How it started...

There's no question that we hate to answer more than how Evan and I met. Not that it was a horrible beginning, but how romantic does it sound to reply with, "Oh, we met on MySpace!" MySpace? Seriously? But that's how it was.
Evan was new to the area. Originally from the East Coast, Evan decided to pursue his education here in Tempe at the University of Advancing Technology. His first year started out pretty rough. Having nothing in common with his roommates, he struggled with severe homesickness and loneliness. That summer, he went home to New Hampshire to help his grandmother with her house renovations and seriously considered not going back to Arizona. Doing a random search on MySpace out of sheer boredom, laced with hope(lol), Evan came across my profile and sent me a message saying that I looked like a nice person, and hoped that maybe I could help him out with finding a local church for him to attend. It was a pretty long message, and I was pleasantly surprised at its length, and its content NOT containing "how cute I was" which was something I had gotten very sick of on MySpace. I liked that he was only looking for friends that did not drink, and knew how to have a fun time. We messaged each other back and forth from July '06 to August before we decided it would be fun to hang out in person, since he decided that he was going to return to AZ. Having had HORRIBLE experiences meeting people online in person, I was not thrilled about it. I decided that if he did want to meet, he could meet me and ALL my friends too. My older sister and I drove down to Tempe to pick him up. I was sick to my stomach the entire trip. Would he just sit there, not talking, in the back of the car? Or would we both struggle to make small talk? I was so happy when it turned out NEITHER. When we pulled up, Evan flung open the door to my parent's suburban and jumped into the back, screaming, "GO, GO, GO!" It was the perfect ice breaker. My sister and I laughed and talked with him the entire trip home like old friends.
We met up with the rest of our friends at my house and he fit right in. We hung out a few more times after that before I went up to NAU, but I was happy that he was still hanging out with my friends even though I wasn't there.
Evan is the funniest guy in the world. Towards October, I knew that he wanted to ask me out, and though I could have just saved him the trouble by asking him first, I was just as shy. Trying to feel things out, Evan asked my best friend how I felt about him. Lucy, with the subtlety of a steam engine, immediately text me out right that Evan wanted to know if I liked him and that I had her approval. I'll never forget the message he sent me, entitled, "Screw this!" The following message informed me that he liked me and wanted to go out on a date, but if I didn't feel the same way, and just wanted to be friends, that's cool. I could forget that he ever sent that email. Laughing, I called him and said yes.
Our first date didn't start out too well. Feeling in a dress-up mood, I wore a skirt, and Evan's look on his face when he showed up in cargo pants and a t-shirt was classic. Evan did not have a car on the West Coast just yet, so I opted to drive. As we weaved our way to our destination (Harkins 25, baby), I came to a stop at a traffic light. I noticed Evan fiddling with his bookbag. When I asked him about it, he said that he had gotten me a present. He proceeded to pull out the softest, cutest stuffed Nemo doll I had ever seen. I loved it! He knew how much I loved Disney, so he had walked from his apartment to the Disney store in the AZ Mills mall earlier that day to get it for me. On the way there, he had gotten hit by a car pulling out of a parking lot, not seeing him on the sidewalk. Poor guy has been hit 3 times by 3 different cars since he moved here!
Finally reaching the theater, we bought our tickets for Employee of the Month, and hated every minute of it. But it was the start of our tradition of going to movies and arguing why they sucked horribly or rocked our socks. We left the theater and went home to where my sister and my then "future bro-in-law" were watching Back to the Future III on the couch. We joined them for the rest of that movie, and Super Troopers right after that ended, so the date was not a complete flop! We've been stuck on each other like white on rice ever since.
It was a little hard only being able to see him on the weekends with me living in Flagstaff, but we made it through that year, and he proposed seven months later at my dad's birthday party. He says he didn't do it right, but it was the most adorable and perfect proposal ever and the best part was that I got to share it with my whole family.
Shortly thereafter, I persuaded him to give up his apartment and stay at my parent's house after the scariest day ever. Walking to school one day, he was held up at gun point by two guys out to scare people. They demanded his wallet, but Evan never carries cash, so they threw it back at him, stole his crappy cell phone, and ran off laughing. They then used the cell to call his mom on it and swore at her and said lots of horrible stuff before we were able to turn it off. We were able to joke about it later because the guys had stolen his phone that was barely working and had no camera or anything, when his ipod nano had been clipped onto his backpack strap at eye level. We said after that, that the ipod nano is so crappy, no one even wants to steal one! Poor Evan has had the worst experience of AZ. He has survived getting hit 3 times by cars, robbed at gun point, and attempted robbery two other times of his laptop and his bike. He's not the biggest fan of Tempe (Lol!).
We were engaged for a year and a half and were married at Regency Garden November
9, 2008. These past 7 months have been great. We had some rough times, such as when Evan lost his job in March, but we made it past that. It took Evan only 3 weeks to find an even better job than before. He works 40+ hours a week and 18 credits at UAT and I couldn't be prouder of him. He is graduating in December with his bachelor's. I'm so excited for him! Right now, we are living in an apartment and saving up money for a down payment on a house. Wish us luck!