the second part of the beginning

So after that first date with my (now) husband, I went on another date with the other guy. The one with the cool gospel discussions. We took our kids out to Trafalga, and the biggest thing that struck me was the kind of father he was. Not a bad father, but a little distant. I was positive that wasn't what I was looking for. I actually ended up texting Justin at one point during the "date" when my date was with his daughter in another part of the park and I was with mine on a different ride. Turns out Justin texted me back also on a date with another girl!

The Mid-Singles stake was hosting a fireside on media the next day, and I had already decided that I would go. I asked Justin if he wanted to come with me. He said he did, and so he picked me up Sunday evening and we went to the fireside. We sat and talked after the fireside until they started folding up the chairs and basically kicked us out.

Later that evening I was preparing some materials for my class the next day and I was making a PowerPoint presentation. It had been a while since I had messed around with the program, and I was stuck trying to figure out how to animate something. I texted Justin to see if he could tell me how to do it. As I was waiting for him to respond I figured it out. Long story short, he ended up over at my house that evening and helped me with my lesson for the next day.

By the time he went home we had decided that we want to date each other exclusively. We had plans to do Family Home Evening at the park the next day with the kids, and after that spent every single day together. After school I would pack up the kids and head to his house, or he would pick up his kids after work and bring them over to my house and we would do homework and dinner together every single night. That Thursday night we went to the temple together and we looked at each other and knew that we were going to get married.

As we were making plans to get married we thought about a good date. Because I am a school teacher we wanted to get married maybe on a Thursday evening or Friday morning so we could have a few days of honeymooning before going back to work. First, we prayed about it, and I got the distinct impression that we should pick a day and ask Heavenly Father about it. We looked at a holiday weekend in January and took the date to Heavenly Father. I didn't feel great about it, but I also didn't feel bad about it, so we proceeded with plans. Shortly after making that decision I felt an urgency. I kept feeling like we needed to move the marriage date closer. Honestly, we both wanted to skip the ceremony and just head down to the county office and have a judge marry us. But for the sake of the kids we decided a small ceremony would be appropriate.

Eventually we decided to get married the day before Thanksgiving to maximize our honeymoon time. Everything fell into place. We asked my bishop to marry us and had Justin's bishop and the Stake President there as witnesses. It was a small ceremony, just us and the kids, our bishops and the Stake President, and their wives. Justin's parents had planned to be out of town, and my parents lived too far away to get here for  last minute wedding. We plan on doing a big celebration when we get sealed in a year. That is more important to us than a wedding anyway!

Well, that basically sums up our "story". I want to write more about life since then, and I will later. But now you have the very beginning.