By now, you know all about our NSD mega-collab at SM this weekend called "Moments that Matter". Make sure you get over to the store and check out all the new grab bags that have been released, along with the 40% off sale on almost everything else. You can get "Moments that Matter" free with a $20 purchase. And trust me, with all the goodies we've got over there, it won't be hard to fill your cart up. :D
With my husband's and my anniversary coming up in just 3 more days (May 4th), the special moment I want to share with you is the night we met. I've been thinking about it a lot lately, about all the little things that fell into place so that we could meet that night.
We met on August 1, 1998. I had just graduated from high school 2 months before that. My family had moved from FL to WV at the beginning of July, but I wanted to spend my last summer before college in FL. So I convinced my parents to let me stay there with a friend's family until shortly before I had to leave for college. Surprisingly, they agreed, and I spent the next few weeks hanging out with my friends. We are LDS and our church was having a regional singles conference July 31 - Aug 2 in Fort Lauderdale. My friends and I decided to drive over there (we were on the west coast) to attend the conference. The first night was not that fun. While it was advertised as a singles conference, and my friends and I were single, we were around 18-20 and it seemed like everyone else there was 35 and older. So we decided we wouldn't bother going to the dance Sat night, and we'd go out to a club instead. That sounded like way more fun. One of my friends (Kim) and I got ready the fastest and decided to go down and see how the dance was going while we waited for our other friends. We walked in and sat down on the outskirts of the dance floor (this was taking place in a big hotel).
Meanwhile, my soon-to-be husband was trying to convince his friends to go over to the dance. He was living in FL for the summer selling pest control. He and the guys in his apartment had thrown a disco party for all the people out there in their office. Then he heard about this singles dance and thought it'd be fun to go over and crash it. But none of his friends wanted to go. It took him a long time to convince them to go with him. When they finally made it over to the hotel, they went up to the front desk to ask where the dance was, and were told there was no dance that night. Needless to say, his friends were annoyed with him and they turned to leave. As they were walking out, some random guy stopped them and said, "If you're looking for the LDS dance, it's down that hall". They followed his directions, found the dance, and started dancing with all the girls who weren't being asked to dance.
Shortly after, my friend and I walked in. Keith saw us sitting down across the room and said to his friend (also named Kim), "You take the short one, I'll take the tall one", not knowing what we looked like or anything. And that was that. Keith and I danced that dance and then the next one, which happened to be the last one of the night. I told him we were leaving to go to a club, he convinced us to go back to his apartment for smoothies instead. We went and we stayed until 4 in the morning. As we were leaving, he asked for all of our phone numbers so he could stay in contact with us (he says now that he really just wanted mine but didn't want to make the other girls feel bad). He also says he was sending me signals all night long, but I had no idea.
He called me 2 days later and asked me out. We went on 2 dates in 1 week. He had to drive over from Ft. Lauderdale - it was a 2.5 hour drive, one way. He'd drive over after he got off work, take me out, and then drive back. Crazy, huh? I left a week later to go home for a week, then out to Rexburg, ID for college. He gave up his work bonus to leave early so he'd have a few days to spend with me in ID before he had to be back to school in Utah. We were engaged by Thanksgiving and then married in May. And that's that - we'll celebrate our 11th anniversary this coming Tuesday. Every now & then, one of us will say to the other, "Can you believe that we actually met?" I know it seems like my story was already long, but there's even more to it that I left out, that should have kept us from meeting each other that night. We really feel like it was meant to be. I made a scrapbook page with a picture we took that night (and please ignore the crazy drop shadows, it was one of my first pages and I was still learning lol)....
Alright, now that you've made it through my LONG story, here's the freebie you'll be getting from me (click the image to download) -
and here's the page I did with it....
**Links will be active until midnight Thursday night 5/6. Then all these blog train goodies are getting gathered up and put into the store!**
Well, I've taken up enough of your time! You can move on to your next train stop - Wendy's blog. Have fun on your "trip" today!!!
