From the beginning

Veao and I grew up under the same mesquite tree only 35 miles apart. We knew eachother through 4-H shooting sports, county fairs and of course good 'ol country dances. I am 13 months older than him but two years ahead in school. I always knew that he had a crush on me... and of course I always thought he was gorgeous, but the age difference seemed huge in highschool. After graduation I moved to Las Cruces to go to school at NMSU and a few years later Veao moved off to west Texas to be a government trapper and then traveled the US following natural disasters as a catastrophic insurance adjuster. Several years went by and I would run into him occationally when he was in town, but we never got together. Then one cold night in January of 2007 I had gone out dancing with my cousin and ran into Veao. I had just broken up with a sleeseball boyfriend, who happened to be there that night. There were several people that I knew from around home and Veao was one of them. He claims that I "gave him a look" and then we proceeded to talk and dance the night away. He decided to spill the beans to me and said that he had liked me for six whole years and that he would never treat me the way the "sleeseball" did. At the end of the night I wanted to be sure he was genuine so I told him that if he really wanted to get a hold of me, he knew how to (most of the people he was with that night had my number or lived across the street). Sure enough a few days later we were talking and setting up dates. We really hit it off, and it didn't take us long to decide we were meant for eachother. Actually it only took us three weeks! He took me skiing in Ruidoso around valentines day and it was then that we made plans to talk to our parents and ask for their blessings to get married. The first time I met his parents was to ask them the big question. We decided on a fall themed wedding and tied the knot September 22, 2007. In the mean time we purchased and re-modled two houses, I graduated college with degrees in graphic design and creative media technology, we took pre-marriage counseling classes, got scuba certified, and I was running Hill-Horizon Graphic Design through Jake Sims & Company.

WEDDING
The wedding was beautiful... everything I had dreamed of. We were married at Mesilla Park Community Church in Las Cruces and held our reception at Dickerson's Barn.

I am such a sentimental person that I wanted to include that touch in the wedding. The pianist that played at our wedding also played for my parents wedding twenty five years prior! I used silk from my mom's wedding dress to make the ring bearer pillow, and I left a seat open where my grandparents would have sat. The day was extra special because it would have been my grandma Tommye's 81st birthday. She passed away the March before the wedding but was so thrilled to know we were getting married on her birthday. I can honestly say that it was the
BEST DAY OF MY LIFE!

Bachelorette Party & Honeymoon I'm going a little out of order here... but the bachelorette party was a blast! The girls surprised me and whisked me off to El Paso where we ate dinner at Olive Garden (my favorite restaurant) and then we hit the town. The boys had their party the same night and I'm still not exactly sure what they did. I'm pretty sure it involved poles and meat...
ha ha. It also happened to be Veao's birthday... so I'm sure they had extra fun.

The honeymoon was great! We went camping in Ruidoso for a few days and then we left to San Carlos, MX to go scuba diving in the Sea of Cortez. It was so beautiful and we saw so many awesome things on our dives. We spent a full week in Mexico and completed 7 dives.

I was an avid seashell hunter while Veao was busy spear-fishing. We got to see things like a giant sea turtle, sea horse, starfish, blowfish, eels, an octopus, sea lions, and all kinds of colorful fish. The crew on the boat were great too! They would catch and cook us fresh fish everyday for lunch, it was delicious.