♥ Five: Dating

Five years (and a few days) ago, I married the best, cutest, sweetest, funniest guy; my best friend. This is us when we were dating. Weren't we adorable? (Oh, and if you couldn't tell, this is going to be totally mushy so go ahead and mentally prepare yourself for that. Okay ready? Here's the cute picture.)

He still is pretty adorable, if you ask me. For example, guess what he put as his facebook status on our anniversary? You won't guess because it is too adorable, so here it is:

5 years of marriage + 4 years of medical school (gettin' there...) + 3 cities to call home + 2 awesome kiddos = 1 BFF


Love him.

So since we've been together for five years, I thought it could be fun to think of some things I remember from the past five (okay a little more if you count dating) years of our life together. :)

So here are some things I remember.

I met Steve on a Monday night at a church activity. It was sort of a weird time in both of our lives, I think--he was just back from a mission and feeling a little lonely in San Diego, where the friends he had started with were now two years ahead. And I was just trying to figure out why the only guys that wanted to date me were SO VERY wrong for me. We were both wondering what we were doing wrong, and then suddenly, there he was that night, and he made me laugh so hard. (And he still does.) And after that it was like any time we were near each other I wanted to talk to him and laugh with him.

Our friend Britta peer pressured me into calling him (yes, can you believe it? I called a boy! How forward...) and from that day until now there has only been one day we haven't seen each other or spoken on the phone (Thanksgiving, when we were very first dating and both at home with our families). The first time I called him we talked for an hour. He was making Hamburger Helper. We got through the whole preparing and eating of that meal... and then I think he might have cut me off to go watch CSI. But it worked out okay anyway I guess. ;)

I had a crush on him pretty fast, I'm not going to lie. I couldn't help it. He didn't have a car and I did (he was such a gold-digger, right?!) so I offered him rides and such. Purely philanthropically, of course. No ulterior motives or anything.

So anyway I had a crush on him, but here's how I knew he was really special: we had a ton of fun... AT THE DMV. Have you ever had fun at the DMV? No. You haven't. But we did. I had offered to take him to run some errands in my super sweet silver Civic, and one of them was hanging out at the DMV. I can't remember why, but we were cracking up in the parking lot... I think we may have almost accidentally stolen a clipboard...? I can't remember. But I do remember thinking how very much I liked this guy who could make boring things so much fun. That night he kissed me. It was a really good day.

So we started officially dating. My friends were all very excited (because Steve is awesome), so once we became official I remember a day at church when everyone in my pew turned to watch him when he walked in, to see if he would sit by me. (He didn't.)

There was some drama after a little bit, as there always is, I think. Things got serious between us pretty fast (um, maybe because we were meant to be together) and it was a little intimidating. So at one point he said we should just be friends for a while. And by a while he meant about a week, because by about 7 days from that conversation we were holding hands at a midnight showing of Harry Potter. Can't stop a good thing.

He wrote me the BEST emails while we were apart for winter break. He sent me this cute picture of himself looking thoughtful in a free jacket he got (how did you get that for free again? From working at REI??) which was definitely my screensaver for a while. (Oh come on, I am hardly ever publicly mushy, you can deal with this, right?)

I went up to visit him and his family after Christmastime. I slept in his sisters' room, and he took me to see the Golden Gate bridge and shopping in San Francisco and on my first cable car ride.

We went through a lot of tough stuff together (not caused by each other, but you know, other stuff), but we also had a LOT of good times. We would cook dinner together and watch disc after disc of 24. We went grocery shopping, hung out at the beach in January talking until early in the morning, ate lots of Sour Patch Straws, and had dinner with our friends every Sunday night. We took cool photos of ourselves in my car. Like this.

(Oh yeah, and he did eventually start sitting by me at church. See... here we are in church clothes.)

I remember standing in his kitchen watching him cook, and thinking that I would really like it if he would stand in my kitchen--in our kitchen--someday and cook like that. It's funny, the snapshots you keep in your head, isn't it? I will always remember that image of him, I think, in gray sweatpants cooking in the galley kitchen of that little apartment he shared with some guys from church.

And then... Look I'm not proud of it. But... Well we went through a gangster phase, which was awkward what with me wearing cardigans and Steve being all clean-cut, but... well. There it is. You know how we be.

That seems like a good cliff-hanger. So you'll have to wait until next time, to find out if we turned ourselves around or not.