Kyle and I met in 2000, after I graduated from high school. I started going to the Fullerton West Institute, across the street from Fullerton Community College and I knew very little people there. And I’m quite shy. 🙂 A girl from my ward introduced Kyle and I.
I happened to be dating another boy at the time we were introduced. About November of 2000 I broke up with him though, because he wanted to serve a mission and I felt like he was paying more attention to me at the time, than his goal of going on a mission. And I remember mentioning to Kyle that I don’t want a new boyfriend for at least a month, because I didn’t want the other boy to feel like I broke up with him to get with a new boyfriend. After breaking up with the other boy, I crashed my first car (not on purpose of course). It was a sad day. I hated that car, but when I crashed it and it was totaled I really began to appreciate it, and I knew I was going to miss it. But I used it to my advantage one night after institute. I had my Mom drive me to institute that night, my Dad told me to just take his car, but I insisted that Mom just take me and drop me off. You see I was planning on bumming a ride home off of Kyle. 😉 It was a set-up!
Then I started dropping the hints. 😉 One Tuesday night after an institute class, I was talking with my friend, Kim about the boys I liked (yes there was more than 1). Kyle asked who they were, and I said something like “I don’t tell boys that are on the list” (it was something like that, I don’t think that was exactly what I said). On another occasion, he asked me to tell me who he liked and I said I didn’t want to say because I thought our friend Sarah, likes the same guy. And on another occasion I mentioned that he served his mission in England. Ok Kyle is pretty smart, even though I dropped all of those hints at completely different times he realized it was him!
2 December 2000 Kyle and I went on our first date. We were not boyfriend and girlfriend at the time, but he needed to go to a few museums for a class that he was taking at the college, so he asked me along and we went to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California. I wouldn’t let Kyle take any pictures of me, because I was really shy. But I remember that day well. I went shopping that morning before he came to pick me up to buy something cute to wear. I got a cute purple top and a pair of black jeans that sparkled, and I wore my Opal Watermelon LipSmackers. 🙂
Sometime during December Kyle went to Utah to visit with his sister Laurel and her family, but he was back before Christmas because he wanted to come back to me. 😉 He gave me a key chain that Christmas with “There is beauty all around, when there’s no one home.” Being the oldest of 10 kids he thought I would appreciate that. Then 26 December 2000 we officially became boyfriend & girlfriend. 🙂
31 December 2000 we spent our first New Years Eve together. He came over to my home and we stayed up really late watching movies like “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” and “The Princess Bride”.
Over the next few months we spent a lot of time together. Some of our favorite places to go were to the book store, the Main Place Mall and See’s Candies. Once we left a See’s with a handful of samples EACH! Kyle would ask, hey what’s that one, and the nice lady behind the counter would give one to each of us. I asked him to marry me. He said that he wanted to read the Book of Mormon first. So he did, and I asked him frequently where he was at. I wanted to know how close to finishing he was. 😉 I wasn’t always happy at home, but every time I went out with Kyle I always felt like everything would be ok, and I knew I wanted to be with him.
5 June 2001 He popped the question, he took me to the park where he first kissed me and asked me to marry him, and the next day I left to go on a road trip with his sister Liesl, to visit his older sister Laurel. Liesl was so happy when she found out that Kyle and I were engaged, Laurel on the other hand nearly flipped out. You see I was only 18, and Laurel is about 12 years older than I am so she saw me as a child I guess. Kyle is also 8 1/2 years older than I am. But we moved forward and made plans for our wedding, and we said how about 28 of December. The temple was actually closed for cleaning then, but was having a special opening on the 29th of December, so that was the day we picked and started working towards.
We were married in the Los Angeles Temple (along with like 35 other couples that day). And now we have been married for 8 years! CRAZY! 😉
In this picture we had been married for about a week, and his family decided to have family pictures done before Laurel and her family went back home to Utah.
