The story of us, in a nutshell, I hope

For those of you who don't know us, and for those
who do, this might be new to you so here goes.

Jake and I got together in high school, he was 18, I was 17,( and no I will not give away my age, you'll just have to figure it out from reading the rest of this); but we met in 1999, in what can only be considered the most CLASSY way to meet, and that would be Cruising the "Loop" as they call it in a good old NW Iowa town called Sioux Center. Basically we'd hang out (even in the cold) from about 7-11pm at night driving around and just hanging out. Sounds like fun, right?!



So, anyway all his friends (from the opposing High school I might add), were dating all my friends. One night they were all going out for Pizza to the "Ranch" and then bowling, and they were all like "do you wanna come? cause we can get our guys to take him along!" Of course I said yes, I am not crazy! I wasn't really looking for anybody, cause I had been burnt in the past, but I figured it couldn't hurt to try right? So there we were a slice of pizza between us....and like 14 other people:-) Haha! Anyway we hung out all night talking and eating pizza and bowling and the end of the night came to be. I was sitting down taking my lovely and stylish bowling shoes off and Jake struts over in his cowboy boots and sits down next to me. Here is what he said verbatim. "So, do you wanna make it official, do you wanna be my girlfriend?" and me so eagerly said "OK!" and that was that. Then we drove off into the night in separate vehicles. What a way to start. The rest as they say, is history.



8 years later, yes you saw that correctly, I decided to make Jake a meal that I had found on the internet called "Engagement Chicken" and decided it couldn't hurt to try, I mean it had to work after all this time, right? So the plan was for me to cook Jake a meal at his house while he was gone to work and wasn't supposed to be back for at least a few hours. Well, didn't exactly work out as planned. He came home super early and caught me in the act of preparing supper for him almost saw the recipe I had laying on the table for the "Engagement Chicken" and I freaked!
I promptly made him go downstairs and get cleaned up and just relax, and I would let him know when supper was ready. So I finish cooking, we eat and we're hanging out just talking and relaxing. We have some dessert, and I am not feeling well, at all. Not good. My head is pounding, by body hurts and I have the chills, fantastic. So much for a romantic evening, right? So anyway, Jake runs downstairs and says he'll be right back. At this point I feel like I'm gonna pass out, so I don't think I even heard anything he said. He comes back up stairs and sits down on the couch and there is this cap sitting next to him, um okay? We sit there, (and I think he had other plans on how to do this but he's never admitted to it) and he get's down on the floor and I stand up cause I thought he was going somewhere, I don't know why, and he says something like "Nikki I love you and we've been together a long time and I just want to know if you'll make it official and be my wife, will you marry me." (again probably not verbatim since I was probably hallucinating from being sick at this point). All I could say was "are you serious?!" like 10 times, and then I finally said "Yes" and we laughed and cried and hugged for a long time, and all the sudden my sickness seemed to disappear, probably from adreneline. The day after this happened I found out I had the flu and was sick for the whole week afterwords, so I couldn't even enjoy being engaged for the 1st week!



We got engaged on October 7th 2006, and planned our wedding for almost exactly a year later on October 6th 2007. We got married at 4:00 on an 85 degree and windy day surrounded by about 250 of our families and friends.



It was the best day ever, and we waited almost 9 years to get to the day, but it was so worth all the tears, fights, laughter, and all the events we'd gone through to get to this point. We both knew on that day, that we were marrying our best friend, and there are not many things that surpass that knowledge, except of course the Knowledge of God and the fact that He was the one who had brought us through all those years, together. He's the one that has set our path, and now we are in this thing together, dancing through life, no matter what life brings we have God on our side and we can't wait to see what happens next!