One-Rad-Fam: Us - A Memory Lane Detour

About 15 years ago I was "hanging out" with Julie, with one of my friends, in Bedford, NY (about an hour north of NYC - give or take for traffic) looking at some of her pictures when I said "Ooh - who's that" through her laughter she said something to the affect of "Ewww that's Uncle Dan". Now for clarification it's not that she didn't like Dan - they were and still are near & dear friends, she just couldn't envision seeing Dan in a romantic way. Not too long after that night Dan called Julie and invited her & a friend down to Philadelphia (where he was living) for a concert - he had 4 tickets. I had never been to Philly so I went with Julie. It was a great weekend we had a ton of fun Julie & I (Dan had a date for the concert who didn't really get along with Julie so we didn't spend a lot of time with him on that trip). I fell in love with Philly & vowed that I would be living in or near Philly within a year, about a year later I did in fact move to a Philly suburb.

Thanks again to Julie, Dan and I started chatting on the phone from time to time & eventually started to date "long distance" and more normal dating after I did move to Philly. We had some awesome, once in a lifetime dates often meeting in the middle (NYC). On our first official date we saw some of the sites in New York and ended up at the top of the Empire State Building watching fireworks being launched over the East River - it happened to be Columbus Day Weekend & somebody was celebrating. It was a hard act to follow but through the next 3 years (some on & some off) of dating we had fun making some great memories. We took a weekend trip to Disney World - just to spend the day (we had some comp. plane tickets that were about to expire), a camping trip with friends to Acadia National Park in Maine, trips to Palmyra (for the pageant there) with accompanying side trip to Niagara Falls, more hockey games than I can count, a trip to Quebec that Dan loved & I hated (I don't like not being able to understand the language that others are speaking - totally drives me crazy) , sometimes it was just a simple dinner & a movie - Our first kiss....he kissed me as he hopped out of a taxi running to catch a train (not to surprising I know) back to Philly.

Eventually he asked me to marry him - I thought he never would. We were engaged for about 8 months before we got married - not long for some but in Mormon Culture we are far from the norm. We were married on August 15, 1997 in Logan, Utah. We were still living in Pennsylvania then so after the wedding & reception we flew back east and went on our honeymoon in one of our favorite places in New Brunswick, Canada.

We lived just outside Philly for about 1 year before taking a transfer to Washington State. I don't remember much about that year except we hardly ever saw each other. The majority of the time Dan worked weekend-nights & I was going to school & working 1-2 jobs (depending on the timing) . We we both very busy and never "off" at the same time. I was not excited at all about moving to Washington, but it turns out it has been an amazing thing for us. So now it's been 12 years (and one day) since we got married. We now have 3 children that our world revolves around most days, we still both work (although technically I only work part time - with the kids it's more than enough), and we are actively involved in church as well. Needless to say we are all grown up & busy as can be. In the grand scheme of things there's not much we'd change & if we had to do it all over again we would. No starter marriage for us - we striving for eternity.

A few pictures of us through the years:

Our engagement photo