The Carstens: How Nate and I Met and Began Dating

A while ago a blogger I follow wrote a few posts on how she met her husband and when they began dating and I thought it was neat reading about how they got together. In looking back over my blog posts I realized I never wrote this up for Nate and I and, since it feels like my memory retention is failing exponentially each year, I thought it'd be fun to write a post on how Nate and I came to be "we".

La Wis Wis Camping trip 2 months into dating.

Nate and I actually met at a friend's house his first night upon moving to the Tri-Cities. Well, my friend's house as Nate didn't know him yet. :-) Nate's cousin Melany and I were friends (still are!) so she invited him to the party thinking it'd be a good way to get him to meet people. At first glance I was smitten. I wondered who that cute boy across the room was and how could I get to know him better? (I later came to find out that he thought I was pretty cute and intelligent, too, and wanted to get to know me better, as well.) It's sad to say but the evening ended pretty uneventfully for our relationship. We both had a great time at the party but at the night's (er...morning's) end we both left to go our respective ways with no phone numbers exchanged.

Same La Wis Wis trip but after some intense hiking.

What occurred next was a year (a year people!) of hits and misses of us seeing each other. I'd be at a party carefully glancing around to see if Nate was there and being disappointed when he wasn't or I'd be unable to go to a party and then later hear how Nate was there. On the few times we were actually at the same place at the same time we always managed to be close to one another whether it was sitting next to each other at dinner or the movies or gravitating towards the same section of the room. I remember one night our group went out to dinner and I had butterflies in my stomach the whole time as Nate not only sat next to me, but he also talked to me almost the whole time we were there. Then we decided to back to a friend's house to watch a movie and I waited and waited for Nate to show up. Just as I was giving up hope thinking that he'd ended up calling it an early night, Nate walked through the front door and my butterflies became frogs. When we sat on the couch together to watch a movie I felt like a teen in a Young Adult novel. All drama and over-the-top feelings I tell you. :-)

Dragging me into a cave in Lincoln City. I remember water dripping from the ceiling down my pants and struggling to keep smiling for the camera but also trying to get out of Nate's grip to get out of there. He had fun holding me still. This is one of my favorite photos, and memory, of the trip.

Finally, the defining moment came. A weekend ski trip was in the works between a few of us friends and after hearing that Nate was going I decided it was time to work up some courage and make a definite move. It was now or never! Either he liked me enough for us to start dating or I was cutting him loose and going after other fish in the pond. This back-and-forth was no longer acceptable. (At least that's what I told myself. :-)) That ski trip ended up being one of those "magic moments". You know what I'm talking about. Those moments that really aren't all that special. They're not a day at Disney World. They're not meeting your favorite celebrity. They're just ordinary moments that are just so awesome in their ordinariness that they became moments that are unforgettable.

I think that was near the Golden Gate Bridge (we'd just driven over and were hanging out in a parking lot) while visiting friends from San Carlos.

I talked to some mutual friends of ours who happened to be married to get some hints from them. Basically trying to figure out how to let Nate know I was interested in more than friendship without looking slutty. :-) Since I knew wine would be involved (because what's a ski trip at a cabin with a hot tub without alcohol) I wanted to have a plan before going in to the weekend. Or as Nate would say "Plan the dive. Dive the plan.". When we got to the cabin all four of us were in agreement that the hot tub was a must that night. It was snowing lightly, we had Classic 80's playing on the iPod, and everyone was in a super good mood. We basically spend the entire evening in the hot tub (after dinner until late into the morning) just talking and laughing and enjoying each other's company. As a funny story to the evening I remember telling myself to count my glasses of wine because I didn't want to drink too much and make a fool of myself that night or have a hangover the next day for skiing. So I faithfully counted glasses. What I didn't know was that every so often after I put my glass down (and behind me) Nate would reach over and pour more wine into my glass, helpful guy that he is. I ended the evening thinking I'd had three or so glasses of wine when I'd really had three BOTTLES. Let's just say that the next morning was a bit of a rough going until I was up on the mountain in the fresh powder.

Watching the sunset with our San Carlos friends.

Throughout the weekend I flirted and I was pretty sure that Nate got the message loud of clear that I was interested in him as he also flirted back quite nicely. Then the end of the trip arrived and I remember unpacking my stuff from the car and thinking how I could give Nate my number without our friends seeing because I wasn't bold enough to do it with an audience. But there never was an alone moment and Nate drove off into the distance. I honestly felt like my last shot at him had disappeared. It doubly felt that way when I heard that he'd gone to dinner with a group of our friends (including the husband and wife that I'd talked to before the trip) and didn't ask anyone to call me to tag along. (Yeah, totally lame idea I know, but I wasn't in the best frame of mind).

Our second annual La Wis Wis trip and a little over a year of dating. We camped here every year over Memorial Day weekend for five years until small children made us rethink camping in the cold and rain.

The next day I got a call from the husband and wife friends who were giddy with excitement for me. Turns out that at the dinner Nate not only mentioned how much fun he'd had on the trip but kept bringing my name up in conversation. So they ~~pushed~~ suggested that I email Nate the following day to tell him that I'd enjoyed the trip and that I was looking forward to hanging out with him again.

A good 'selfie' on that same camping trip.

I felt like a total goob when three emails later I was finally done gushing on him. :-) The first email was a "hey, had fun hanging with you we should do it again" email. The second was a "oh, and btw there's a get together this week that you should go to." The third was a "of course, no pressure, if you don't want to" lame-o email because I felt like I'd totally stuck my foot in it with the first two.

Heading out to a friend's wedding. Nate picked me up from a scrapbooking get-together and said he felt like a circus attraction as all the women in the room stopped what they were doing and watched him walk back to me, and then watched the two of us head out. My Mom (who was at the scrapbooking event) said that after we left the room everyone was in a twitter to know who he was.

Thankfully, Nate looked past my gooberness and said he'd be there at the friend get together but would also like to set up a date for the following week. A date! With him! By ourselves! Without other people! If I could have danced in my office I totally would have.

Portland Bridge-a-thon. It took us roughly four hours to ride over 11 bridges (and around the city). Nate was the sweetest as I'm not the best biker and he would help push me up the hills that I was struggling on. It was great pumping my legs for all they were worth and then feeling this hand push on my bottom to give me that extra oomph I needed to get up the last leg of the hill.

At the friends get-together that week I put extra effort into dressing nicely (even the ladies at work commented on how good I looked that day) to make a good impression. While I didn't see it my friend later told me that as Nate walked in he scanned the room and when he saw me his eyes bugged out and he mouthed "wow". Then sort of glared at the friend sitting next to me as if saying "why are you in my spot? Sitting next to her is always my spot. Move."

Hanging out with my extended family during a family get-together.

On the day of our date I remember rushing home early from my gym class as I wanted ample time to shower, dress, and primp before he showed up. Of course that would be the day that I lost track of time and literally finished putting myself together right as he rang the doorbell. I sprinted to the door and opened it up to two dozen red roses. Nate sure knew (and still knows!) how to make an impression. I remember being so nervous about making a good impression that I babbled incessantly, sweated profusely, and just knew that I was ruining our date. Nate was so sweet letting me take time to calm down and get my nerves out without putting it as a mark against me. (I showed him my craft room, people. Who does that on a first date?) But our date still went super well and at the end of the night we made plans to go out for a second date. And, as they say, the rest is history. 18 or so months later Nate proposed while we were on a trip to DC, 5 months after that we got married, and 11 months into our marriage we had Abby. We both acknowledge that it was a good thing we had that year of misses to get our lives more in order before we started dating but are so thankful that we figured ourselves out and got together. I'm so thankful to have Nate as my husband!