Just Keep Swimming ... and Tagged.

Cooper let me out of the house (wahoo) and so I went really wild and snuck over to my parents' house to use their internet and blog to my heart's content. Meri is really sick and Jenelle has fever envy so let's just say today was a little bit nuts. I called Coop at one point just so he could hear the lovely harmonizing our girls were doing as they cried. Jenelle stopped when I put the phone close to her, but I poked her and she started up again. Oh oh, and my favorite quote of the day happened while we were still on the phone. Jenelle pointed at Meredith and yelled, "No! Top crying! Is my turn [to cry]!" That was funny. A few hours later, not so much, but I did get to watch Finding Nemo, which was exciting. Of course they were both insisting on being held at the same time, which would work fine (my lap is plenty large), if Meri didn't keep stealing Jell's binky and pulling her hair. I'm gonna give her the benefit of the doubt and say she was doing it out of curiosity. Yeah, I am that naive, by choice.

Anyway, like a week ago now, I was tagged. Don't totally know what that means, nor does the person who tagged me, but we figure I should answer all the questions she did (although I've seen some people list 7 interesting things about themselves when they were tagged, I don't think I have that many so I'll answer the questions instead). Here goes:


1) Where did you meet your husband?

The better question is when. Let's just say, we looked like this:

2)What was the first thing you said?
Ha, um, probably something like "don't cut in line," or "I'm in love with your friend, Laura Blake." We do have a letter I wrote him in 3rd grade, but if you're thinking it was mushy, you should know, it was a class assignment.

3)Where was your first date?
That would totally depend on your definition of a date. Was it in any of the hundreds of times we hung out in high school? Any of the double dates we went on in high school - oh wait, we were never each other's date. Pre-mission when he wanted to date and I didn't want to deal with sending off another missionary so we just hung out awkwardly wanting to be more than friends? Or three days after I got home from my mission when he held my hand while we watched Pirates of the Caribbean? Three days! Totally freaked me out! Oh, and if he comes out with some story of me giving him all the signs that I wanted him to, don't believe a word of it. I didn't know what signs were . I was just trying to speak English and sleep in a room by myself.

4)Where was your first kiss?
In front of my apartment door a couple of weeks later. After he kissed me, he laughed out loud and said, "I can't believe I finally did that!"

5)Did you have a long or short courtship/engagement?
How do you mean that? I know that when we started talking about getting married and I was freaking out about how quickly it was all happening, Coop, Mr. Smooth Talker, pointed out that our "relationship" was 20 years in the making. Now he likes to tell people we dated for 2 weeks, just to embarrass me with his lies. The truth would be somewhere in the middle.

6)Where did you get engaged?
Up a mountain hike in Utah, past the rattlesnake, a few feet from the edge of a huge rock cliff. (I've been trying to upload a picture, with no success. If you want to look though, his friends were hiding nearby, snapping shots, which are in an old album that you can connect to through the link at the right.) I knew it was coming because, bless his heart, he can't lie worth a darn - whatever that means.

7)Where did you get married?
Portland, Oregon temple

8)How did the reception go?
Thanks to lots of hard work from my mom, it was fantastic. Really beautiful. Although, I have no clue why I spent so much time stressing over things like making sure the silverware looked good with the plates - as if I saw any of it or got to eat anything anyway! We tried to ditch the line idea (since we were standing directly in the sun and my dress had been laced up WAY too tight), but they just followed us. Oh, and the bellhop at our hotel stole the food we'd snagged from the reception, but you know, who really cares about any of that on their wedding day???

9)The honeymoon?
We spent it in a little Oregon coast town - Manzanita, in the vacation home owned by my in-law's boss. Coop's parents went to the beach too and brought us out to dinner one night, which was a little weird to me, but other than that it rained the whole week, and we didn't care.

10)Whose turn is it next?
Lyndsey, have you been tagged yet?