How it All Began...

Landon was attending BYU-Idaho studying Spanish Education.
Kara was attending BYU-Idaho studying Health Science.
Landon was tired of looking for a date for a big group date.
Kara was tired of being set up.
But finally agreed to let her roommate set her up to send a certain message to another someone. She said she knew the "perfect" person!

And so we went on our first date in January of 2003 to play games at a local elementary school. We played 4-square and floor hockey, ran through an obstacle course, and even had our first dance, randomly, on the side of the road on the way home.

It was a fun night, but neither of us were looking for anything serious, just having fun. A few weeks later we kept running in to each other on campus, though this wasn't the first time Kara had seen Landon around. She spotted him once before in the library and thought, "hmm, I think that's the kind of guy I could marry one day" without knowing a single thing about him, strange! So we started hanging out more and more but both resisted too much interest. The resistance didn't last too long before we couldn't stand being apart.

One month later Kara moved back home for the summer and Landon moved back to California. We talked on the phone with each other every single day for those long four months. Kara visited over Memorial Day weekend to meet Landon's family when he told her he loved her for the first time. Landon visited for Father's Day to surprise Kara, and then again over the 4th of July for Kara's birthday and to ask her dad's permission to marry her. A few weeks later Kara visited Landon in California when he decided to take her to see the Redwoods in Trinidad, knowing her love for trees. We went out to eat, played on the beach, went hiking and at the end of the day Landon found the perfect cliff at the edge of the beach where he asked Kara to be his eternal best friend. She said "are you serious?!" (We had discussed not getting engaged til we went back to school.) And then she said, "yes!"
Landon came to Oregon to meet Kara's family one more time when Kara's dad revealed the truth about a secret admirer on Valentine's Day when Kara was 14 years old. It wasn't the boy(s) Kara had always wondered about, it was her own dad. He explained he felt comfortable telling her now that she'd found someone like Landon.

We headed back to school in September and that's when things got tough! It was hard to plan a wedding and work hard in school and still find time to spend with each other and continue to get to know each other. Landon was busy changing educational/career paths to work toward optometry school and Kara was having a hard time accepting getting married so soon.

In the end, it was just the beginning of the bumps in the road the rest of our lives would have.
We were married on December 20, 2003 in the Boise, ID temple. (Kara never wanted a winter wedding but finally figured out just how right this marriage was and knew it was the right time).
Landon would have started adding children to our family from day one. But Kara wanted to finish her last 3 semesters of school, taking 22 credits her last semester to have it all done! We've always talked about having 4-6 children and didn't imagine the biggest struggle in raising our family would be getting the family here in the first place!