why i DO believe in fate.

okay so i think that i've come to a conclusion: i believe in fate to an extent. i'll tell you why...
this is stratford court, on condo row:

my big sister lived in stratford for her first few years of college:

(living room)

below: (kitchen. see, josh even celebrated his 18th birthday in this place)

okay back to fate. i fell in LOVE with this place. i knew that as soon as i was out of the dorms i had to live in stratford with my best friends like my sister did with hers. and ideally in the same apartment... #304. BUT. how? lauren's aunt used to own the condo... but then she sold it... so that complicated things.

but i was faithful in my pursuit. kind of. i was actually lazy in my pursuit and it still worked out (fate)

here's how it went: pretty much in february everybody went crazy and got their housing lined up. except for me. i had to wait to see if my best friend paty would get accepted to BYU, because since we graduated high school, we'd been planning on living together at BYU.

she got in.

so our next step was to apartment shop.. not that we had any idea how to since we never had... but. paty came up to provo. and we were unsuccessful. we knew that stratford was where we wanted to live. but since they're privately owned condos there was no management office. we had no clue who to contact. we made no progress and were both a tad bit stressed.

But two days ago magic happened. a friend of mine had asked me for some help with housing (ha. idk why. like i know anything) but i tried to help anyway. and this is a good, cute, friend, so obviously i wanted him to live in stratford with me. so. i googled stratford or something and this craig's list listing came up.

albeit it was for spring and summer but i was like. what the heck, i'm going to call anyway and figure out what is going on (because after weeks of google searching paty and i could find no reliable information). so i called the number. wait for it. (the contact's name was mary, PS).

i explained my situation (this is not verbatim): "Mary, this is Mary, I have to live in stratford, I don't know who to call. PLEASE HELP ME, and i will try to find people to buy your contract."

Mary was so nice!!! She gave me the number for the property manager. Whom I called. And who was also so nice and guess what. Just guess!

There were TWO openings left in Stratford. two. each for two people (me and paty, so either way we would be together). One was in room 202. And the other one? In room 304. Yep. 304. okay. it took a really long time to get here to the point and it was probably pretty anticlimatic for most of you... but just imagine. the apartment that you've been wanting to live in for like.. 4 years, by chance (fate), is open.

so many good things and so much magic has happened in that apartment. and i can't wait to live in it. there have been other elements combining to bring about my belief in fate but umm. this post is really long. so i'll tell you about those later? k. cool. Here's to Stratford 304's newest residents! much love--Mary

(and whoever else is living in our apartment with us. hopefully they aren't weirdos. just sayinn)