Thursday, September 18, 2008

Engagement Pictures








































Meeting on the Mayflower Part 2


Melissa and David at Colonial Days in Provo. That is one good lookin' hat Melissa. Yeah. This is totally how I went to Los Hermanos - minus the hat. I looked just a little bit out of the ordinary.


Tuesday, September 9, 2008

2nd Date - Disc Golf

This one is from David's perspective. Sorry, no pictures on this one - - I (Melissa) don't usually take pictures on 1-3 dates. Now, I wish I would have.

So there I was trying to figure out what to do for a second date with this wonderfully interesting and compellingly verbose girl. I wanted to make sure she knew I was interested so I called her before I had a plan. Not a good idea most of the time. It worked out this time. I called her up and said I don't have a plan but I promise to by Friday at 7 will you go out with me. Not those exact words but you get the idea. Once again she agreed. I wasn't shocked this time. We'd both had a lovely time and I felt I would have more to look forward to. This brought me to the dilemma of the dreaded, "What are we going to do."

I knew she was a school teacher, so I wanted to do something fun and adult. I had museums in mind but most of them are closed before 7pm so that was out. I looked up a BUNCH, 'cause well, I figured it would be a nice break from being with 10-agers all day and would reaffirm her in her adulthood. In retrospect that was a little arrogant on my part. Regardless, I struggled with an idea of anything. I talked with family and friends. Several of them suggested disk golf and beings I had just gotten back into that game I had everything I needed for it. So a choice was made. We would go disk golfing.

The night before I had a date with another girl from my ward, it went so bad. Conversation was stilted and difficult to carry on. I thought the girl was having a miserable time and it was no picnic for me either. I found out later that she was quite shy and needed some help in being comfortable. This experience still shook me. I went into my date with Melissa with some trepidation and fear. What if she clams up and is unwilling to talk with me. What if I needed to plan more? What if she decides to hate me and stab me with a fork then slowly pull out my guts and feed them to her cat? What if.... well you get the idea.

I arrived at her condo a little late. I didn't plan for traffic nor did I realize that she lived as far from the freeway as she does. So I'm already at a bad start.

The Disk Golf course I was planning on taking us is in American Fork. She knew of one that was a lot closer and so we went there. She told me it was right across from her school. We parked at her school and walked over.

There were about 100 people in that park that day. I don't know what it was. My guess was a HUGE family reunion. There were people who knew her in the mix - former class members from classes she taught, people she knew from the community, etc. Melissa is a private person and having all these people in the area was initially off setting for her (my word you can't have it).

After that first little awkwardness, we started talking and everything was wonderful. My fears of a crappy date were totally dispelled.

We played some disk golf. But in truth mostly what we did was talk. It was a lot of fun.

After disk golf we went for a walk, and talked. We talked about family and growing up. We talked about funny stories that had happened to us. We talked about haircuts and how unfair for women they are. We talked a lot.

After the walk, we went to a Thai Restaurant and had wonderful food. Oddly enough, we talked there too. Up until they kicked us out. I have to admit that was pretty funny. The poor little waitress came up and very timidly told us, "We're trying to close can you go away now?" Not the words she said, but along those lines and much nicer and much more polite.

So we left and went to her place. And guess what we did there. If you guess talk you win 5 cookie points.

It's hard for me to describe the ease in which the conversation flowed. We went from topic to topic, not franticly like someone feverishly searching for gold, nor in exacting detail like a witness for the defense in a trial. But, calmly with a sense of adventure and wonder as we saw each other's lives unfold before our eyes.

The date ended about 1 and we were both shocked at how fast the time had flown. We had joined up a little after 7 and we had basically talked for 6 hours. Ladies and Gentlemen . . . that my friends is a good date! I knew I wanted more to do with this girl. I don't remember if she brought it up on her own or if I had mentioned that I wanted to see her again first, anyway, she told me about a big group of people who were going up to Salt Lake to see the sights the next day (Saturday). I gladly joined them. But that is a story for another time.