Summer Marriage Challenge: Week One: Our Story: Part I

Week 1, the week of June 14th: Post Pictures from your dating days (or tell us all about it!). Think about one thing you used to do or have as a couple that you have lost in the shuffle of life. How can you regain it?



This is actually interesting that I found this challenge at this time because I was going to post our dating story this week anyway, since next Monday is our anniversary. And next week's challenge, remembering our wedding day and those vows we made, comes at a perfect time, being that our 9-year anniversary is on Monday, June 21st.

My Version of Our Story

Our story actually begins with my graduation from BYU. I'm sure there are things from his end as well, but then that's his story, and this is my version of it.


Anyway, I graduated from BYU in April 2000, and in the four months previous to graduation, spent that time student teaching for my degree in Elementary Education. During that time, my parents had put their home on the market (they lived in South Jordan) because they were moving to Michigan. I was still single, not even one single dating prospect to keep me in Provo. I had burned a bridge from a past relationship, a missionary for whom I had waited. So I had a few choices. I could stay in Provo, or just Utah, like many of my peers who were also graduating single. I could move with my family to Michigan to teach school there and live with my parents and youngest brother. Or I could find somewhere new to go entirely.

I decided that the last option sounded the most exciting. California was going through a hiring craze in 2000--they had a ratio law of 20 to 1 in the lower grades--so I got offered a job with every district that interviewed me. I took the first one that I was offered--and that is a story in itself how that all happened. I took a job teaching 2nd grade in a small town called Lake Los Angeles on the outskirts of Palmdale in the high desert of Southern California, known as the Antelope Valley.

I didn't know anything about the area. I didn't know anyone who lived there. My parents drove out with me a few months before to help me find a place to live. At first I tried to go through the LDS Institute there to find a roommate but was unsuccessful. A few of the teachers at my school recommended a certain apartment complex, where a couple of them lived, and that's where I signed on for my own little one-bedroom apartment. I even rented furniture because I had nothing.

*2nd grade class, first year teaching (2000-2001)

Then I moved to teach 2nd grade. In September 2000, I went with the Antelope Valley Singles Ward for a temple trip to the Los Angeles Temple. I had previously received my endowments in December of 1998. On that temple trip, I was introduced to my husband, but I didn't really think anything of him.

A few weeks later, a bunch of us from Institute went to the junior college football game to support someone who was a member of the Church, active in Institute, and on the team. That was the same guy I'd met on the temple trip. At that point, I was interested in someone else. And that young man, the football player that I'd met on the temple trip, wasn't even in the singles ward. He attended his home ward with his family and only took part of Institute classes as he went to the junior college across the street. He was fresh off his mission and not very far along in school. I really didn't think anything of him at all at that point.

To be continued...