The Beginning Of Us

I read a friend's blog about how they got together and I thought, "what a cute idea for Valentine's Day!"  Her's is obviously more relevant since it has ties to the actual day of February 14th, but what the heck.  I love telling our story and since we never "had the opportunity" to speak in church when we first moved to this ward a year and a half ago I didn't get a chance to tell it, so bear with/ humor me. :)

The short version of our story would be that we met in a singles ward.  The long version is a bit better in my personal opinion. :)
Our story begins in the fall of 2009.  My dear best friend Amy and I had some dear guy friends (Tyler being one of them) whom we liked to gather with and play games.  Our story would first begin with Monopoly, but I am forbidden to mention that period of our history, so suffice it to say...we don't play Monopoly anymore and have not played Monopoly since that certain time.
Anywhoo...a while later, a few of us were playing games one September Sunday and decided to attend ward prayer from our previous ward.  Our ward was recently split and my house and Tyler's house had sadly been annexed (it all ended up being a very good thing since several marriages happened from that event), but we loved our old bishop and they had great treats after ward prayer, so we decided to go to the "old ward."
Well as we were eating our dessert we were all discussing the possibility of driving to Las Vegas that upcoming weekend to do baptisms in the temple there.  Our old bishop overheard, and being a singles ward bishop he says to me and Tyler, "you're getting married in Vegas this weekend?" To which we replied, no, we were doing baptisms.  He then kept insisting that we were indeed getting married in Vegas that weekend and proceeded to tell us his plan.  He would transfer my records back into his ward, he would give me a temple recommend and bada-bing, bada-boom --  we could get married that weekend.  He even offered to pay for the ring, and the marriage license.  And I kid you not, he was serious.  Then the rest of the bishopric piped in and said they would buy Tyler's ring and the their wives were telling us their plans for the reception! I mean wow! Talk about feeling a bit overwhelmed and on the spot and basically everything else!  We finally were able to say, no, and quickly tried to escape, but before we hit the door the bishop stopped us and asked us to at least please pray about it! Ha! Tyler was my friend, and barely that at the time, I was not going to pray about it!  But did I?  Oddly, yes, but very, very VERY briefly.  And not quite how the bishop wanted me to.
So anyway, on our walk home from the church we were laughing about the how situation and decided we wanted revenge.  So, we spent time that night and the next day planning how we were going to get back at the bishop.
Well, Heavenly Father has his own sense of humor, because that next day I could not stop thinking of Tyler. I thought of him in class, at lunch, at study group, etc.  And I always kept feeling the spirit with each thought and I knew I needed to give this boy a chance to win my heart and that there was a good chance he would.
So, anyway, that night we found a $10 Wal-mart engagement ring and went over to the bishop's house and knocked hand in hand with big, goofy smiles on our faces.  The bishop's wife answered the door and said the bishop wasn't home yet but would be soon and to come in and sit down.  She was curious and a little hesitant to believe our story, but kept quiet until the bishop came home.  Well he walked in and saw us sitting all cozy on the couch and said, "oh my word! What have we here?"  To which we explained that we did as he suggested and we prayed about it and felt that it was indeed right for us to get married!  We weren't going to do it that weekend, but we had set a date in December and thanked him for bringing us together!  And what did he do?  He started crying!  Crying!  What!?  That was not in the plan!  We wanted to carry this out for a few days or something.  So we finally said that we were teasing we were just trying to get back at him.  He sat there for maybe 5 seconds. Maybe, and said "It'll happen."  We just laughed, but were told all night the wonderful qualities about the other person.
When we left that night I knew things had changed though.  Something had happened at the bishop's house and I was pretty sure knew Tyler knew it too.  That night as we were getting ready for bed I told my roommate "This is it.  I'm done.  I'm taken.  I'm going to marry Tyler Anderson.  I just know it."
Well the next day Tyler and I talked and "found out" that we liked each other.  A week later we were "officially"dating, and 3 months later (December! Haha!) we were engaged.  This May will be our three year anniversary (wahoo!) and we couldn't be happier!

I love you Babe! Happy Valentine's Day!