I got home from my mission in June, and moved back in with my dad in Rexburg. Wife was in Pocatello just finished with her junior year at ISU. She was working full-time on campus in the summer break. We started hanging out again after I had been home about a week. The week I arrived back at home was stake conference, so my homecoming was father's day. My mom, maternal grandparents, and 3 older siblings who lived out of state all came to town, and we went out to dinner the night before. Mom asked if Wife would come. That was a huge switch from before the mission, as she was staunchly opposed to me dating her in high school and before the mission. After high school, I moved in with Mom to work and save for my mission. Wife came to visit twice during breaks from then-Ricks College, and was super mean/grumpy/judgmental about it. And harshly critical of my spending time anf money with someone else's future wife instead of focusing on and saving for my mission.

During dinner, Mom told us she wanted to have a family vacation one last time before everything got crazy. Brother was graduating from BYU and moving to the East Coast, #2 Sister was having another baby and moving away to Oregon with husband's new job, #4 sister and husband were going into business with his brother and just moved to New Mexico, and there was me, going to BYU-I, everyone else had established careers and starting to have a bunch of kids somewhat scattered around the intermountain west...so it was a last hoorah, kinda thing. And the, "of course Wife is coming, too" absolutely shocked everyone. Sister #1 about freaked cuz her now-husband of like 15 years hadnt even been allowed to be in the family photo the day before their wedding (he wasn't family yet!). Apparently a switch really had been thrown, as it had seemed that she loathed Wife when she was "just" my high school girlfriend.

The Monday after Independence day, I drove to Pocatello, loaded our stuff, and drove her car to Long Beach to meet my family at a Ho-Jo near the harbor. I stayed in a room with my brother, soon-to-be brother in law, and my 7 year old nephew, Wife stayed in a room with my technically unmarried sister - nephew's mom - and the rest of my siblings had their spouse and children in rooms with them. Sister #3 was pissed cuz she and BIL had been living together since like a month after I left on my mission, and this was fixing to be her 3rd marriage.

We took the early morning ferry to Catalina. Sleeping arrangements were the same on the island, and it was three days of very vanilla, Peter Priesthood and Mary Mormon get-to-know-you-all-over-again, beach family vacation with a bunch of kids burying each other in sand, a flying fish tour around the island, a golf cart tour of the island and buffalo preserve, and parasailing. The closest thing to romance was sharing an ice cream cone with Wife while watching my 11 nieces and nephews...while their parents took a break and probably tried to make me more nieces and nephews, and yes, unmarried sister got caught having alone time with my next BIL. And got reamed by mom for it. "I'm not paying for you to break the law of chastity!"

Thursday night, our last night on the island, right after dinner, Wife and I took a walk. We walked all the way to the north end of the beach, to a little cove and sat on a lounge chair. We cuddled, we talked, had the official DTR and decided we still intended to get married...and then we kissed. Boy did we kiss. We kissed so much, it almost made up for the 3 years apart we had had since high school, the last time I had kissed her was Memorial Day 2 years before, hours before I was set apart as a missionary. I had some making up to do. Hands stayed in virtuous places, but they definitely wanted to wander. We made out till our lips couldn't take it anymore, and our raging hormones would have resulted in regret. We walked back to the house/hotel/not quite airbnb place and made out on the porch for a few minutes until the cat calling from my family started. Apparently mom was watching for us and she gather everyone together on the balcony to watch. Yes, quite a switch.

The trip back was much less vanilla, albeit not too crazy, all things considered. Wife moved the armrest in her cat and sat in the middle seat. She wrapped her arm around me and made sure my hand was strategically placed just inside the open collar of her button down. I kept my hand centered there, mostly still, resisting the urge to wander, but I did start to run my fingers over the edge of her bra and into her cleavage as I drove out of LA, until we got to Barstow. We stopped to eat and took a potty break, and when we got back in the car, she put my hand back where it was, but a little lower. And to my greatest surprise, pleasure, and immediate arousal, she was no longer wearing her bra. By the time we hit the Nevada line my right hand was altenating between her perfectly shaped breasts, and I was playing with her nipples and squeezing and feeling everything I could and (barely) stay on the road.