Way Back When...

Since people are giving flack over no pictures of me posted here, I decided to post one. Kristie and Amanda recently posted pictures of them with their spouses from before they were married. Since I tried for many, many years to be just like Kristie, I am going to try once more. Here ya go!

November 12, 1998.

This was taken in my apartment just before we left for the Preference Dance. It's a "Ladies' Choice" dance at BYU (actually, all of the dances seem to be ladies' choice...). We went with all of my roommates. ALL of them...even the ones that didn't go to BYU. This was the night that I knew I was falling in love with him. Ain't he cute? Looks a lot different now with his goatee. In fact, we have our wedding picture on top of the entertainment center. Da Boo was looking at it and said "Mommy looks pretty. Who is that man?" hehehehe...

I tell people we met on a blind date, set up by our roommates. This is true, but only partially. I went home to Texas during the summer of '98 and the Man moved in down the hall. My roommate noticed him and thought he would be perfect for me. So as she and I talked or emailed through the summer, I got updates on this mysterious guy. Within a hour of moving back to Provo, I was hauled down to his apartment to meet him. We weren't interested. I was dating someone else and he had just ended a rough relationship. Fast forward to a week later, when my computer stopped working. I went down to his apartment to get his roommate who was a computer guy. He was the only one there and offered to take a look at it. It took him about 6 seconds to fix it! That's when I realized he was kinda cute. I don't do things half-heartedly so I immediately started stalking the Man. Seriously. He could have called the police. I showed up where he worked, at his apartment, with his friends...it was kinda creepy and I'm surprised he didn't run away screaming. He asked me out on a triple date with two of his roommates. No, he still wasn't interested in me but he knew I would go out with him. We went to a dollar movie and to Dairy Queen ("hey, big spender"). It was more than a little awkward because of the other two girls...well, one was staring at me a lot and the other one was just rude. As we were getting in the car to go home, I asked him how he knew the other girl, the one that stared. His response: "I guess you could say she's my ex-girlfriend." Great. He did ask me out again, on another double date (see how scary it must have been to be alone with me), where we went to dinner and then to a corn maze. By the end of the night, I had won him over and we started dating.
Of course I asked him to Preference and, in grand BYU tradition, I had to think of a way to do it in an interesting way. I wrote "Will you go to Preference with me?" on paper in six pieces, like a puzzle then wound then very tightly and wedged them into the centers of a half dozen roses. I had them delivered to his apartment. Not the most spectacular but it did the job.

We were married on May 15, 1999 and have been blissfully happy ever since. :)