The Day We Met

Right after Thanksgiving 2004, I rededicated myself to attending my Family Home Evening Group. I hadn't been in ages. So I came home from school Monday evening, and went over to the big apartment complex in my ward and saw that FHE was going on in apartment 24. I walked in, and a boy I had gone out with a few weeks before was giving the lesson. We were put in groups to make towers out of paper or something. This girl Emily said, "Hey AJ, have you met Emily?" And we were introduced. He was dressed like a lumberjack, complete with woodchips. I thought he was really cute anyway. And he started hitting on me.

Some girls had made him a belated birthday cake and I decided to go have a slice. He asked if I would be studying that evening, and I said no, I had to run some errands. He asked if I wanted company. So we went to target together. He was a really good shopper. Then he asked if there were other errands I needed to run. When I said no, he was like, darn, I really would like to run more errands with you. (sigh!) He was working part time as an electrician, wiring custom homes, and he asked if I would mind going to Elk Ridge to a house they were working on, because you could see the whole valley from that house. I made him promise not to murder me and hide my body in Elk Ridge, and off we went. On the way we stopped by Salem Pond, which was lit up for Christmas. He loaned me a sweatshirt he's had since high school, which I wore to bed for the next 8 months or so.

We made it up to Elk Ridge, and the view was lovely. We talked for hours, during which, AJ said, "I like you." It was refreshing to have a nice, decent man be so open. We made plans to attend his econ class and devotional together the next day. As he dropped me off, we exchanged phone numbers, and he asked me to give him a wake up call the next morning. That was a little weird, but he explained he had just moved and hadn't unpacked his alarm clock yet. It was a few more days before I fell completely in love with him, but I was very impressed right from the get-go.

Tomorrow is our 1 year anniversary of knowing each other. (We've been married almost 7 months. BYU.)