15 yrs

Today Tim and I are celebrating 15 years of marital bliss :) YAY!!!! It's been a FUN 15 years. We've grown so much together and we've been each others best friend....that's how it should be :)

Tim remembers our first meeting better than I do because he noticed me first :) He was sitting by me in sacrament meeting on my first sunday at the branch in Ontario. He must have thought I was a hottie or something :) lol..... I like to think that anyway :o)

At our first FHE for the branch, everyone was sitting in a circle and we went around and introduced ourselves. I was sitting on the couch with a friend, which, we were both surrounded by men :) hehehe.... I introduced myself "I'm Gina Downing, I'm from LaGrande and I'm single, that's why I'm here" Well, Tim leaned over to one of our guy friends and said "We'll see what we can do about that" And boy did he see what he could do about me being single :) HA!!!!! It's fun to remember the past and the fun of those years.

We remmeniss about our so many "first" dates as well :) Thanks to John Jorgensen, our first first date was foiled by John and Tim hiking :) "The roads over here" "It's not too far" LOL!!!!! Tim and John went hiking early in the morning and were supposed to be back in time for us to go out. We had only dated in a group until that time :) well, the guys didn't get back into town until after 10pm...NO DATE!!!!!!! Okay, so we did have a date, just not the one we were planning. We went to dinner. Our favorite place to go to dinner was a dinner downtown Ontario. Kingsbury's owned it. 4th street dinner. They had the best chicken sandwiches and milkshakes.

Then about a week or so later, Matt Anderson and another friend from LaGrande came down to Ontario on their way to Conference and kidnapped me. We left a ransom note with a friend in the dorms :) I had a great time at conference...we went to a BYU/ Uof U game :) It was a blast...that is where I met Mitsie Cowley. We became very close friends in an instant...thanks Matt :)

Tim and I eventually got our first date and have had many dates since then :)

For halloween Tim and I wanted to shock everyone so we went as bride and groom :) He rented a tux and I borrowed a wedding dress. It was such great fun to make everyone wonder :) Everyone seemed to know that we would get married, but it was still fun to shock people...we still have fun shocking people :)

When we got engaged, Tim and I wanted to shock the branch Pres..... he had a FHE at his house and we went to him and told him we needed to talk to him about something serious.... We weren't smiling at this time, we wanted him to be shocked :) hehehe.... So we told Pres. Hunter that we wanted to go to the temple but had some issues we needed to take care of first. He took a deep breath and sighed. He was quite sad.....but then we smiled big and told him that we wanted to go to the temple to get married :) HAAAHAAAA!!!!! He hit Tim and just laughed...then we went into the family room and he told everyone we were stinkers :)

On our wedding night, Tim had to work, so we didn't have a honeymoon. We have since made up for that by going to the coast or getting away by ourselves for a night or two :) Tim has made me laugh and smile almost everyday of our lives :) I have loved having him as my friend in whom I could trust. I appreciate him so much and his strength.

We had another fun experience at a marriage retreat. Well, it wasn't fun at the time, but it was fun later. I was about 12 weeks pregnant...not wanting to be because Josh wasn't even 1 yet. Anyway, during the retreat, I started to misscarry. Tim was talking to Bishop Banner and I was talking to Marshiela. I was crying as was Tim. Bishop and his wife were consoling us. Right after the retreat was over, we left for home. For weeks after that we had people calling us to make sure things were okay. Then another friend called one day and asked if we were getting a divorce. WHAT!!!!!! I guess word had gotten around that we were apparently having problems and we were getting a divorce. Nothing could be farther from the truth :)

Tim and I had grown closer through our trials.

Another one of our shockers was when we were expecting Dallin, we didn't tell ANYONE!!!!! NO ONE AT ALL!!!!!! We did finally tell someone the week we were going to go in and have him :) That was great fun as well

I look forward to our eternity together. I can't wait to see what our next 15 years has in store for us and for others to be shocked :) Watch out everyone, we Love to shock you :)

I love my sweetheart Tim :) He loves me dearly and is my best friend. We are so truly blessed in our lives to have each other and to have so many wonderful friends and family.