Show Us Your Life-How I met my husband.

Neil and I first met officially at a 2002 Sigma Kappa Destination Unknown Fall party at Louisiana Tech. We both had different dates, but ended up dancing at the party. We are pretty sure we met before that party because we pretty much ran in the same crowds. The theme of the party was 2 of a kind or something like that. I was a cop and my date was a prisoner. He was a coach and his date was a cheerleader. He told me later that he was looking at the Party Pics asking his roommate about the"cop" from the SK party.

Here are all of the Sigma Kappas and KA's. To say that I was a bit of a KA groupie might be an understatement. My date and I are right there in the middle. He was only a friend type date.

Fast Forward to June 2003.....we had been seeing each other at one of the most classy places in Ruston...Rabb's. Neil asked me for my number one night and then called to take me on a date. He picked me up from my job at Trinity United Methodist (I was a nursery worker) on a Sunday afternoon. He was with Reeves and my roommate, Merideth. We went to Chile Verde (a Mexican restaurant in Monroe) and he ordered sour cream for me! I thought it was so sweet that he even remembered I loved sour cream! We then went to see Finding Nemo. I ended up giving him a Finding Nemo DVD for our first Valentine's Day and now Bennett watches that same DVD all the time in the car. Funny how things work.

Fast Forward 1 year later from SK Fall Party to the next year same party. We were dates at Party Like a Rockstar. We were punk rockers. I like this picture because it shows how young we look. I'm pretty sure Neil was 12 in this picture. I made our outfits.

Here we are on our first Christmas together. We were actually going to one of Neil's fraternity brother's engagement parties. These friends of his are now some of our close friends...the Raines family.

As I mentioned, I was a big fan of the KA's at Tech. Still am. Neil happened to be the president of his fraternity, TKE. I happened to be the KA Rose (sweetheart) when we started dating. This was not that big of a deal to us, but we thought it was funny. Here I am signing all of the pledge paddles. It seemed like a way bigger deal back in 2004. I just thought I should document. This also happened to be the night that my dad and brother met Neil's family.

Fast forward through 3 1/2 years of dating, traveling, working, graduating, wondering if I would ever get engaged, and having a blast to this 2006 Tech Homecoming morning. We went to Ruston to stay at his parents house for Tech Homecoming weekend. He woke me up with orange juice in champagne glasses asking me to marry him! I was so excited and in shock. Here is the picture that Neil's parents took when we went down to tell them.

And 6 months after that, we were married at the Justice of the Peace. We were just tired of waiting around to be married. So, along with our parents on May 24, 2007 we got married. We were so excited! It turned out to be such an intimate, sweet ceremony.

I wasn't going to write this and I have erased it already, but I decided I wanted to. We have lost some very close friends over not telling that we were married before Hawaii. It still makes me sad to this day (almost 3 years later). Our intent was never to hurt anyone...we just wanted to get married.

Here is our Hawaiian wedding October 6, 2007. This was such a great trip with 34 of our closest friends and family. We think everyone had a wonderful time in Hawaii. I had to take photos of photos because I lost the memory card of our Hawaii trip. It makes me sick every time I think about it.

Now we have our sweet little family. Who would have thought that it would all have started with a dress-up party and Finding Nemo?