Green Sheet Friday.

Black Friday?  Perhaps.  But forevermore, in my mind, this is Green Sheet Friday!
Ten Years ago today, on the day after Thanksgiving, Jennifer and I started colluding about how to prepare for a pending engagement and ultimately marriage.  We mutually decided that it was the path that our lives were destined to take, so ever-logically, we started drafting the factors that need to be under consideration to help make it happen.

We pulled out a green sheet of paper and began brainstorming.  Through the years, we've talked about "the green sheet", though I don't know that we've known where it was.  Recently, I stumbled upon it again.

As we look through it, it's interesting to see that our biggest concerns were finances and timing.  We trusted that everything else would take care of itself.  After 10 years, I can attest that we made it through the engagement and early marriage years successfully; finances have worked out and we've never had any regrets on the timing. 

On the back, we made "rules of engagement."  These flowed down from two courses I think.  First, we had a great bishop who counseled single adults to stay "out of the box."  The box was pretty much any private place where a couple was confined away from others.  So we had a few rules about being inclusive.  We had rules about respecting personal space and making the most of our time together.  Together, we felt the rules would put us in a place where we could have a respectful engagement that would keep us out of the box.  Since they include some cultural references that you might not get, and I wouldn't want to embarrass Jen, I've left of the actual images of the green sheet..

For the fun of it, we wrote down the responses of our friends as we told them, as follows, for those who can't read my script:

Jen and Joe (interested party): I just want you!

Steve (my roommate): Well good, Joe.  [eyes roll]

Joe's parents: I'm so happy for you.

Ben and family (apartment-mate): Well, it is tradition to ask permission.

Jen's parents: Oh you are?

Isaac (longtime friend): You're kidding, right?

Amy (Jen's best friend/coworker): ---Awww!

Jared (Joe's best friend):  I can't believe you.  I'll still have you for the next semester.

Shannon and Chris (engaged roommate):  Hahahah! Congratulations!

Matt Duke (the ward bachelor): Oh reaaaaally?

Jenn Alder (Jen's best friend/roommate): Ahhhhh!

Erin Steck (Jen's apartment-mate): --No. Way.

So that is the story of the Green Sheet.  The evidence is clear that everything Jen and Joe were bound to do would be thoughtful, methodical, and structured!

Happy 10 years of commitment, dear!

10 Odd Things Here.

Okay, let's play a game.  I'm going to show you a picture, and you'll have to write down 10 interesting things about the picture.  If you know me, you'll see some of the interesting things.

Some of the interesting things 

1.  I'm a bowtie wearer now, which didn't become a regular habit until about 5 years after this photo.  It was a borrowed clip-on bowtie, which I would never wear these days.

2.  This dance was the Deseret Towers Invitational... and were were a Heritage Halls crew.  This would be categorized as crashing the party, wouldn't it?

3.  My roommate (Justus) and I went out with "the Jen's", for which he had a crush and I had a crush.  As you can see, the crush has been realigned.

4.  Clarification:  I am told that this event was one coordinated by the female contingent, which is not all that unusual at BYU.  Though I probably had like a 5:1 ratio of asking vs. being asked for dates.

5.  I went on several dates with Jenn ("Eyes") through the year, and I think she still holds it against me that on one of those evenings, I was double booked with another date later in the evening (could've been a different night than this one, but still).

6.  There's some gal really excited to be peeking her way into the picture.

7.  For some reason, the only balloons in the scene are tied to our dates' wrists.  Easy to not get lost in a crowd, that's for sure.

8.  Seems like we're the only gents wearing hats.  With hats seem to have come with the shirts our dates are wearing.

9.  Those lights in the background look like they are in Thai or some middle eastern language.  Illusion?

10.  I bought a tux shirt a few years ago for events such as this, but A)  Jen seems to think the vertical silver strands sewn into it are tacky, and B) I haven't gotten Jen to go to a dance with me since we were married.


I think we ended up leaving before  too long, because DT just didn't know how to throw a party the way Heritage could.  Freshmen spend an aweful lot of time preparing for the social scene.

Witness: Time Flying

(other than the initial gasps in my head saying, "Wow. I used to fit into that dress," I think it's kind of cute, eh?)

On October 9, 1999, I went on my first date at BYU.....with a blond kid from Tennessee who claimed that I was his "first choice" for homecoming. (That part is still up for debate.....wouldn't you agree, Brianne?). I didn't know him well at all--I wasn't in his Freshman Academy group (heck, I wasn't in Freshman Academy at all), we didn't have any common classes, and we never really ran into each other during the day..... He did, however, live in a neighboring dorm and we did go to church together every Sunday and we did tend to pal around with the same group of people on the weekends.

He was safe, he was funny, he was a great overall choice for homecoming.

We were going on a train--as in, I would have to dance on a train--but it sounded fun, right? No matter how silly I looked? Right? (Please nod in agreement for the sake of my self esteem.)

Thank you.

And really, looking back, it was the perfect date. (Especially when I look back at a lot of mediocre-or-worse dates I endured at BYU before Joe and I started dating in 2002....I realize now that BYU men everywhere should have been a fly on the wall of that train that night. Or at the 7-11 in Heber when we got slurpees. Or in the car when it broke down on the way to Squaw Peak {scandalous...}).

And to think that I married that blond kid from Tennessee is the best part, I'd say. But I'm biased. Because I look at those pictures from that night and realize how lucky I got.

'Cause, lest you haven't paid attention during my years of blogging, I married myself a CATCH-of-a-man, I did.

(And today, as a present to you, Joseph, I officially forgive you for making me take that special library tour.)