-Man Pants And Hair Nets-

Kohn Thedell and Haley Nielsen---such an unlikely couple, such an unexpected love story. Want a little background??? Okay.

Kohn graduated from Sky View in 2008. He was, and still is, an amazing baseball player and had opportunities to go play some college ball, but he didn't accept the offers, because he wasn't going to let anything stop him from serving his mission. So, instead of going to school for a semester or two to pitch he was lucky enough to end up working at Pepperidge Farm (heavy on the sarcasm) on Line 5. Remember that, Line 5, because it is a very important detail in the future.

Fast forward-------> Haley graduated from West Side in 2010. I was preparing to go to BYU-Idaho in Rexburg in the fall and needed to earn a little bit of cash for the coming school year, so I was also a lucky one and got to work at Pepperidge Farm for the summer! But I was on Line 4. This is also important for the future.

Rewind<------ Kohn left on his mission in April of 2009 for Kentucky. He left a friend, who was a girl, behind. They were pretty faithful writers for the first bit of his mission, then the letters came from her side less and less, he knew what was happening, and I'm pretty sure you can figure it out too. You guessed it, she found someone and got married while Kohn was gone. He didn't let this get to him though, and his missionary work only continued to get stronger.

Back to Haley...no need to go too into depth about writing missionaries here! We'll just say that I have written a few "Dear John's" in my day!

April 2011. Kohn was returning from his very successful, 2 year mission. I was finishing up my first year of college. As I mentioned, Kohn had a very successful mission. He experienced so many different things, so many things that helped him grow so much. Maybe one day I can get him to share a few mission stories on here :) because he's got some crazy, good ones! Now---my first year of college was not what I expected. There were so many up's and so many down's. By the time my 2nd semester came to an end I was ready to be back home in my sweet, little Weston, Idaho! That time finally came.

Fun story insert: A few days after I got home my family and I were doing some grocery shopping at Lee's in Smithfield. I remember it perfectly. We were in the dairy section and I heard someone saying "Meagan" over and over. I remember I kept thinking that this "Meagan" girl must be deaf or something because whoever was trying to get her attention was not succeeding. As the lady behind me continued to repeat herself, my mom finally turned and said with a very confused look on her face "Haley maybe?" The lady started laughing at herself "Oh shoot, I did that all last summer too! That's right, you're Haley, your older sister is Meagan." Oooooh, it was a lady I had worked with last summer at Pepperidge, Jean Thedell. I laughed it off and told her it was okay and we continued talking, asking how the other had been...just making small talk. "Oh, I'm so good. My son comes home from his mission soon and we're going to Kentucky in a few weeks to see everything from his mission." Instantly my mind jumped to the thought of an RM, a mature boy. What would it be like? After talking about how exciting that was we went our separate ways. As my mom and I were walking to the car I leaned over to her and said "Mom, I'm going to meet Jean's son...and I'm going to marry him." Oooooookay whoa Haley!!!! You've never even met this boy, you don't know if he's cute or not so attractive. Was I even sure of what his name was?!?!? Well, do I  really need to say more---I don't know if you noticed or not, but Jean and Kohn happen to have the same last name :)

Let's take a step back---during finals week I had talked with HR at Pepperidge and they told me they had a job for me and to call them when I got home from school and was all settled in. So, I did just that. When I called they told me that they weren't sure that there would be much work anymore, but that they would get back to me soon. A few days later I received a call, they were still not 100% positive and even mentioned looking elsewhere for a job. Of course, I lacked all motivation at this time and didn't even attempt to find another job. About a month later I finally got a call back from Pepperidge. They told me that they had found somewhere for me to work. I was assigned to the frozen line. You see, most temps are put on Line 4, and that's where I had been the summer before, so that's where I was supposed to be this summer as well, and up until this phone call that is where I had been planning on being. But, I needed a job, so I took the frozen job. Now, I don't know how it all played out for Kohn, BUT I do know that he was told he would be on Line 5, since that's where he had worked before his mission. He too had to wait longer than he expected to get back on at Pepperidge, and he also was told he'd be on frozen instead.

Frozen only hires 2 temps over the summer. The line starts at 6:55 every morning. But the bread has to go through the freezer before it can be packaged. The freezer process takes about 50 minutes. So, the 2 temps come in at 7:45 instead. The rest of the line gets off at 3, but the TWO people who start at 7:45 get done around 4. So the temps are there alone for about an hour at the end of the day.

May 9, 2011: First day on the job.

I walked into work and saw this realllllllly cute boy at the schedule board. I didn't think anything other than that he was cute though. I was not about to get involved with anyone this summer. This summer was about my running and taking a nice little break from "life". I was determined that it was going to be that way. Ha! Yeah. Right. I won't lie though, I was pleasantly surprised to see that he was working on my line :) good eye candy never hurt anyone, because you know man pants and hair nets look SO attractive on everyone! I guess I wasn't the only one that felt this way though. I kid you not, ALL day we kept catching each other staring! Then what I did not want to happen, happened. We ended up in the positions across from each other on a rotation. We rotate every 30 minutes. Usually when people are in these 2 positions they talk. Crap. I got in my spot and started pushing the bread down the belt, looking down. I would glance up and he was just smiling and laughing. Yes, I was being foolish. Right next to us our two little Asian trainers were talking, but not in English, so it's not like we could have joined in their conversation. So he decided he needed to start a conversation for us. So we talked. I was shy, gave super short answers, and was so relieved when he finally rotated. We continued to make eye contact the rest of the day, and we finally got to the point where we wouldn't look away really fast, but we finally started laughing and smiling whenever we caught each other staring.

The next day at work was a pretty normal day, I didn't think anything was going to happen with him. I was glad though, because I had my goals for the summer. No boys. After work ended though I was walking out of the locker room and getting ready to head out to my car, but Kohn stopped me in my tracks. We started talking, and it was actually really easy to talk to this boy now that we didn't have ear plugs in and loud machines all around. The conversation was good, he talked about how he wanted to go play baseball for some college far away after a semester at Utah Sate. This was good news I thought, because if he wanted to go play baseball somewhere then he definitely wouldn't be looking to have a relationship. Gooooood. I was feeling extra chipper as we were leaving the plant and were getting ready to head into opposite directions. We stuttered an awkward goodbye and then as I was turning to go towards my car, he stopped me.

"Uhhhhh, do you think I could maybe ummm....get your number?"

"Oh sure! Definitely!" Ugggh, I sounded way toooooo excited about this.

We exchanged numbers and he said he wanted to do something sometime. We decided it wouldn't work the coming weekend though because he had baseball games and I was making a trip to Boise for my roommates wedding. We peaced out and that was that.

I rode to Boise with my dear friend Nicole :) the whole way there we talked about Blake and Kohn. Blake just happens to be her HUSBAND. Who was just someone she had started dating when we were driving to Boise together! And well, I promise I'm not a creep. I just talked about Kohn and didn't know him very well, and then Facebook stalked him when we got to Boise. But don't worry, he stalked me too---he told me so! Nicole will tell you that I talked about wanting to date him and everything great like that, but I will tell you otherwise ;)

Anyways---Boise was great, we made it home Saturday night and then Sunday afternoon I got a text from Kohn, I have never been so excited to get a text in my whole entire life! Such a girl. I don't think we've stopped texting since then though, other than when we're together.

Monday, May 16th, Kohn agreed he would run a 5k with me some time in the summer. I told him he would have to start running some hills to train. He agreed to that and even suggested that we run some together. Then I was such a smart one and suggested running the WS sometime. For those of you that don't know...WS=BIG MOUNTAIN. I was really cocky about my running at this time so I thought it would be great and I could show this boy up. It just so happened that we weren't scheduled to work the next day. I guess Kohn was eager to start working on those hills. We decided that we would brave the WS the next morning. And THAT'S where WE really begin....TO BE CONTINUED...