9 years down......

Dustin and Jessica Moyes, March 20 1999
Well today is our 9 year anniversary and I wanted to do a special post for the occasion. Right now as I am posting this I am realizing that it was EXACTLY now that we were getting married 9 years ago in the Oakland Temple! How wierd is that?

(Just before school got out our freshman year)

Anyway I thought it would be fun to post some of my favorite pictures over the last 12 years (I always love seeing peoples old pictures). Unfortunately I couldn't get my scanner to work so I just had to take pictures of the pictures which is why some of them are blurrier than others. For those of you that don't know, Dustin and I met our freshman year at BYU in Deseret Towers. We weren't in the same ward or anything (I got stuck with all the return missionary boys that roomed in Deseret Towers, just what every freshman girl is looking forward too) but we did see each other in the Morris Center often. I actually credit his brother Paul, who was serving a mission in Missouri, for brining us together.

(While we were dating at BYU. A few things to note in this picture 1: anyone that wanted to see what Dustin looked like with hair, here you go. And yes it was curly. 2: No comments about my bangs please, enough said. 3: Dustin was making that face on purpose.)

I became good friends with a girl that was from Missouri and knew Dustin's brother as a missionary in her home ward. When she came to BYU she started writing him. He told her to look for his brother Dustin who was also living in DT. So she found him one day and introduced herself and when I saw her talking to him all I could think was that I wished that I was talking to him. I thought he was SO handsome! As time went on I of course thought that my friend liked Dustin and Dustin liked my friend and we sort-of talked a couple of times but I didn't really make myself available because I thought that he was into my friend. Well I came to find out that he wasn't into my friend but that he had really wanted to meet me the whole time! He thought I didn't like him because I had been sort-of stand-of-ish, not wanting to invade my friends territory!

(This was our first formal dance date we went on our Freshman year)

He tells the story that we were actually in the same American Heritage class our first semester at BYU. Anyone that has taken that class knows it is about 1000 people. Well apparently I sat in front of him everyday and I never even noticed him! He says that he noticed me everyday and he would talk to his friend about the redhead that sat in front of him. We didn't actually meet until the second semester and he couldn't believe that the same redhead that sat in front of him in American Heritage was friends with the girl that knew his brother. How cute is that?

(This was a picture actually from our first date. Dustin made me pose like that)

Anyway after a while we finally figured out that we were both interested in each other and we started to date in February of 1996. We were inseperable. We wrote through his mission and as I define waiting.....I waited. But I knew through those two years that I was going to marry Dustin. I think that I even knew I was going to marry him from the first date we went on. I actually have it written in my journal to document it when I was 19 that I knew that I was going to marry Dustin! (what a nerd am I?)

(Dustin drove home from school with me frechman year and spent a week at my house.)

Our first date I found myself having to hold myself back because I felt so comfortable and right with him. I am NOT a forward girl and to be perfectly honest flirting and stuff wasn't something that ever came very naturally to me. But for some reason with Dustin on our first date, all I wanted to do was hold his hand and just be with him like I felt was natural.

(this was when we were both 19 and right before Dustin went on his mission)

We still had our fair share of ups and down. I think that we broke up half a dozen times before his mission and about a dozen times after his mission. But we couldn't stay away long. Something always ended up brining us back together.

(One of our engagement pictures.)

(This was on second honeymoon, we had been married about a month. Since we got married in the middle of the school year we took a real honeymoon when school got out and went down to Disneyland.)

(This was on our first honeymoon. A weekend at grandmas! Doesn't that sound romantic?! It was actually really fun and grandma vacated the place for us and she lives in the Santa Cruz area so we had a blast for four days and then went back to school.)

I can't believe that I have known Dustin for 12 years! Part of me feels like I have known him forever and there are parts that feel at times that I am just getting to know him. I look back at when we were first married and I thought that I knew him so well, and that I knew our relationship so well. Now after nine years I look back and realize how little I knew about him or our relationship and how much we have both grown and changed over the past decade. I am so thankful that I have him to grow and change with. He has taught me so much and been such an example to me in so many ways.

(first ultra sound. The funniest story is that Dustin actually got a picture taken with the ultra sound technician......not me with the technician but he wanted on with himself and the technician.)


(Feel priveledged that you get to see this picture of me because as you can see it is VERY attractive. I just can't believe how young we look. This was in the new married housing at BYU straight home from the hospital)

(You want to see young looking. Check out that picture! Don't we look about 12?)

(Dustin graduating from BYU and we were headed to Portland for the first time.)

(This is my all time favorite picture of Dustin. I think I love all the pink surrounding him and his beautiful babies and how cute he looks holding little Josey. I always smile when I see it.)

(This was about 4 years ago at a wedding. It is just one of the only pictures of us fairly recently by ourselves.)

Through 3 kids, 16 moves, undergrad and law school, a dozen different jobs between us and everything else that comes with all that, I am so thankful to still be together and stronger today than we were nine years ago. I can honestly say that I love Dustin more today than I ever have.