I really love to think and talk about the time when I first started dating Joe! It makes me all giddy and twitterpated like a girl who has a major crush all over again! I know, I'm weird, but one of my favorite things is to read my journals from that time and remember exactly how I was feeling while it was all happening, that is one of the main reasons I keep a journal to be honest. But enough of that, I really want to tell you the story of our first date.
I really love to think and talk about the time when I first started dating Joe! It makes me all giddy and twitterpated like a girl who has a major crush all over again! I know, I’m weird, but one of my favorite things is to read my journals from that time and remember exactly how I was feeling while it was all happening, that is one of the main reasons I keep a journal to be honest. But enough of that, I really want to tell you the story of our first date.
If you were to ask Joe and I about our first date, you would get two completely different stories about a few completely different events. Is that weird? It’s not a huge disagreement in our marriage, we rarely discuss it, but I think about it sometimes. Which date would we go on if we were to recreate our first date? What am I going to tell my kids when they ask about it? I still have no idea, maybe we’ll always consider both of them our first dates, and I’ll tell you why.
(Sidenote: I just asked Joe, to be sure, “If someone asked you what our first date was, what would you tell them?” and first he answered, “I don’t know, I can’t remember that long ago!” and then after I suggested the one that he’d always told me was our first date, he said, “That was the first one I took you on.” So… apparently I’m slowly convincing him that I’m right 😉 but either way, our first date stories are as follows!)
Not a date, but when we were dating.
I should tell you that when my husband and I first met, he had only been home from his LDS mission for three weeks, so he was jobless and didn’t have a car of his own yet. If the guy doesn’t have money or transportation, dates are a little difficult. It’s a good thing he only lived a few blocks away and could walk to my house, and I guess it helped that I had a car of my own as well. Just know that he would have taken me out from day one if he had the resources.
Within a few days of Joe and I meeting, he told me that he’d really like to get to know me better one on one and wanted to know if there was a day during the week, before the movie night we had planned that weekend, when we could get together and do something. Never once did he ask me to “hang out”, which I LOVED!!! Unfortunately, I had a lot going on and he was supposed to start work that week, and our free time was inconveniently opposite each other’s and it looked like we’d just have to wait for a week to see each other.
As luck, or fate, would have it, because Joe spent two years on a mission in a foreign country, his background check took longer than planned and he wasn’t able to start work when he’d planned. One of my plans fell through during the week, so I had a free night open as well. I had a lot of homework to do but I told him that I would love a study buddy if he was up for it. He made me tell him a million times that I really wanted him to come over, I think he likes to make me beg, but he finally agreed. We watched The Blindside while I did homework, and being the recently returned missionary that he was, he chose to sit three cushions away from me through the entire move. After it was over, we went on the first of many long walks!
I thought it was a good first date, and over the next week or so, we did something similar almost every single night. Him patiently watching a movie while I was a dedicated, responsible student (which is so hard to do when there is a cute boy that you’d rather spend time with) and then us going on a long walk after it was over and most of the time ending up on the swings at the park, talking for hours. Those were some of my favorite dates!
Our spontaneous movie night, long walk and talk, and swinging dates were a lot of fun, but if I were to pick the night that I consider our first real date, I would have to say it happened a little over a week before what my husband considers our first date. On November 5, 2010, I made Joe go to a wedding reception for one of my college friends with me. I picked him up and we spent the next couple of hours getting to know each other in one of the longest, but most enjoyable, reception lines I’ve ever stood in. (KaDee, I hope you know that I LOVED every minute of your reception, and the long line was beneficial, not a nuisance!!!) We were able to talk about life, hold hands, stare at each other with goo goo eyes, hug, and talk some more, the makings of a great date!
When we got back from the reception, I decided that I would teach Joe how to make cookies, because he told me that he didn’t know how. I found out later that his mom banned him from baking cookies once upon a time because he used to make them so much and leave her kitchen a mess. Why he felt that he needed to let me “teach” him, I don’t know, I don’t think he got anything out of it that he wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. And then we watched Sherlock Holmes with my brothers. It was one of my favorite dates as well.
Our first picture together, at the reception
So, what is his side of this first date story? On the night that Joe held my hand for the first time (which is a great, funny, entertaining story for another post), he asked me out on what he considered our first date. The date wasn’t for a few weeks, but it was something that he already had planned and needed to find a date for anyway. By the time it rolled around, he had money from his job and he’d convinced his dad to let him borrow their truck for a night, so he could actually take me out. I wrote in my journal on November 13, 2010, the following:
Joey and I went on our first “official” date tonight. I always assumed that our walks counted and him going to the reception and making cookies and stuff counted, but I guess because he asked me and he’s driving and paying, it counts this time for real. We met up with his coworkers at the Cheesecake Factory and had dinner. It was pretty good food, a long wait, but I LOVED the atmosphere! The whole restaurant smelled divine, it was busy, but each booth was cozy, it was warm and the lights were dim. After dinner, we watched the new Robin Hood movie with Joey’s brother and I tried hard not to fall asleep.
I was just thinking about this date and remembered that Joe taught me a couple of things. While I was eating my salad that had avocado on it, my then boyfriend “taught” me that avocados make men really fertile. And while he was eating his penne pasta, he taught me a little Spanish, because penne is not only an Italian pasta, it is Spanish for… something, I’ll let you look that one up on your own if you’re curious. Oh my husband, he keeps life interesting, I love him so much!!!
Our dates are pretty low key, but that’s how we like it, and with our busy schedules, we’re always too worn out for much more. If you were to agree with Joe’s opinion of what our first date was, then we’d held hands, kissed, DTR’d, and become Facebook official all before going on an actual date together. Which actually has happened to me in previous relationships, so maybe I’m the one with a problem and should just stop doing things in the wrong order. That wouldn’t surprise me though because after all, I do like to eat my dessert first…
What did you do on your first date?