Missed part one? Start here!

PART ONE: IT STARTED WITH A GIF

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THE FIRST DATE:

Prepare yourself folks, because today’s blog post is extra special. It tells the story of my last first date ever and I couldn’t be more thrilled to share it all with you from BOTH of our perspectives 😀 It is so funny to see each of our stories side by side and to be honest, it is probably one of my favorite stories to share! A little piece of advice for all of you still in the dating pool: Movies are a bad choice for a first date! Especially if it is a bad remake of a classic like Ghostbusters. (If you liked the new version, I am sorry but it was awful and nowhere near as great as the OG). Now that that is taken care of, enjoy!

HIS SIDE:

I was working at Tri City for the women’s beer tournament. Unfortunately, it got rained out so I just bartended at the club house. After everyone had left, a few of the ladies decided to go to the bar in Luana and invited me along. We stayed there a little bit before I had to head off to Monona for our date. When I told them I was heading straight there, they made me go back home first and change. I guess an american flag shirt wasn’t good date attire.

So I changed and made my way to Monona. When I got about half way there, I realized I had forgotten my wallet. So I turned around and rushed home. I called Megan to tell her that I was going to be late and that my phone was almost dead, but that I was on my way.

I ended up being about 15 minutes late and I apologized a lot because I felt so bad. We talked on our way to Prairie and then went to see the new Ghostbuster movie. Then after the movie, we just drove back to Monona and I headed home. I wanted to text her but I couldn’t because my phone was dead so I did when I got home and my phone had charged a bit.

HER SIDE:

I pulled into the Kwik Star parking lot and parked facing the road. I watched countless cars go by and as each of them slowed down, the butterflies in my stomach would erupt and I thought, “oh that must be him? Nope.” I waited patiently with my nerves growing with each passing minute.

Then my phone rang. It was Ethan.

All I could hear was a frantic, run on sentence about forgetting a wallet, running late, a phone was dying but he was for sure coming. I told him that wasn’t a problem and not to hurry, I would wait. Then I hung up my phone and my first thought was, “what are the odds he is sitting in the parking lot with all of his friends seeing how long I would wait around for him.” I immediately dismissed the thought, but you know how hard it is to get a thought like that out of your head after it has planted it’s seed. It’s hard. Like maybe he isn’t actually here but he isn’t actually planning on it either. Do I wait half an hour and then leave? Where would I go because it is definitely too embarrassing to go home after being gone 45 minutes when I TOLD my parents I was going out for the night.

Then in the midst of my panicked thoughts. Ethan parks his vehicle beside me and I’m not gonna lie, everything after that was kind of a blur.

I remember thinking he didn’t really look like his pictures, which makes since because most of them were at least four years old! We took my car to Prairie because having a borderline stranger drive seemed like a bad idea. He apologized a LOT for being late and I remember it being so sweet because you could tell he truly felt bad about it. I realized pretty quickly that both driving and going to the movies for your first date was a bad idea. For starters, I couldn’t even really look at him, but the conversation flowed really smoothly and there weren’t too many of those awkward first date silences in the conversation.

It just felt natural.

Even just sitting through the movie, whispering comments here and there, felt natural. Then as the movie credits came one, I found myself looking for other things that we could do to drag this out a bit longer. But he talked about the movie and never really brought up other plans so I started second guessing myself, so we got back into my car and started driving home. We were a couple miles from Monona and I was trying desperately to come up with something, anything! Go for a walk? No, that is weird. Go to MJ’s? Too many people and my mom would definitely hear all about it at work on Monday! Side note: I didn’t tell anyone about going on a date…looking back that probably wasn’t my greatest idea. So with no other options, I parked my car next to his and we said good bye. How had I let the date end so soon?!? Who does that?!? IT WAS GOING SOOO WELL AND IT WAS STILL BRIGHT OUTSIDE!!!!!

So you know what I did? I texted him. I texted him that I knew you weren’t supposed to text someone within ten minutes of dropping them off, but I had a really good time and I wished we could have talked more because he seemed really cool.

I clicked send.

And I waited and I waited and I waited. Yep, it was probably a good idea I didn’t try to extend the date, he obviously wasn’t interested. I mean it had been a whole 20 minutes and what kind of person isn’t glued to their phone every minute of the day. He obviously ignored it and blocked my number.

Then I got a text saying how he had had a great time too and we should definitely do it again sometime.

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Was it love at first site? No, but in our defense we couldn’t really look at each other too well sitting in a car or in the theatre. But what I can say is that I knew this man was special. I knew there was something there and that I wanted to learn more about this handsome stranger. We had a couple dates after that before we made it official but the real test was yet to come.

Stay tuned next week for another exciting addition of our story including an 11 hour road trip only two months into dating! Just wait till you see all of the photos!