How I fell in Love With My Husband

You might have heard Dustin or I say that we have no idea how we ended up together. That’s true. We don’t have the regular relationship milestones. We didn’t have a first date, he never asked me to be his girlfriend, and our first kiss was well…not the best experience (because of me, not him-- but that’s another story). Dustin and his friend Vernon would come over and hang out at my college house (aka The Fire House). Vernon liked my roommate DawnSheree, Dustin was Vernon’s best friend, therefore Dustin was at my house all the time. We started out as kind of “cuddle buddies”. I didn’t think too much of it, because he had also cuddled with one of my roommates (what?!? yeah…again another story). Then we started kissing, making out, and being together more often. All the while never defining what we really were. My fault. I was young and got really freaked out whenever I thought about being in a relationship. I was in college now, away from my family, dating could lead to…gulp…getting married! So lets just say that went on for a really long time. We were “unofficially dating”, I tried to go on dates with other guys, we even broke up once (a hilarious story, but one I will never blog about).

Just for kicks, here’s some pictures of Dustin and I when we were first dating. These were taken 5 years ago. That’s right, 5 years!It’s funny, because the two things that irritated me the most are in these pictures. That hat, and those ugly red pants!


During this time I went on a date with a boy named Jacob. Jacob was cute, and I wasn’t “dating” anyone right? So I went. (Why Dustin married me, after all I put him through, I’ll never know) Jacob had a really nice expensive truck. In fact, it was all he would talk about. He would talk about his truck and his goal to purchase a Hummer. He asked me if I wanted to marry a returned missionary. I said yes. He then went on a rant about why this shouldn’t be a priority for girls. I said how I realized that there are plenty of good guys out there, who didn’t go on missions, but it was just something that was important to me and it was on my list.

Ahh… “the list”. Does everybody remember making those in Young Women’s? I remember not ever being serious about my list writing, but four things always wound up on them. 1. He had to be funny. If he could make me laugh, I knew we would be able to make it through anything. 2. Returned Missionary. I wanted my future son to go on a mission, so his dad would need to be an example. 3. Goal oriented. I wasn’t going to be married to a burger-flipper. 4. Good with kids.

That night after I got home from this date, I remembered my list. Dustin’s goal wasn’t to buy a hummer, his goal was to go to ASU and get his degree in Graphic Design! Dustin served a mission in Argentina. He was good with kids, and most importantly—he made me laugh. Dustin’s first “love note” to me went like this:

Most roses are red,
But this one is yellow,
So shut up about it!

He had asked me to homecoming by filling my room with balloons and writing this story on four poster boards about how they had came to be there:

Roses are red, violets are blue. It would take my breath away (almost as much as these stupid balloons did while I was over at Vernon’s trying to blow them all up. In fact, I was doing it for so long that I started getting all light headed and crap! And once in the middle of the entire episode, I tried to stand up and fell flat on my face on Vernon’s bed. Then when I finally got up, I was soooo mad at the freaking balloons that my eyes went red with rage and I started popping them all! Then I was even more angry cause I had to buy more balloons, that I let the rage take control of me and I told those dang balloons, “You won’t like me when I’m angry!” And I turned into the Incredible Hulk and stormed over to Wal-Mart where I destroyed the party section seriously injuring and possibly killing 4 old women greeters and 1 young cashier (who was kinda hot) grabbed my balloons and ran through the west wall. Where to my surprise was 4 military tanks and 12 fighter jets. As they started to fire, I grabbed one of the tanks (after I had stuffed the balloons down my pants for protection) and threw it, knocking out the 3 other tanks. As the fighter jets started to turn in fear, I leaped out of the back of one, busted out the cockpit window and as I was brutally mutilating the pilot, the thought of you and your beauty came into my mind and calmed me down and I changed back into my normal self. The authorities then took me into custody and transported me to a sanitarium where I sat for 3 days until Vernon appeared out of a tunnel he had dug in which we escaped in Lance;s car. Then I realized that the balloons were still down my pants and still without air. So once again I began to blow them up. So after all that was over it came time to transport them into your room. This task proved to be most strenuous, and made me extremely angry, and as I said to the balloons, I now say to you- “YOU WON’T LIKE ME WHEN I’M ANGRY!”)

So—how bout homecoming?

So after remembering all this, I called Dustin and told him to come over. I told him how funny I thought he was and how I was so glad that he had goals! He didn’t quite understand why I was saying these things, but then we made out and everything was okay.

I wish I could say that it was smooth sailing from then on, but it definitely wasn’t. The Adversary knew how good we would be together, and he did his darn-dest to keep us from falling in love, getting engaged, and getting married. But we did. We don’t really know how, but we did!

And for all those who didn’t think Dustin had a soft side, here is an email he wrote to me shortly after he had proposed.

Hey sexxxy lady, just wanted to write you and let you know how much I love and appreciate you. You’re better than anything I could have imagined and more than I ever dreamed of having for a girlfriend, fiancé or wife. Thank you so much for everything. You make every day worth living and even make going to that job I don’t care too much for worthwhile. I love you more than I ever thought possible, especially the way my life was before we started dating! I want you to know that although I will never be able to give you everything, that I will spend the rest of my life trying to make you happy. Never before has my happiness depended so much on the happiness of another. You are truly a blessing from heaven and I will always be in debt to my father in heaven for having put you in my life, I love you, I love being with you, and I love who I am when that happens. Until forever…Dustin

Awwwww.

I love you too Dustin.