How We Met
I was only eighteen when Cody and I met. I worked at Outback Steakhouse as a hostess when he first saw me, but I was waaaaaay too busy to be able to search for the cutest guy in the room. Ironically, we went to the same Highschool but he graduated my freshman year, so I had no idea who he was. Even more ironic, we were already friends on Facebook. My coworker one day asked me why I never responded to his Facebook message so I decided to log on and see what he wanted and there Cody was – a month old Facebook message that I probably would have never seen for months to come!
We talked for about five-six days before we actually went out to good ol’ Spaghetti Factory dinner date for restaurant week. When he picked me up, we introduced ourselves and he began to open the car door for me. Right then, I said to myself (if I didn’t fall over and faint) this guy is ALREADY a winner. It was my senior year in high school and I was going out on a date with one of the cutest guys, ever. What.
The morning after our first date, he asked me to get breakfast. All I can remember about that morning is waking up, reading that text, and getting up to run downstairs to tell my mom so fast I thought the whole house was going to fall over. When we got to the restaurant and got settled in, he told me that we can’t date because he’s the JV head coach at my High School, and I was a student. So technically, it was student dating teacher. But began following with “I don’t want that to stop us, I want us to keep dating. So we have to date in secret”. Even though there was only a two year age difference, it still wasn’t allowed. We would sit in his car for hours and hours and we would drive miles outside of Orange County so no one would run into us and to think that we actually got away with all those stressful, expensive get aways.
Four months later, he was relieved from his coaching duties and the next day we dropped the bomb on everyone that we were a “new” couple. He left for UCLA for that summer and we didn’t think twice about leaving one another and worrying about making it work. We knew after two months that we were each others forever. Here we are, four years later getting married and raising the perfect dog together!
how they asked
Almost four years later, we have traveled all around the US camping. When we realized that both of our families would be gone for Thanksgiving, we decided to pack up and go on a spontaneous camping trip in Los Padres National Forest! The second day we were camping, we really didn’t know what to do. Cody asked the groundskeeper where the best (and easiest) place to hike was. There was a waterfall about 11 miles up the mountain and it was only around a half a mile hike. I didn’t think anything of this because we’ve been to so many beautiful places, it never even crossed my mind! The hike was so beautiful and Cody kept fidgeting with the camera trying to make the image perfect, which I thought was weird because we do have iPhones! When we arrived at the waterfall, it was only about two minutes in that Cody wanted to take a “picture”. He began telling me how much he loved me and how he’s always known I was the girl for him. I knew what was happening and I felt the same fainting feeling I got on our very first date three and a half years ago. All of a sudden, in a blink of an eye, there it was – a beautiful rose gold Heidi Gibson ring from the man of my dreams! We were planning on camping for the rest of the weekend, but without cell service I wasn’t able to contact anyone, so we packed up and came home to celebrate that night.
