This post begins with a story. The story of how Dave and I met and quickly became engaged and then married. All within the course of four months. I know . . . .
I had just returned to Moab after an exhausting year at BYU and had determined to just work my little heart out all summer because "there was no one left in Moab to date". All my friends were serving missions and I was sure the summer was going to be LONG and BORING! My mom said, "Well, Dave Cozzens is working just across the street. Go over and flirt with him." My response . . "Sure Mom, he comes about to my knees." Because my only memory of Dave Cozzens was that he was short. And I was incredibly not. So that ended that, until a few weeks later when Dave walked into the store where I was working. My first thought was, "wow, he's not that short anymore." His first thought was, "Wow, she has a GREAT suntan!" He came back to the store after I was off to ask who I was, then he called and asked me out, and the rest is . . . well, still going on :)
But this is the story of how our names ended up on these trees.
Deep breath! Well . . .when we met Dave was the Scoutmaster of his ward and he had planned a week long camp out at Warner Campground RIGHT during the middle of our engagement. It was critical time considering we only had only dated for three weeks and only had three months to get to know each other before we were "welded together in holy matrimony". But he had promised those boys!! So, during his week long camp out with the Boy Scouts, he took the boys on a hike WAY up above Warner Campground, and, without any of those boys seeing him, because Boy Scouts don't carve up trees in the forest!! he carved our names into this tree with our upcoming wedding date - 8/3/79 - underneath. So sweet :) He also wrote me a cute little love note on the back of a flattened out granola box. It was all he had.
As each one of our children were added to our family, their names were added to our tree. See "Jill, Kimbrey, Brennan, Drew", and Kyle's is down below. I don't know why.
I'm pretty bummed that there is a stick going right up the middle of me in
our cute picture, but when you set the timer on your camera and run to
get into the picture, you take what you get. And for better or worse, we've got each other - we have had for the past 33 years come August 3rd, and we're holding out hope for 33 more.
2 comments:
I never knew Dad was such a romantic. You should keep writing stories from you past here, and then you can just compile it into your personal history :). Or else you should just write one, either way some day we will want all these stories that we don't know.
I was looking at blogs tonight (haven't done that in ages) and came across yours. I love your pictures and your cute kids and grandkids. I especially love this post. When you are up there next, will you grab a couple of pictures of our family tree (Cozzens family) and of my family tree (James family)? I actually have never seen our little tree since we carved it at Mom & Dad's 50th reunion. We never went back to see it after it had-what do you call it-developed? :) Love and miss you.
P.S. I think there needs to be a new rule... if Dave and Paul want to come back to DC again, they need to bring wives. I am getting very tired of the guys. :)
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