in the beginning...

Because this blog is about our family, it seems only fitting to start out with how "we" began. This is probably a repeat for most of you, but I promised Caleb that if I did a blog, it would be used like a journal to record our history. So here goes!

Caleb and I had our second first date on December 8, 2008.  I call it the second first date because we technically had a first date about 3 years earlier, but it seems like you can't really call it a second date if more than a year has gone by.

ANYWAY...

We had known each other ever since I moved to Mesa in 2003. Apparently we met at a fireside. I don't remember this first meeting, but Caleb does, and as his memory is much better than mine, I'm putting it down as fact. After years of casual acquaintanceship (is that a word? Nope.) Caleb decided to go back to BYU for his MBA. At this point, I was excited to have a new friend in Provo and kept in better touch with him. I even invited him to a Sunday dinner with my family.

Well, to make a regular story long (as is my unfortunate habit), we were chatting on Facebook right before Caleb came back to Mesa for Christmas and he asked me out. We had a great time, talked for hours, and thus began our long distance relationship.

Highlights (or not so high-I'm not really sure...) of our courtship:

Page: Talking on the phone just wasn't cutting it, so we had a weekend rendezvous in Page, Arizona. It was the end of January, and we decided to rough it. I worried it would be too cold, but Caleb assured me it wouldn't be.  He was right.  It wasn't cold.  It was freezing.

After freezing all night, this smile shows that I was still at the
stage where I felt I had to impress Caleb.

Fortunately, we decided to check into a motel for night #2. Unfortunately it was the cheapest motel we could find, and our room was next to a bunch of drunk Indians. By a bunch, I mean 15+ in one cheap motel room. Caleb had to tell them to break up the party around 2:00 am.

Costa Rica: My friend, Rebecca Spendlove, and I had planned a trip to Costa Rica in March of 2009. I tried to get Caleb to come, but he wasn't really interested...until he learned that "some other dude" was going. Caleb jumped on the Costa Rica bandwagon right away! Although Costa Rica was a lot of fun, it was also a bit of a learning experience, to say the least.  I'll leave out the gory details--many of you have already heard them anyway. At least Caleb can laugh about it. I, on the other hand, am not quite able to...yet.

the view just outside our hotel

"some other dude" (aka Burke Hatch), Caleb, Becca, and Rebecca

the Colorado cabin: Sometimes Caleb and I suffer mis-communications. Our "vacation" to his parents' cabin in Colorado is a great example of this. Right after arriving in Utah that summer we were dating, Caleb had invited me to their family cabin in Colorado. Sounds like fun, right? He neglected to tell me, however, that the cabin wasn't finished and that it would be more akin to camping out, except instead of cold earth below us, we'd have freezing cold cement. And no running water. And no electricity.  I don't think I have ever been so cold in my life! We spent the days working on the cabin and the nights trying not to freeze. Despite the unpleasant temperature, I did enjoy myself and loved the scenery.  Oh, and I met his parents for the first time.

Mt. Elbert: Caleb is a big fan of hiking. Me? Not so much. He has a goal to hike the highest peak (or "point" when no peak is available) in every state. After bugging me about it over and over again, I finally agreed to go along with him on one of his trips.  That's when I knew I must like him a lot.  We summited Mt. Elbert in Colorado. At 14,433 feet, Mt. Elbert is the second highest point in the continental US. As learned from the tortoise, slow and steady won me the race!

Caleb was really, really patient with me. I know he wanted to go ahead, but instead kept my slow pace. That's when I realized that he must like me a lot.