Our Story :)

One of my favorite times of the week is when I ride home with my mom from Logan to Salt Lake for the weekend. She comes up once a week to clean my grandma's house and I usually snag a ride home with her. I love the opportunity to have a couple hours alone with her and catch up on the week. She's an incredible woman. This past weekend's conversation we re-lived the last few months since I met Alex. This is basically our story!!

Alex and I met on November 17th. Me and a few of my roommates went down to Provo for the Utah State/BYU Basketball game. My roommate Sarah was dating a boy who went to school down there (they're engaged now too! YAY!) and he told her he was going to bring a few friends with him to meet all of us. We walked up the steps and introduced ourselves and I automatically thought Alex was cute. But I had to sit a few rows down because there wasn't much room. He tried to ask me a couple questions and then when my roommates and I went back over to the Utah State section, we invited him to come with us. Lucky for me he ended up standing next to me. We talked about basketball quite a bit. After the game, we walked back to the boys' apartment. Alex went down the line and got all of our numbers. He texted me so I had his number. I texted him when we got home that night and told him it was nice to meet him. I wasn't really expecting to hear from him again though. However, the next day I was in class when I got a text. It was from Al. We started chatting again and basically never stopped. He texted me for the next week and a half or so. One day we were talking about Mario Kart. I somehow challenged him to a game. He made a bet with me. He said "we'll play and if I win, I get to take you on a date." And I bet that if I won he had to take me on a date. So, either way, I got a date out of it! funny enough, that game still hasn't happened. But I still got my date!

November 26 was our first date. I came down to Salt Lake the day after Thanksgiving. He called me to say that we were going to go sledding and get dinner. So I spent a good couple hours trying to track down some snow pants and stuff. However he called an hour before and said sledding had fallen through and we were going to go ice-skating. Well, my knees are awful and my Dr. has forbidden me from ice-skating so I had to awkwardly call him back and explain. My only thought was, oh shoot. He's gonna think I'm a baby. But he was way sweet about it and we ended up going downtown to look at Christmas lights with his friends Heidi and Mitch. After we went to dinner at a Mexican Restaurant called The Red Iguana. I knew I was starting to sort of like him when I ordered and choked down my meal. I'm probably the pickiest person on the earth, but I pretended to like my food to impress him. Halfway through the date he got kind of quiet and I just figured he wasn't feelin it. I figured it would be another fun first date that never went anywhere. After dinner we went to Mitch's house and watched a movie. Halfway through Al held my hand. On our way home that night, he told me how much fun he had and that we should hang out again. I made up some excuse on the spot of why I was coming back to Salt Lake the next weekend in hopes he would ask me to go out again. It worked! He did!! :) We hung out once more that weekend too.

Our first kiss was the night of December 4th. I guess technically it was only our 2nd official date but we had hung out a couple other times. My family somehow convinced me to invite him to festival of trees with the whole fam damily. Talk about scaring a guy off. But he came along and immediately clicked with everyone and had so much fun! After we met up with some friends to watch a movie. When the movie got over, his friends were hanging around and he said something to them in Spanish. Immediately they got up and left. A couple weeks ago I finally asked him what they had said. I guess he told them he wanted to kiss me so they needed to leave. Haha We were playing a game on his iPhone and when the game ended I went to play again but he grabbed the phone out of my hand and put it in his pocket. I was so confused but a couple seconds later he kissed me so it made sense.

**brief interruption.. I had gone through a stage for quite a few months before where I'd like a guy for a few days and then just get completely bored. It was after about 3 weeks of dating Al that I realized something was different and this could actually be going somewhere!**

The next weekend Al and some friends came up to Logan to go to a game and hang out. And the next weekend I went home again. **Another side note- I hardly ever went home Freshman year... but suddenly I wanted to be home every weekend**. Anyway, on the 18th of December I went to a movie with him and his parents. Afterward, he took me driving. We ended up out by daybreak by the temple. He pulled over and we started talking about us and decided neither one of us were interested in dating anyone else at that time. So I guess we became "official" on the 18th.

The next few weeks were a blast because I was home for Christmas. We spent literally EVERY day together for 3 weeks straight. I had to go back to Logan on the 11th of January and I was so emotional. I realized I was falling fast for this kid.

The next weekend he came up for Martin Luther King day and the whole day he kept going to say something but then he'd bite his tongue and stop talking. I tried so hard to pry whatever it was he wanted to say out of him but he wouldn't budge.. That night as he was leaving I walked him out to the car and was like "k love you bye!" and then i panicked cause we hadn't told each other we loved each other yet and I did NOT want to be the first one to say it. I tried to make a quick cover but I was so mad at myself. Haha Anyway, He came back up to Logan on the 19th for my birthday and that's when he first told me he loved me. The first thing I said was "well, its a dang good thing you finally said it cause I was about to have to!"

About a week and a half later I somehow casually asked if he saw our relationship going somewhere serious and if he could see himself as a part of my family. Well, that opened up about a week's worth of marriage conversations. I'd seriously spend 3 hours on the phone with him every night and we decided that we were both going to pray about it. Well, we both got our answer and went ring shopping about 3 weeks later. The rest is history!!

I know I say this all the time, but I'm so grateful for this incredible addition to my life. He is the most self-less, charitable, good looking, spiritual, and genuine guy I've ever met. I'm a lucky lucky girl. I can't wait for July 7th when I can be sealed forever to my best friend and the love of my life!!