Our Love Story

I thought it was about dang time to write out our love story! I get questions all the time about how long Danny and I have been together and how we met and so I thought I would just write it alllllll out. It’s pretty juicy if I do say so myself…

It all started on a lake at summer camp. We were going into our senior year of highschool when we met in the middle of Hume Lake. I was kayaking with my best friend, Gracie, and Danny was on paddle boards with his best friend. I knew the friend he was with and so we waved to each other out on the lake and met up! We ended up sitting out on our kayaks and paddle boards for a couple hours out on the lake just chatting about life and school and everything that was important to a 17 year old. I’m not exactly sure how, but I ended up sitting on Danny’s paddle board and he paddled me back to shore. (Truly, I can’t remember what happened to my kayak- HAHA!)

That was the start to a beautiful friendship. We spent every waking moment of the rest of camp together and once we got home, we hung out every single day for ten days straight. Danny intrigued me. He was so sweet and kind, yet I could tell there was so much to uncover. We came from the most opposite of families and up-bringings and had so much to learn from each other. All our friends thought we were into each other but, truly, it was just a friendship! Maybe there were some buried feelings towards each other from the beginning but we had both gotten out of long relationships that had messy endings and so dating was the last thing on our minds. Actually, during this time, Danny thought he would never date again, and often would tell me that he was convinced he would never marry. ha-ha.

Months passed, we got busy, and we stopped hanging out as much. I worked a lot and dated some other guys casually and Danny was busy and in football season. We had joked and made a pact that if we weren’t dating anyone, we would goto Danny’s Winter formal together, as friends. After the football season ended, we began hanging out more again, and then, my great grandma passed away. It’s kinda crazy looking back but my great grandma Winnie passing started it all for us…

Since Danny was my best friend, he was the first person I called when my grandma died. I was VERY close to my grandma. She raised me in a lot of ways and I had never experienced loss like that before. I was wrecked. When I told Danny, I expected for him to be my knight and shining armor and come running to my rescue to be there for me in my time of need. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. Danny had never experienced loss before either and his 18 year old immature self didn’t know how to process it, never mind help me process it. He ended up ignoring me for two weeks! I was sooooo mad at him and I told everyone that we were DONE being friends. I couldn’t believe he would abandon me in my time of need!

Apparently during those two weeks, he was doing a lot of reflecting. He realized that we were starting to get really close and that scared him. He was still adamant about NOT dating and so he wasn’t sure what to do. He hung out with one of his best friends and his friend helped him realize that either two things were going to come out of our relationship: either we would start dating and see if we worked out good as a couple, or one of us would start dating someone else and our friendship would fade… When he told me what his friend had said a couple weeks later, I was still mad at him and so I replied, “Well, I guess we won’t be friends anymore then!”

After those two weeks of ignoring me, Danny asked me to come to his house. I reluctantly obliged and said “we have ALOT to talk about.” I was going to make sure he knew I was not happy with how he handled my grandma’s passing. When I pulled up to his house, I saw he had covered his garage in huge posters that said “Will You Goto Winter Formal With Me?” I stayed mad at him for about two seconds and the rest is history. I said yes to Winter Formal, and unbeknownst to me, I said yes to the rest of forever.

I’ll spare the nitty gritty details but a couple weeks later, we finally admitted that we had feelings for each other and we started dating.

The rest is history. From then on it was always “Danny and Lauren”. Things got serious pretty quickly. Since Danny was so set on NOT dating, it was a BIG deal that he was dating me. I knew he must really like me! He was so serious about not dating just to date and he told me that the next person he kissed would be the last one. It took him about five months after we starting dating to actually kiss me because of it!

We went to the same college and Danny was accepted into the ROTC program at Cal State Fullerton. Because of this, we knew that we had the next eight years of our lives planned out for us. We knew we would be in school for four years and then Danny would be active duty in the Army for four years. This is what led us to get married in college. My only perception of the military was war, deployment, and uncertainty. I thought that if we got married while we were college, we would have at least a year of ‘normalcy’ before we jumped into military life. Now that I look back on it, it was definitely MY idea to get married in college, Danny just loved me and was in the for ride! haha

Danny proposed at Hume Lake (where we met) the summer going into our Junior year of college. Here’s the video…

and four months after that we got married!! Here’s the video…

Wow- it’s crazy looking back on all of this and realizing that we’ve been married five years already! So much life has happened. I look back on these videos and realize how young we were. We knew NOTHING and yet were making such huge life decisions! It’s truly by God’s grace that we are here today with our beautiful baby girl and happier than ever. I’m so thankful.

If you have stuck around this long to read our love story- you deserve a prize! I hope you enjoyed getting a little glimpse into our life. <3

xo

Lo