me + jake

Jake is from Cincinnati, Ohio. 

He is hardworking, smart, so funny, and pretty dang good looking.
I also should probably mention that he's a great cook. 

He graduated from BYU and is now going to medical school at the University of Cincinnati!
He's my best friend and I'm so glad we're sealed for eternity! 

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H O W  W E  M E T 

We met early in 2016 all thanks to Jake's sister, Beth. She lives in my home ward in Texas and thought we'd be a good match. In January, she gave Jake my number and we met that weekend. Our first date was ice skating, which I've since learned he chose because he's so good at it!

January through April, we went on almost 2-4 dates a week. Kind of crazy. But neither of us were sure how we felt about each other or our relationship (even though he'll claim he "always knew"). We never became "official" at this time, but we did have a really fun relationship -- comfortable with each other and we just wanted to have fun! 

 For some reason, we had planned that I would go to Cincinnati when the semester ended. But during one of our last times together before summer, we decided that probably wasn't the best idea. 

After we both had been home for about a week or so, Jake's mom texted me and said that he wasn't singing or whistling anymore, and that they were bummed I couldn't make it out to the farm. She asked if she could buy me a plane ticket to surprise Jake for an entire week. I said yes, even though I had no idea what it'd be like... For all I knew, it was probably going to be super awkward because he'd found a new girlfriend or something!

I went to the farm three times this summer and each time we grew closer and closer. It was so fun to see him in his element working and  building things and also seeing his family life. I'm pretty sure any girl that goes out there will fall in love with one of those Blackwelder boys!

At the end of the summer, before he dropped me off at the airport, he told me he loved me.

We had mentioned marriage, but we didn't really go anywhere with it except that it was a possibility in the future.

(In fact, we both agreed that December was way too soon!)

I told him he had to come out to Texas to meet my family, so he did. He drove his truck from Ohio to Texas and hung out with us for about a week. My family loved him. There, we pretty much decided we were going to get married, we just didn't know when.

We drove both our cars to Kansas, left mine there, and then drove his truck the rest of the way to Utah. It was in that next 14 hours that we kind of solidified that we wanted to be together (for eternity, wow). That week, we went and looked at rings. 

You can read the rest of our engagement story here.