Nate, Marie, Lilly, Carter, & Easton: The Crazy, Perfect Story of Us!

I realized not long ago that I have never written Nate & I's story and very few people know how we met. So in honor of our 13th anniversary here we go.

Ahh we were so young

Nate and I first met fall 2003 at BYU-I. Our respective apartments were assigned to be in the same Family Home Evening group. The first time we met, I was crawling over the couch that was blocking my way out of the hallway and I accidentally kicked his hat off of his head. His first words to me were along the lines of "thanks for kicking me in the head" and my first words to him were something like "I didn't kick you in the head. I only kicked your hat off. Don't be such a baby."

Neither of us were impressed.

Eventually we became friends and started hanging out more. I first knew that there was dating potential when after our ward Halloween dance he (jokingly) tried to take off the lava-lava I was wearing (I had clothes on underneath) and invited me to his apartment to watch Patton. Obviously he was a romantic.

I don't ever remember going on actual formal dates. He was going to school full time while working early mornings at Target and so we would just hang out whenever we could. We first held hands during Thanksgiving break while watching Billy Madison in my apartments lounge. Like I said Super Romantic, but if you know either one of us, it's a perfect story of us.

It was probably a couple weeks later that we kissed outside my apartment for the first time and about 3 weeks later he tricked me into telling him I loved him. He would walk me to classes and late at night we would sit on the heated steps in front of the Smith bldg. and talk until curfew.

I was always nervous to talk to him about my family and the drama involved because I was afraid it would scare him away. His response was always, "every family has drama."

My Family loves him.

In February 2004 he asked me to marry him. I obviously accepted his proposal on the condition that we didn't get married until after the summer. I had promised my grandma that I would spend the summer at home, so after Winter Semester, Nate came home with me and met the entire family. I was sure he would be scared off but he wasn't. After a week he went back to Idaho and I stayed in Oklahoma. We spent 3 months apart. We called each other a couple times a week and on occasion chatted on Yahoo! instant messenger (wow, we're so old). It was during those 3 months that I really fell head over heals in love with him. All we could do is talk and I learned so much about him during that time.

He finally flew back to Oklahoma a week before we got married. I didn't realize how much I really missed him till then. Then on Aug. 6, 2004 we were married in the Oklahoma City LDS temple. We were both super nervous and young and unsure of what the future had in store for us (which turned out to be a lot of trials and a lot of blessings).