Mike and I have now been married for 12 years and marriage is HARD! It often times seems that things just cannot go our way. This February, I have been trying to think back to what made my husband and I fall in love. I tend to talk a lot about my family, mainly the kids, but I bet you probably don’t know the story of how Mike and I ended up together!
We both graduated from Boone High School in 1991, but we each dated other people. I kind of thought he was my cousin because his mom, Lila Carpenter had married my cousin, Bill Carpenter. Therefore, Mike was often times at our family reunions! We didn’t put it all together until the summer of 1998! He had been in the Navy and served in Desert Shield. He lived in Washington for a while and had moved back home. We each had our own little starter house in Boone.
On 4/17/99, Mike proposed. It is kind of a funny story. We went to Cosi Cucina in Des Moines for dinner. This is where we had gone on our first real date. He was acting very suspicious and had just bought a new truck that day. (He still has this truck!) We were celebrating my 26th birthday. He told me not to scream and make a scene. Then, he passed a small jewelry box under the table. I was VERY nervous! When I opened it, there was a pair of tiny diamond earrings in the box. I graciously told him I liked them and closed the box. He then told me to put them on. I said “Not in a restaurant!”. He kept insisting. When I turned over the earrings, they had a $4.00 price tag on them from Wal-Mart. There was a velvet bag underneath with the ring in it. I kept looking at it under the table. Then, he WHISPERED, “Amy, will you marry me?”. I said yes and immediately told the waitress. She brought us a dessert and we asked her to take our picture.
That seems like SUCH a long time ago! We were married on 11/27/99 and moved into our first home on UNION St. How cute is that? We had both of our kids there and moved to Grandma and Grandpa Carlson’s farm in the spring of 2009.
That is how we got to where we are today!
