Hey there pretties! Happy Monday!

So being that today is April 22, this is the date that Nate and I use as our ‘anniversary’. Not our wedding anniversary mind you, that’s not until July… But our anniversary of being a couple. Long story short the reason I say it’s the date that we use is because we dated off and on long before that date way back in 2006… Going back so far as 2004 even… but because it was so off and on *cough* we didn’t really know what date to use. 😉

As of today we have been ‘together’ for SEVEN years! 7. We’ve been married for 2 years on July 9th of this year and dated for four + years before getting engaged, five + before getting married. We actually met when we were just kids… In honor of our 7 year ‘anniversary’ I thought it would be fun to start sharing ‘Our Love Story’. In those 7 + years we’ve experienced lots of fun (and not so fun) things, traveled to all kinds of exciting places and made (and lost) so many new friends! So here goes, our love story, part 1.

Our Wedding – July 9, 2011

Nate and I met at the Luna Rodeo dance. The Luna Rodeo is an annual tradition to celebrate Pioneer Days in the small town where I grew up. Pioneer Days are a celebration of the first pioneers who moved to and settled our area. For years my parents were really involved with helping put on the rodeo, the dance, the parade. For as long as I can remember I have never missed a single year! {On a side note, I might actually miss it this year as little miss’s due date is July 18th… It’s the best reason I can think of to miss though! 😉} I’m not even sure exactly what year it was that we met… But it was about the time we were either 10 or 11 years old.

Kassi and Nate circa July 2006, the day after the Luna Rodeo (and several years after we actually met!)

His family owns a little vacation place in Luna and had been going to the rodeo for years. When we finally met at that particular dance, he had friends there (Jory, I think) and I had friends there (Priscilla and Fallon). I can’t tell you what he was wearing, what I was wearing, what songs we danced to… I can’t tell you that it was love at first sight. 😉 We were just kids…  I do remember that he was this really skinny, blonde kid and about as tall as me then… {He’s grown a lot since… but he’s still skinny and blonde… haha} And that we exchanged addresses and decided we’d keep in touch. I still distinctly remember standing outside the fire station (where the dance was held back then) waiting while he wrote his address on a piece of paper. His ACTUAL address. We didn’t even do email and what not then… Ah the 90’s… 😉

For years we wrote letters back and forth to one another. I saved a few that he’d sent me including some of his school pictures that I still have in a box in our bedroom. A few months ago while cleaning out a closet I found letters that I had written to him in a box of his stuff from when we moved into our new house!

I’ll be honest… I was blushing reading through those letters at how cheesy I was! ‘Sorry so sloppy’, remember that? Those were the days when playing basketball, showing pigs at the fair and running around with our friends was all that mattered. So that’s what we wrote about. We had a lot in common even back then… 😉

I’ve saved all of these old letters that I can find so that someday we can show them to our little ones and point out what big ol’ dorks mommy and daddy were throughout grade school and junior high… haha. Like I said, we wrote for years… But finally we grew up a little bit, started high school, made new friends, started dating boyfriends (on my part of course, haha) and girlfriends (his part!) and we just sort of stopped writing…

But you know the story doesn’t end there, so I hope you’ll stick around for part 2 to find out how we reconnected! 😉

Your turn: Have you written out YOUR love story? If you have I’d love to read it! Share the links in the comments below! Or if it’s short and sweet tell me in the comments. I’m a sucker for a good love story!