Mother Knows Best

People ask all the time to hear about mine and Tanner's story, so I figured that instead of having to tell it over and over again that I'd just write it down here and make everyone else do all the work and look it up. Because I'm lazy. I'll try to not make it too sappy or cheesy or love-y dove-y for you...no promises though.

I think the first time I really paid any attention to Tanner was our sophomore year of high school in Mrs. Walker's English class. Tanner and his friends were a bunch of hoodlums, always finding ways to torture our poor teacher. But of course during the annoying teenage stage of life where adults are awful, I thought he was the funniest person I had ever met. We eventually started hanging out and developed the same group of friends. A little while later I finally decided to get courageous and asked Tanner to the girl's choice Sadie Hawkins dance our Junior year of high school. And look! Lucky for us our first date is forever documented thanks to the bloody awful tradition known as dance pictures. 

Let's hope this isn't an indication of how our marriage is going to be.

Looking back now, I have absolutely no recollection of what we did for our day date or exactly what happened during that dance, but I do remember that by the end of the night I was suddenly crazy about this boy. Thankfully, he felt the same way and we ended up dating our whole Junior year. And yes, that does mean that we went to our Junior Prom together and got to get ANOTHER adorable picture taken. 

Awwwwww

Shortly after that following summer began, I decided that I didn't want to date Tanner anymore and ended up breaking things off. My mom was crushed after I told her the news and kept telling me how much she liked Tanner and blah blah blah. I was not having it. What did she know anyway? Mothers....

Senior year came and went. Whether we were forced to because we had the same friends or by choice, Tanner and I stayed close friends throughout that year. Tanner left to serve an LDS mission in Argentina a few months after graduation  (he would tell you he left as a "free agent" with no one waiting for him) and I stuck around for school. Fast forward 2 years and all my friends started coming back from missions. As Tanner's homecoming date inched closer and closer my mom kept bringing him up and not so subtly hinting at me to date him again. I think her exact words were actually "You know Tanner's coming home soon. I've always liked Tanner....you should ask him out." Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever, Mom.  

Tanner got back the end of February of this year. I just so happened to be living with his twin sister Tiffani and I just so happened to be single. I swear if I didn't know any better I would have said that my mom had planned this from the beginning. I saw him a few days after he came back and a couple of weeks later he was nice enough to give me another shot and asked me on our first date in years (sadly this time I don't have a cheesily posed picture of it. Sorry). Things started getting a little serious and so I threatened that I was going to go on a mission after I graduated in December. It ended up being a very empty threat. We got engaged on June 26th, 2013. 

Which leads me to the next story that everyone asks me about. How did he propose?! Well...we went on a hike up to the Wind Caves here in Logan Canyon with my brother Mason and his wife along with Tiffani and her boyfriend. I had no idea what was going on so I cheerily booked it up the mountain. Red faced and sweaty, we were told to go take a picture at the top. Tanner pulled out a bouquet of gerber daisies. On it he had written "A Few Reasons I Want to Spend Eternity With You" with a reason attached to the stem of each flower. *heart melt* And that's when--red faced and sweaty--Tanner proposed. And I said yes.

Moral of the story: Mother really does know best. The big day is October 18th, 2013. You are all welcome to come feast on cheesecake and candy with us.