Our Story Part 1

February is a special month for me. Why? My berfday. Now that I have a significant other there's also Valentine's Day. A day to celebrate LOOOOOVE. Haha, being what it is it was never really my favorite holiday. Even now I don't like it that much...i like spending time with my husband but I don't really feel the need to deck out my house in red and pink hearts and frillies...but then I really am not a frilly sort of person. But in honor of the holiday I will fill you all in with OUR love story. It's not the most fascinating or even interesting love story but it's ours and I cherish it and love to remember it. I will now remember it on here for all of you to see, whether you know it or not.

I'm gonna start this all the way back to 2004, before I even came to Provo, with a seemingly irrelevant story.

Back in 2004 I was still in high school and our ward was preparing for a dance festival. A young couple in our ward was assigned to lead us through this experience. My memory of them was more fresh when I first came to Utah but what I remember now is that the husband was tall and skinny with dark hair and I thought he was a jerk to his wife and he was really impatient with us and of course I didn't like him very much.

Flash forward to Fall of 2005 and my very first time gathering as a ward in the Glenwood breezeway. I saw a tall, skinny guy with dark hair come down the stairs and he reminded me an awful lot of the aforementioned gentleman. First impressions are always the worst but mine was a little bit of disgust and a little bit of intrigue. Disgust because I really didn't like that other guy and intrigue because he looked so similar but obviously wasn't the same person and not even likely to be related at all. I also found him a lot more attractive then the other guy but that seemed irrelevant at that moment.

Flash forward once again to my first encounter with Mark since then. Me and my friend Stacia got a group of people together to play a card game called Nertz. Mark and a few of his roommates were in attendance and then I got my first real impression of Mark. He was attractive, quiet yet fun and incredibly quick at the game. After the Christmas break we played again at Mark's apartment and even though he had a broken arm he dominated everyone who was playing with two!! Impressive yet frustrating at the same time, at least to me.

Well Nertz sort of took off and we made an semi-official club out of it. We for sure played every week and sometimes it was twice a week. Those are some of my fondest memories of college. When we'd get a really large group we'd play in pairs. Whenever me and Mark got randomly paired together we were almost unstoppable, we definitely dominated. Mark was my favorite partner and quickly became my really good friend.

Then of course he had to go start dating some girl in the ward and totally ruined everything...really no offense to the girl he dated but from our end of things it was lame because Mark stopped coming the Nertz club. At the time I didn't really have the mindset that I wanted to date Mark but in hindsight I think I liked him more then I thought because I was probably the most annoyed about his ever decreasing attendance.

And so ends part 1 of this tale. Stay tuned for Part 2 where Mark will share his side of the story up to this point.