our engagements by jen

anytime we need pictures in our family we go straight to our lovely cousin jen...she's the queen of photography and i will drool over our engagements til the day we die and i have to leave them behind.

Here are a few of my favorites, starting with the one we used on our announcements/invites:

wedding #1

when we first decided to get married we were planning on a September wedding...which is weird to think that would be this month.  amanda and jose had been engaged for a year, dated a year before that, and with jose's parents out of the country their date changed countless times. finally they settled on the beginning of July.

my sister is very against attention. which is funny cuz most of her family and her wonderful now-husband is the opposite. so amanda asked me to do a double wedding. having had one already, i figured whatever they had planned would be just enough for me and then it's half the price for both of us. (the biggest part we worked with was the fact that my dad had been out of work for over a year...all expenses were on us...a huge deciding factor because they just could not afford a second trip across the country in 1 year).

BUT the boys did NOT want a double wedding, which turned out to be a good thing in the end. we ended with the weddings just 2 days apart from each other and it was a fabulous wedding weekend.

thursday, july 6th we drove to bountiful and got to be with amanda and jose while they were sealed for time and all eternity.

they had a beautiful reception at The Point in salt lake city, we got to see so much family and have a crazy fun night celebrating amanda and jose. she was a gorgeous bride and he was a fabulous latino dancing groom.  i'll love them forever for sharing that week with us.

ENGAGED

Of course he decided April Fools Day was the answer. We both have different details to this story that we like to share.  Here is my side:

We took a weekend trip to Salt Lake because my sister Amanda and her fiance had some conference tickets for us. We decided to go out to eat, Jose wanted us to go to his old restaurant in Ogden called Sonora Grill. The food was incredible and the service was amazing. I got sweet pork tacos and the guacamole was to die for. Mexican is by far my favorite, and this was a really nice place.

We had an amazing time... Matt was acting a little off and he told me he was just feeling sick. I started to worry about him since we were away for the weekend. Jose insisted that we get dessert so I got a mango sorbet and Matty got flan so we could try both. The waitress brought them over and I was looking at my phone when she placed my plate in front of me. Instead of ice cream there was a little brown box with a bow sitting on my plate. I am embarrassed to say it took me at least 10 second of staring at the box confused before realizing what was going on. I kept thinking "is this chocolate or something? where is my ice cream?"

When it hit me I had to calm myself down, I turned and look at Matty and I will never ever forget his face in that moment.  It was so sweet and humble. I could see how nervous and hopeful he was even though he already knew what my answer would be. I opened the box and it was empty, Jose yelled "APRIL FOOLS"-I did not care for that. But I looked over at my beautiful man and he pulled out the ring, in an actual ring box, got down on one knee and told me how much he loved me. When he asked me to marry him the whole restaurant cheered and the waitresses and managers came over one by one to look at the ring. There were many tears and not just from us. It couldn't have been more perfect.



He did a good job. As per my request, I've got 2 thin rose gold bands that will go on each side of this beauty. I just love my man, and not only because he got me the perfect ring. :)

our first years

i'd like to have a family blog for the amazing opportunity we have of printing out blogs and using them as journals. we've been asked to keep a family history and why wouldn't we take advantage of this amazing modern day opportunity?

so i'm going to start at the beginning, so a few things that are already in my personal blog will be repeated in these first few posts, while i also add some details.

matty and i were lucky to have memories of each other from out very first years of school. when we started dating out parents were excited because they remembered the other one from our kindergarten years. we both had crushes on each other when we were 5 years old, we are standing next to each other in the class picture. One day I'll scan it in for a better view:

i'm the blue socks and he's the snoopy sweatshirt

we separated in first grade then had 2nd grade together again. he said he remembers the outfit i was wearing the last time he saw me before i moved away to ohio in the 3rd grade. leggings and a sweater, something i did wear back then...it's very possible.

i moved away and had a separate life, he grew up with the same friends we knew together. when we were 22 the glory of facebook brought us back together again. a mutual friend from those elementary days had a birthday and he saw my post on her wall. when i saw his face i knew it was little matty from kindergarten all grown up.  i'd been divorced, he had just ended an engagement, we built each other up and from day one never went 24 hours without seeing each other. i'm lucky to say it's stayed that way (although we've only been married 12ish weeks)

...so this blog is our story. and we are going to make it a good one.