Our modest beginnings... (part 1)

So, Kizzie and I went out to dinner last night, thanks to a birthday gift card from my parents. On our drive to the restaurant, we started talking about where we are now vs how things were when we first got married. So... we thought it would be fun to write about some of our fun old poor stories from our early months.

Therefore, I'll start with a very brief history of how we ended up together, and some other background information.

Kizzie and I met probably about 11-12 years ago in our ward in Missouri. I was friends with some of her brothers, and would do things with them on occasion, and would thus run into Kizzie every now and then. We probably actually became friends a few years later. We'd mostly talk at church, or correspond through emails... things like that. Obviously, it was nothing terribly thrilling. We would have fun talking/hanging out at church, and I think it was safe to say we were good friends, but it never really went beyond that.

When I was 19, I went on my mission, where Kizzie became one of my most diligent letter writers (as she was for most missionaries coming from our ward). We had our ups and downs through this correspondence, but remained close.
The day or so after I returned home, Kizzie came to visit. The next day she came back with Karen, another friend of ours, and I asked them if they wanted to come back that night to watch a movie we talked about. Karen was unable to come, but Kizzie said she would come.

So it began.

Over the next couple weeks before leaving for school, we spent a ridiculous amount of time together and had a lot of fun. The whole thing went much differently than either of us would have ever imagined. Within about 1 month of my return, we were engaged. 4 months after that we were married in the Winter Quarters Temple.