Eight Years and a Few Days

This week marks the 8th anniversary of Jake and my 1st date.
Though we are not together to celebrate- and not that we usually remember anyway...
I thought I would share these memories here.

We had been class friends only for a few months.
The kind of class friends that aren't sure of one anothers names but flirt excessively anyways.
I claim that I only flirted with him because the only other boy in a Spring Psych class of 20 people was dating a friend of mine. It was obvious Jake thought I was cute and can still tell you what I was wearing and how my hair was the 1st day this class met and we were introduced.
I was sure he was going to ask me out by the way he acted around me.
I was usually right about that sort of thing.
But he didn't.
The class ended. I didn't think much of it except that I was surprised I was wrong.

A week or so later I got a phone call. I was visiting my parents.
We made plans to go out the following Thursday.
It was not until a year or more later I found out it had not been him calling, but a friend of his wanting him to get a date to double with him doing his best Jake impersonation. It fooled me. Jake didn't want to call me because I was not his 1st choice... can you even believe that.
No doubt we would have ended up on a date together eventually had he called or not because we coincidentally both moved that summer to apartments just around the corner from one another and would run into one another all the time this following year-even during our "broken up" times.

Jake took me on "the never ending 1st date" on the first day of summer.
Dinner, meeting up with friends, lawn bowling, frozen yogurt and a midnight showing of " a Beautiful Mind".
I don't think he had planned to keep me in his company for what was like nine hours.
I think he just thought it was going well and didn't want me to leave because he thought I was so great.
Lucky for him I liked him more at the end of the 9 hours. I had never met someone who was so good and seemed to have everything going for him but was still a little shy.
So when we called a few days later I agreed to a 2nd date.
And thus we began our on again off again 13 month courtship that ended on July 25, 2003 in wedded bliss.

Want to see some pictures of little us back then...
the longest my hair has ever been I think. Fall 2002
something is so hilarious about playing yahzee in Jake's basement apartment. To him at least.
The amazing tennis player Jake is- he was convinced he could teach me to play great too so we could play doubles. He forgot that I don't like him telling me what to do. I still can't play well.
At my apartment. Fall 2002
At Jake's apartment headed to church Spring 2003

Celebrating Jake's graduation with his Bachelor's April 2002. This was also the 1st time I spent more than 20 minutes will his family because they came into to town to celebrate graduation with him. I quickly came to love them.
I promise I am 20-21 in these pictures and Jake is 23-24, not 12 like we look.
At Amy and Jeff's wedding May 2003.
We are engaged at this point and planning our own wedding for later that summer.

Somehow we were so happy together despite the fact we were poor, overworked tired college students. Because we wanted to spend time together and both had full time jobs and full time school we sacrificed our sleep and ran on 4 hours of sleep a night. Jake worked a grave shift and would be up for 36 hours straight at least once a week. Jake was always planning silly things for us to do, a lot of hikes, playing guitar, things with friends, or we would just sit together studying at his spot in the library. I'm not sure how we both pulled off 3.7 GPA's these two semesters since we hardly slept and study time was hardly that. It is true that I literally only purchased groceries three times this entire year because I was always eating on the go or at Jake's house or out with him somewhere. We both had great roommates who are still some of our best friends today- who were kind enough to put up with us making out in their living rooms all the time.

Sadly these are almost all the picture I have because neither of us owned a digital camera in 2002.


Ahh.... memories....