1 November 2007

So many people have asked our story, so I figured that I would post it once and for all....maybe I can get Robbie to put his side on a bit later...we'll see.

Anyway, it all started about 5 years ago when I moved to Cedar City to attend Southern Utah University. When visiting some friends from elementary school (strange, I know--we were friends in kindergarten and such, drifted apart the rest of the years, and became better friends again in college), I noticed this highly attractive person who became known as "Hot Jake."

Eventually, Jake and I kissed, but that ended the infatuation with Hot Jake. Strangely, Hot Jake had this roommate named Robbie that was really fun to hang out with. We would go "mulletmobiling" (placing snowboard decks under tires in a car so that you can spin donuts on pavement), "sleeping bagging" (shoving 2+ people into a sleeping bag and rolling down the hill so that the chances of injury increase exponentially), look up nixon watches online (www.nixonnow.com), and talk about snowboarding and photography. Once we even drove to Park City to go ice skating, only to find out that the rink was closed, so we got hot chocolate at a gas station instead; and another time, Robbie took me and my friend Robyn up to Kaysville to look at Christmas lights.

My relationship with Robbie was strangely similar to my best friend, Ally. We could go months without seeing each other, and rarely hung around the same groups of people, but whenever we were together, it was literally like no time had passed. There was never any "weirdness" and I soon gave Robbie the name "Safe Robbie" because I knew that no matter what happened, he would never be romantically interested in me, nor I in him. Being with him was safe.

After the first year of college, Robbie entered the mission field, where I wrote to him periodically. In fact, I still have the letters he sent back to me....they are truly amusing. I stayed in Cedar for another year then moved to Logan to go to USU (the big guy was in charge, I didn't want to leave Cedar). It seemed I was there to get my roommates married--they would not have found their current spouses the way they did had I not been there.

One year after moving to Logan, I turned in my own mission papers. Soon, Robbie ended up moving to Logan as well. It was funny to be speaking in church, and see him walk into the chapel--He moved into my ward!

We saw each other a few times over the summer, and I entered the mission field in September of 2005. He attended the open house before I left, and while I was in Indiana, Robbie wrote to me a few times.

I returned home on March 29, 2007 and gave my homecoming address on Easter Sunday, April 8, 2007. On the 12th, that next Thursday night, he took me on a date. We spent a lot of time together; my parents were worried that I was leading him on. I wasn't completely convinced at that time that I wasn't doing exactly that.

April 27, I met Robbie up in Kaysville to spend the day with him. His mom and sisters as well as grandma were going to lunch that day. We were invited, so I was suddenly exposed to a large amount of Allreds all in one day. The icing on the cake was when Robbie's nephew, Alex, turned around and said, "Robbie, I have a girlfriend too!" Wow. So much for not being sure if I was really going to truly and seriously date him, now the whole family was involved! The problem was only that I knew inside that the moment I let myself become Robbie's girlfriend I was done. I knew already that there was something here, I just had convinced byself I wan't ready yet for that.

My parents had gone to the cabin that night, so I really wasn't worried about making it home at any particular time. We hung out all day and rented "Walk the Line" which apparently stimulates some incredible conversation....before too long we were "hypothetically speaking" about getting married. Only it wasn't very "hypothetical," and we both knew it. Luckily for me and my fear of the future, I was only his girlfriend for about 4 hours...

...until I became the fiancee.

One week later, our parents met us at Mimi's Cafe in Sandy for dinner, and we went to Le Jardin together to see if it was the right place for the reception. Another wedding reception was in progress, and we were definitely in jeans. Suddenly, Robbie pulls me over to a nearby water fountain, gets down on one knee, and asks me to be his wife. It was darling to see how nervous he was, and eventually we got it on the correct hand/finger. To top it all off, we had attracted quite the crowd, that thought that the bride and groom celebrating their wedding that night should know, assuming that we knew them. They were wrong. We left quickly, before they could attract more attention to the wedding crashers. A few months later, we were married. And that's that.