Corresponding Correspondents

This is where it all started- well, I guess it all started about two months before this picture was taken, in the summer of 1996. Jared was a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, visa waiting in my hometown of Centralia, WA. This is a picture of us on my baptism day, August 11, 1996. Just two weeks later he would receive his visa and be shipped off to Lisbon, Portugal.
In December he sent me our first correspondence. I remember coming home, likely from basketball practice, and seeing this envelope on my pillow. I am sure I squealed. Of course I wrote back, likely immediately (though I can't say the same for Jared when he received my letters, many of his open with "I am so sorry I haven't written." Only later was I to learn that he was juggling several girls, so it must have been difficult to keep track of who he had already responded to).
The unique thing about our letters was that they were so random. They were never about what each of us was up to or how the weather had been, they were filled with stories and quotes and random facts. I used to be constantly on the lookout for unlikely tid-bits that I could include in my letters. It was really an exercise in creative writing.
Our correspondence ended in March of 1998 when he came home from his mission. This was the last letter I received from him- arriving just ONE day before he was to fly through New York where I had wanted to meet him (it was tricky, but I made it- I will save that story for the next time you come over for dinner).

When I came out to BYU in the fall of 1998, we naturally started dating, if for no other reason than that he was one of two people I knew in Utah, and the other was a girl. Though he would say that I had planned that all along as, according to him, my letters to him on his mission kept getting "sweeter and sweeter." Of course, he will have to produce said letters to prove his case.
I am not sure when this picture was taken or where we were going, but it is in the kitchen of my apartment in Provo. We got engaged in April of 1999 and when we had to spend the summer apart, he in Utah and me in Washington, we resumed our letter writing. Now the letters were much more mushy, filled with sweet nothings, but still maintaining a healthy dose of random thoughts and quotes.

With that theme in mind, and the history of my failed blog attempt (so sorry to those of you who have been checking my blog in vain), along with my desire to know what goes on in that encyclopedia of random facts between Jared's ears, we have decided to start a joint blog. I will likely contribute bits about life here at home and the shenanigans of our darling children, while Jared will contribute the thoughts and findings of his random passions and processes.
So, after a nine year break, we are resuming our correspondence, sort-of. Our most treasured times of late have been our evenings, just talking in our room. However, there is just something completely different about writing down your thoughts instead of verbalizing them. I know I fell in love with Jared, the missionary, partly because of his writing- it revealed so much about him; he was, and is, so funny and quirky- in a very good way. So, allow us to pick up where we left off nearly nine years ago. And hopefully after an introduction like this, it'll take.