How We Met / Our First Date

Continuing the Week of Wonders, I've decided to share how Mitch and I met, which is, coincidentally, our first date...

Some background information - my mother had recently gotten remarried and with her new husband, had decided to pack up and move across the state. I made the choice to not only move with them, but to also take some time off of school to help my new step siblings (Henry and Madeline) adjust. They are both disabled and I knew that my sacrifice to not only drive everyone around with our one usable vehicle during the transition, but to also take the time to watch H and M, would be helpful to my newly-wed parents.

So, the summer after I graduated high school, my family and I picked up and moved to Idaho Falls, where I spent an entire 8 months doing nothing but watching the kids, going to Target to "keep busy", and playing video games. My social life was non-existent due to the fact that no one knew where the Single's Ward was, no one in my neighborhood was my age, and my schedule was pretty much flip flopped from everyone else's, but I did buy a lot of useless and random crap.

Long story short, I was pretty unsociable and very lonely.

During the 8 months, my sister attended her Freshman year of high school and met a beautiful girl named Ciara Holt. They developed a strong friendship and were very much inseparable just a few months in to the year. Despite being relatively close to their age, it was awkward to try to hang out with my little sister and her friends, so I mostly shied away from spending too much time around them so that I wasn't like that weird mom always "checking in". Ciara pretty much thought I was like the biggest loner in the world because she started formulating with Abbi to set me up on a date - with her return missionary of a brother!

Little to my knowledge, they had been secretly planning this for some time. Without knowing it, I attended Mitch's mission homecoming. Abbi would randomly ask me to go to Walmart with her for no apparent reason, but being so stir crazy, I would agree to go, only to find out later that Ciara had just asked Mitch to go to Walmart as well so that we could "accidentally" bump into each other. We never did. Finally, Abbi and Ciara took the initiative to steal my phone and text him. It was a very embarrassing and awkward night trying to talk to some guy that I had never met who just got home from a mission. If you've ever met Mitch, you probably know that he is just the slightest bit awkward to have a conversation with - take that and times it by 10 because he was a return missionary, and then another 10 because we had never met. It was probably the most red I've ever been in my life so I'm grateful that there was no way he could see my face or hear me yelling at Abbi from the top of my lungs, "GIVE ME MY PHONE!"

Mitch must have been excellent at setting appointments on his mission because sooner rather than later, I finally agreed to go on a date with him just to appease Abbi and Ciara, who could only think about the possibility that they could be sisters. 

The first time I ever saw Mitch was when he rang my doorbell for our first date. 

I had set up a plan to avoid any "meeting the parent's" or "sitting down and explaining when I'd be home". My plan consisted of waiting by the door, and when he showed up, I'd just leave and get it over with. I was also worried that my new brother, Henry, might try to charm Mitch with his wonderful ability to climb into a car five times faster than the average adult human, and then take an hour to get wrangled out of the car. I definitely didn't want to have to wrestle my brother out of a vehicle with a new date just standing there waiting to leave. Anyway, Mitch rang the door bell and I shot out of the house in Gold Medal timing. I gave Mitch a quick, "Hi, I'm Alex." followed by an immediate, "We can leave now." I was to his car before he even knew it. I was also to his car right as my brother Henry realized that someone rang the doorbell. Sure enough, as Mitch and I were pulling out of the drive-way, my little brother made it out of the front door and was chasing our car. I have no clue what was going through Mitch's mind at the time because all I could say was "Oh, you can keep going. He'll stop before he gets hit." Meanwhile Henry is running in his funny little way and screaming at the tops of his lungs "STOP!" and trying to grab onto the car's door handle.

After convincing Mitch that Henry would be fine and that driving as fast as you can from an Autistic child is okay, our first date started. Mitch hadn't really planned anything but going to get ice cream - apparently even after you tell someone to pretty much get in the car and drive as fast as they can while a young, disabled child is running after you screaming, you can still have a mostly normal date. During his mission several frozen yogurt places had moved into Idaho Falls so he took me to Orange Leaf. We each got a large cup of ice cream and found the last open booth in the joint. Mitch was completely finished with his ice cream by the time I had 5 bites of mine. We spent the first 30 minutes doing introductions, and then 3 hours after that just talking and laughing. Orange Leaf employees actually had to come ask us to leave because it was closing time (on the way out, Mitch ran into the glass door - I still tease him about it). 

After Orange Leaf, Mitch started to take me home, but for some reason totally decided to take me on a tour of Idaho Falls. He showed me where good places were to eat, and then when we got closer to my house, he showed me the ward boundaries - romantic right?

By the time he dropped me off at my house, and per my request didn't walk me up to the door due to my crazy circus family, I had been gone for a little over 4 and a half hours.

There wasn't a goodnight kiss, not even a goodnight hug. But apparently something clicked that night because I agreed to go on a date with him again... every day for the next few months...