A post about Husband

My sister in law Margie did this on her blog, and it seemed like a good idea. Instead of a blog post about me, here's one about my husband.

Where did you meet your husband?
Freshman year, probably at either ward prayer or at my neighbor's apartment. My roommates weren't particularly social and made stinky food, so I frequently escaped to Apartment 126 next door- a couple of the girls were in my french class and we made fast friends.. Kenny was in their FHE group and was over there a fair amount too, so it was inevitable that we'd hang out a bit. The girls tried to fix us up, but I didn't think we had enough in common.
We did go on one date, though. Freshman year he invited me to see the Jazz group perform on campus, and that was technically a "date", but apparently I talked about other guys (my High School guy friends) the whole time and it was a bit of a turn off for him, so things didn't really move forward after that, though we did spend Thanksgiving alone together since the rest of the ward had gone home. At the end of the year, he went on a mission and I pretty much forgot about him, though I occasionally heard news from our mutual friends.
After his mission, we saw each other at a Freshman reunion (whose sole purpose was for us ladies to meet up with all the RMs). I remembered that Kenny had been a Tolkien fan and figured he was on his mission when Return of the King came out, and I had been wanting to watch it, so I asked if he had seen it and if he wanted to come watch it. He lied and said he hadn't seen it, and two or three weeks later he came over and we watched it together. I remember when I dropped him off that night, he asked if he could take me out to dinner the next night, and I said yes. After he got out of the car, I was giddy all the way home. That was nearly 2 years ago today.

What was the first thing you said to your husband?
Probably "Hi, my name is Jenn". He said something about my transformer's t-shirt, which I had "borrowed" from my sister Becky (and still have).

Where was the first kiss? First date?
Ha. I like the order of this question. As I said earlier, we did go on a "date" freshman year, but it hardly counted. After we watched Return of the King together, we went out to the California Pizza Kitchen the next night (November 5th, 2005). We were inseparable from there on out.

The first kiss was a couple weeks later. We were watching Big Fish at my place, and afterwards we just cuddled on the couch. I had sworn to myself I wouldn't initiate the kiss, but I didn't realize that Kenny didn't have much experience or courage when it comes to such things. Anyways, I was doing everything in the book to try and get him to kiss me, and finally I asked him what he was thinking about. He said "I bet you could guess what I'm thinking about". And I said "I bet I could. I'm just wondering why you don't go ahead and DO it". After a few more minutes of him pep talking himself into it, we both leaned in. I think it's fair to say we both initiated the first kiss.

Did you have a long or short courtship? Engagement?
We dated from the beginning of November through Christmas. I think over Christmas break, while we were in our respective homes, we both started thinking more seriously about things. Then we both came back early from home and spent all day every day together for like a week before school started. I think it was during that time we first mentioned marriage, so technically it was about 2 months (geez, that sounds short). He proposed about a month and a half later (February 18th). We didn't get married until August 19th, so we were technically engaged for 6 months, had dated for 9ish months, and had known each other for 4 years (2 of which, Kenny was on a mission).

Where did you get engaged?
We had gone home to meet my parents. I knew after he spoke to my dad, a proposal wouldn't be long coming. We had already picked out the ring, though Kenny made some great additions to it. So, we went home and Kenny had a long talk with my dad. The marriage bit of it wasn't a big deal, my dad liked Kenny from the start. Unfortunately, my dad felt it necessary to initiate Kenny into the family by discussing politics for 4 hours, while forgetting poor Kenny hadn't eaten all day. Poor guy.
Anyways, that night, I took him to see the Portland Temple. On the drive back, the freeway spat me out int he middle of Portland somehow, right next to my favorite fountain. Kenny couldn't have planned that, but he did expect me to take him to this fountain while we were home, since I'd talked about it so much. He had planned on getting down on one knee int he water. Unfortunately, it was the middle of the winter and the fountain was turned off. Even with the water off, it's a pretty cool structure so we just played around for a while anyways. I think I knew it was coming and was trying to make it easier for him. Eventually, he did get down on one knee and asked me to marry him. I think I cried, I can't remember. We were both really happy.

Where did you get married?
The Portland, Oregon LDS temple.

How did the reception go?
It went great! I was sooo happy with how the flowers and cake turned out. My mom and her helpers did a great job. I loved all my little nieces and nephews in matching outfits, and I'm really glad all my siblings got to be there.

How was the honeymoon?
It was amazing. The first night we spent in a fancy hotel in Portland (which looked much fancier online), then we drove up to my parents timeshare Condo in Victoria, Canada. It was the perfect town for a honeymoon- very pretty, but not so much to do we felt obliged to do anything. We were there for 4 days, I think, then we traded with my parents and they came up to Canada while we drove down to their house in Portland. Yeah, it's weird we spent some of our honeymoon at my parent's house, but it's not like anyone else was there, and there was a lot about my hometown I still wanted to show him. We got to go to the zoo and had a great time.

It's been over a year since we married, and things are still great!