Happy Two Year Anniversary!

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It's been the most wonderful 2 years of my life! I feel so lucky to have a husband who is so loving and faithful and my best friend!

I thought I might take a moment to tell the story of how we met. It was a blog fad there for a while but I didn't take the opportunity. Excuse the long-winded story, but I feel like I need to get it written down.

Neither Jared nor I can recall the very first time we set eyes on each other. It was far from love at first sight, because we were in the same ward for a year and a half before we started dating. The first time we spoke though is very clear. Jared was my apartment's hometeacher. He and his companion/roommate did not make the greatest impression, but after a few months we got to know them better. Jared was also coming out of a relationship (which in Provo means re-entering the land of the living.) We were hanging out with different crowds, but they occasionally crossed paths so we have pictures of us doing things like Jello Slip-n-Slide and playing in the snow long before we were ever dating (or even thinking about it!)
I took a class fall of 2004 that required I have a fake boyfriend. The details are not important, it was a marriage prep class. That should explain most of it. Anyway, I culd either get a fake boyfriend (the thought of which mortified me) or I could write a paper. So I could either knock doors and as for a boyfriend or write a paper. Never before had a paper seemed so appealing. Jared was visiting our apartment more often (being the good hometeacher he was) and overheard me telling a roommate about the fake boyfriend project. He volunteered. I'd like to say the rest is history, but actually the rest, for a while at least, was a mess!
We did the project for the required time, and then...not much. We have talked about it since and I think the problem was we didn't know how to make it real. It had been fake, and that's a weird transition. For a while we went our seperate ways - still hanging out pretty often, but always in groups. He started dating other people, I started dating other people and it looked for a while like it would only ever be fake.
A few weeks before finals, Jared start to hang out at our place A LOT more. And when I say A LOT - I mean he might as well have spent the night. He was friends with all of us but it seemed different. We did a few things together just the two of us, seemingly on accident, and I had a great time. He was dating someone though, so I didn't push it or talk about it.
Then one day he let me know that he wasn't dating anyone anymore. The next few days the mess resolved itself. I went home for Christmas and while we were apart we realized that we didn't want to be apart anymore. I flew back to Provo early for New Years and that night we had the "if we were to get married, when would that be" discussion. There were a few glitches because I had already committed to be in Washington DC all summer, but he was wonderfully supportive. We got married 2 weeks after I came home and we've never been a night apart since.
Looking back on the time we were friends then fake dated then were friends again, then really just pretty much got engaged, I am so happy with how it turned out. I'm so lucky that I was such good friends with Jared before we ever even thought of each other romantically. We saw each other through breakups and new relationships, through finals and other stressing situations. We knew how to have fun together and we had a bunch of friends that we will probably be close to forever! I can't wait to spend the rest of eternity with him and face everything life brings us - hand in hand!

All Our Love!