Mike and I met many years ago through a mutual friend. We had a local hang out that we used to frequent on Thursday nights called Moondoggies. It was such a fun place to go to when you're in college because all of your friends would meet up there and it was $2 U-Call-Its, which is great for a starving student budget. HAHA. Lucky for me, my friends worked the door, so the $5 cover didn't apply to me. Candice (one of my bridesmaids) and I used to meet up with each other there all the time as well as my friend Breinne (who will be helping with the guest book at the wedding) and I would head over there regularly together. So I would see Mike there just about as often as I was there. We stayed friends throughout the years of college and more of a see ya when I see ya type friendship. An occasional chat online would be a great addition to getting to know eachother, it was where we could actually take time to talk about life, our future plans, goals, etc. Quite the enjoyable conversation when they occured. Now due to Mike having a girlfriend throughout knowing him and myself having a boyfriend I never really let myself go into the thought of anything more with him. Even though I always thought he was such a cool guy and of course a cutie!

After some time, we started talking about needing to venture out of our friend-circle's that we were in and going to church might be a nice change in our life. Months and months would go by and the conversation and desire was still there it just never seemed to work out. I was going up to Orange County A LOT and that would include Sundays and Mike's traveling to all over the place on surf trips to Costa Rica, going to Hawaii, etc, trying to fit it into our schedules to go together was very hard. Then after a year or more of talking about it, we still had not done the one thing we were really anxious to do, which was check out our local singles ward.

FINALLY, I got a chance to have a long chat with Mike while he was in Hawaii for the month hanging out with family. We talked for a good amount of time about what had been going on with each other. At this point in time, neither of us seeing anyone. Just talking about our lives and things that we would like to do for our futures. There was something different about this conversation. It wasn't just my friend Mike, it was hmm..Mike is a great catch. We finally decided that it was the time to schedule our visit to the singles ward. He was planning on coming back into town on a Thursday, so we decided to go that Sunday after he came back. With that decided, he still had a couple weeks of Hawaii before he would come back to San Diego. However, we talked every day online for a pretty good amount of time each day just seeing how each other's days went and everything.

Then it came time for him to leave Oahu and go over to Kauai to visit some friends that live over there and we would lose that internet connection, so our first phone call after the interest was out there on both ends came. It was a short conversation, but nice, I got the butterflies and knew that this was something worth pursuing.

He came back from Hawaii and Sunday finally came for our "first date" I guess you could call it. He came to my house to go to church, he looked so cute with his sun-kissed blonde hair and his blue shirt that made his eyes stand out like no other! So we get to the church and we're thinking we're like 10 minutes late or something. We walk into the church and sit down and realized after a few minutes of being there that it was almost over. We felt like such dorks, the internet had the wrong time. They didn't update it, so church started an hour earlier or so and we were there for the last 20 minutes. We got one song in and the closing prayer and as soon as everyone was getting ready to get up, so embarrassed that this happened, we walked quickly back out to the car to avoid much eye contact from anyone. Rather than calling it a day, we went to breakfast at the Broken Yolk. We talked the entire time we were there. It was so awesome. Then Mike had to work that night (back when he worked at Outback Steakhouse in Clairemont). So we had to end the wonderful afternoon.

Our dating continued (obviously) and it was only a matter of a VERY short time when I knew he was the one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with!!