The Good Old Times

While we were down in the Provo/Orem area for my Grandpa's birthday Bingo party, Aaron and I did some reminiscing. Since we met at BYU and I ended up putting Aaron through school the first four years of our marriage we have a lot of history there. I will start from the beginning. Here is my apartment while I was still single and going to school--Good old Liberty Square. I lived in the apartment above the office. It still looks the same as when I lived there so many years ago--about 11 years ago.Here is Aaron's apartment that he lived in while he was still single. Both of us were lucky enough to live in apartments close enough to BYU campus we could walk to school. In which we ended up walking uphill to school both ways with no shoes and through huge snow drifts...just kidding, but can really tell our kids we had to walk to school. We both even had to go up these horrendous steep stairs or ramp to get there. We both had some strong legs from walking up those stairs or ramp!Here's the building where Aaron and I took that fateful Karate class. Yes Aaron and I met while taking a Karate class. Aaron noticed me before I noticed him in class. He would listen in on some of my conversations with other people so he knew a lot more about me than I knew about him. That way he could strike up a conversation with me and conveniently we had lots in common. What a smooth guy...Timpanogos Hospital is where I was working the graveyard shift on the medical/surgical floor from 6pm-6am as an RN for about 3 years before Aaron and I met. I also stayed working here putting Aaron through the rest of his schooling which took about another 3 years. Matthew and Josh ended up being born here. That's always fun to show all your coworkers the childbearing side of you :). For the first few years of our marriage we only had one car. I usually would take it to work, but if Aaron needed it he would have to drop me off at work and then come pick me back up when my shift was over. One time Aaron, who was not a morning person, came to pick me up. There was a highway that was the fastest way to the hospital which is the way we would usually go to get to the hospital. That one morning Aaron's reflexes were not the fastest since he was still pretty groggy from getting up early to pick me up and he ended up running over some ducks who were crossing the road. To this day I still tease him about that--poor ducks!! Anyway, while we were single Aaron would come bring me dinner in at about midnight to try and brighten up my shift. He always brought me the same thing--a Taco Bell seven layer burrito and a large Dr. Pepper drink. Makes my mouth water just thinking about it. Our karate class was having an extra practice one night at a different location than the classroom. Aaron asked me to go with him and so that was our first official date. Before the practice we went out to dinner at a restaurant called The Grilled Pepper. It has since closed and become part of the Men's Wearhouse in Orem, but the building is still there. Aaron was nervous and was talking a lot (he talks a lot when he is nervous). We ordered our food and sat down. The place wasn't that busy so it wasn't hard to find a seat. At this place they would call out your order number when your order was ready. We kept hearing them call this number and Aaron kept saying that wasn't our order number. Finally when it had taken forever he went up to check on our order. Yep, the order number they kept calling was ours. Oh well, some cold Mexican food wasn't half bad. Poor Aaron was so nervous!

After dinner we went to get our karate clothes on to go to that practice. It was then that it finally came out that neither one of us really wanted to go to that extra practice. We were relieved that the other one didn't want to go either. We went to catch the movie The Sixth Sense instead at this theater in Orem:After this we started dating pretty regularly. While we were dating Aaron ended up getting a job at the BYU laundry ironing clothes. Still to this day because of his ironing job he is the official ironer at our house, however, neither one of us likes to iron.We drove around on campus. Of course I had to take a picture of the SWKT building. A lot of my nursing stuff happened in this building. I thought we got a picture of the Engineering building for Aaron since that is where he spent the majority of his time during school, but for some reason I can't find it. After dating about four months and after my first visit to meet his family in Texas over part of that Christmas break, he proposed. While we were waiting until we were to be married, Aaron found an apartment that we would live in together after we married. Until we were married, though Aaron lived here by himself. It was nothing spectacular, in fact we really wanted to live in married student housing, but this basement apartment would fit the bill until a spot opened up in married student housing. It only took a week after we were married for a spot in married student housing to open up. So right after I had unpacked all our wedding stuff, we had to pack it all up again and move within a week. We lived in the Wymount apartments in building 3A. This was Matthew's first home after he was born 14 months later. The Wymount apartments were very close to the Provo Temple. You have to look close, but you can see the temple through the trees. We lived close enough that we would walk over and do a session for date night before Matthew was born. Of course you can't go to Provo and not visit the Tabernacle that burned down last month. This was the first place Aaron and I went to Stake Conference together. We are sad it burned down. Matthew's first stake conference was here, too--not that he would remember since he was just a baby.Of course all these places mean more to Aaron and me than the kids. Here's basically the reaction we got from most of the kids while driving around and looking at everything:Who knew that so much would change in these last almost 11 years--5 kids and three college degrees later. Even though school wasn't the funnest, we did have some fun times while living in Provo.