointing. We loved spending time with Ross, Elaine, and their son, and I felt like I got to know some more of my new family a lot better. By the time we were driving back on Monday, I felt like I wouldn’t mind making the drive again sometime in the future to spend more time with them.

And sometimes, we make long drives for no perceivable reason. The last weekend of January, we had our first camping experience as a married couple. You may be thinking, “What a pleasant time of year for a camping trip in Utah,” which is what I thought as well when Luke suggested a drive to the Salt Flats at 10 PM on Friday night. We had had a nice dinner, watched Age of Adeline, and I was so happy and warm and comfortable in my little house with all of my blankets. But Luke had been wishing to camp on the Salt Flats and watch the sunrise ever since I went camping there with some girlfriends in the fall. We pulled out our new tent, sleeping bags, head lamps and many many blankets and drove to the two hours to some the completely abandoned Salt Lake Desert (completely abandoned because, as I mentioned, it was the last weekend in January).

By the time we made it to the flats, it was around 12:30 AM. We set up the tent as quickly as possibly, set up our sleeping bags and blankets, and promptly lay on the ground, trying to sleep. I think Luke managed to sleep for about an hour and a half. I never even came close to dozing, I was so cold. I completely cocooned myself in my sleeping bag, trying every arrangement I could to make myself a little warmer. I was reading a romance novel on my Libby app for a few hours, watching my breath condensate on the screen and wishing that I could feel warm enough to sleep, until eventually Luke made the call to sleep in the car for the rest of the night.

Despite the nagging voices of the ghosts of the young men I grew up with in the White Oak Ward that moving into the car because its too cold outside is such a girl thing to do, I was very VERY grateful. And to those who would chide me for it, I recommend you try to get scurvy the next time you go on a cruise. Just for the experience and the character-building.

Oh, and it was foggy. There was no sunrise. But we took a few pictures anyway.

It was a fun experience and I’m glad we went, but we both agree that we won’t go again until it’s a more reasonable time of year.

And that was January! It was a really wonderful month. I felt so little stress and so much excitement for pretty much everything happening in my life. This week, I don’t feel that way quite as much, but it’s nice to look back on January and think about how good I am at being carefree and happy when I want to be.

Luke and I love you all and are excited to share February with you too.

Love,

Sophie