Today, Matt and I celebrate our “Lucky 7” Anniversary (though we won’t be doing much out of the ordinary to celebrate, as we already went out for our anniversary about a week and a half ago).
In honor of the day, I thought I’d share 7 little facts about us:
1) We met in high school, though we didn’t date in high school. It was one of those “he was dating one of my close friends, I was dating one of his” type things.
2) According to Matt, he was dating me long before I was dating him (this is true, basically, as it took him a long time to make his intentions known and a long time for me to not be dumb)
3) Before I left on my mission (and we had been dating a few months, though not exclusively), he pulled out a huge ring box while we were sitting in his car in the parking lot of our favorite place to eat (Leatherby’s). My heart almost stopped because I knew I’d be telling him no (since my heart was made up about leaving on a mission). Inside was a rolled up slip of paper that asked me if I would go to the movies with him (and he later produced a ginormous plastic engagement ring that he said his family had been trying to convince him to use and actually carry out a full-on fake proposal).
4) While on my mission, I wrote Matt a letter telling him it would never work out between us and for him to move on. While he, to his credit, did try and move on and dated other people, he (also to his credit) continued to write me letters faithfully the entire time I was out because, as he put it, “We were friends before anything else, and friends we will remain.”
5) When I got home from my mission, after I decided that Matt was definitely worth giving a fair shot to (since I hadn’t dated him exclusively before), I told him to take things slow because I wasn’t wanting to get engaged within a week or a month or something like that. Well, he took me at my word and waited over a month of seeing each other as much as we could and dating before he even kissed me (and he had kissed me before I’d left on my mission, so it wasn’t like it was our first time!)
6) Little did he know that that that kiss was all I was waiting for to determine if he was The One for me–I knew we had everything else going for us and our relationship by that point (since we’d known each other so long), but before when we’d dated, it kind of felt like I was kissing my best friend, and I wanted to see if the chemistry had changed at all in the year and a half (plus) that we’d been apart. Needless to say, when he did finally go in for it, things had definitely changed!
7) Later, when he proposed for real (almost two years from the first time), he proposed in the exact same spot as that “fake-out” proposal, except he got out of the car and knelt down (in the rain) to pop the question. (And the ring was decidedly NOT fake.) Bonus fun fact: Leatherby’s ended up catering our wedding reception, which kind of brought the whole thing full circle 🙂
If you’re curious to hear more of the whole story, I detailed it all in these posts:
Happy 7 years to the man who makes me more of myself–and, most importantly, more of my BETTER self–every day, and who is the best example of a good and honest man for both me AND our daughter (and soon, to our son, too!).
Love you for eternity, Matt!
