Happy Anniversary!

Brian and I spent more than half of our courtship writing letters to each other. The mailbox seemed like the perfect photo to celebrate the over 27 years we've known each other. 

It's Friday the 13th and that is a good day at our house. That's the day Brian and I got married 22 years ago right here in Mesa. Here is our story in a nutshell (it's turning out to be a bigger nutshell than I had planned on):

I first saw Brian up at NAU when he walked out on center stage for a dress rehearsal of a play he was in. I was sitting up in a cherry picker adjusting stage lights, so I saw him before he saw me. I thought he was pretty cute. Do you know what I noticed right off the bat? His arm hairs. I thought they were so manly. I was only 18, so it was easy for me to be impressed with such things...not to take away anything from the hair on Brian's arms.

 We dated the rest of the school year and then spent the summer apart, me in Phoenix and him in Mesa.  That summer Brian was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. A few months later I joined the church, too.(That is a whole other story) One year later, Brian left on a 2 year mission for the Church to Washington D.C. In the meantime I went to Germany and worked as an Au-Pair for 1 year to have my own adventure.

  This is when our letter writing began. The year I spent in Germany helped solidify the desire that I began to have to serve a mission, so after Brian had been out for about 18 months, I left on a mission as well. I served in Minnesota for 18 months. When you finish your mission, you have a final interview with your Mission President. One thing that stands out from my interview with President Bennett, was a promise he made to me. He told me that I would know within two weeks if Brian was the ONE. That was, after all a long time to be apart. After 37 months of writing regularly we were finally reunited on a warm (wait...I mean blazing hot!) AZ summer day in August of 1986 right outside my house in North Phoenix. That first embrace was magical. My mission president was right...four days later we were engaged. Six months later we were married in the Arizona Temple on March 13, 1987. I should mention that our letter writing didn't stop, but continued after our engagement as Brian left for graduate school in CA and I lived with his parents while working for America West Airlines. We saw each other over Christmas and maybe  twice more during the 6 1/2 months we were engaged. I'm so grateful for all of those years of writing letters...real, actual letters, not emails, not texts, not phone calls,  but a box full of long, anticipated letters. 

Can't wait to go through them someday.