january date

For Christmas I gave Kent a "Year of Dates" 

Kent's amazing, inspired sister, Shannon, came up with this idea a few years ago: here's her blog about it.

It looked like so much fun, so I spent months researching and planning, and then at Christmas I gave Kent a box full of twelve envelopes with planned dates for the year.

January was our "reenact our first date" date.

Our first date was sometime in the middle of January, 2007.  

Kent stopped me after our biology class and told me,

"Do you like ice skating? I'm going on Saturday and wondered if you wanted to come?"

He said it like he was going to go anyways....and he wouldn't mind if I didn't come....

But he is not the kind of guy to go ice skating all by himself. 

I know that now.

We went.  We went to a tiny little outdoor rink outside of Rexburg, Idaho,

and it was just us on the ice.

(Well, us and a strangely alone 6 year old boy who wouldn't stop following us and talking about horror movies.)

After we skated, we drove out to this hole-in-the-wall hamburger place (Big Judd's).

As we drove, Kent turned on Josh Groban,

and that started the conversations.  I was impressed that he liked Josh Groban. 

We talked easily.  I was comfortable with Kent.  

I found myself telling him things that I would normally never tell a boy I barely knew. Things about my plans and dreams and what I wanted my future to look like.  

The whole time I was talking, in my head I was thinking "what am I doing?? This is our first date! Why am I saying this??"  

I guess it was meant to be. 

We had happy, easygoing fun.

As he dropped me off that afternoon, I said,

"We should do this again sometime."

Turns out "sometime" is seven years and two kids later.

 The rink was crowded.  
We were wobbly and slow,
but it was so great. Great to be doing something other than the typical dinner-and-a-movie dates.

After skating we finished it off with hamburgers at the college's creamery (got to include that college vibe, after all.)

And we listened to Josh Groban as we drove our family car with empty carseats in the back.

Perfect.