Our story "technically" started in 1997.
I had attended a preview weekend at Emmaus Bible College with a bunch of my buddies in the fall.
Laura (Schiltz) from Atlantic, IA, attended as well with her friends.
Our two friend groups casually hung out over the weekend, not thinking much of it.
Fast forward two years...
Both Paul and Laura attend Emmaus Bible College as freshmen in August of 1999.
The first day contained some icebreaker games in the student center.
During a fast and furious game of ping pong/round-robin, two people are eliminated right away and stand in "the loser's corner".
"Hi, I'm Laura - nice to meet you", she said as she extended her hand to me. ("Wow, this pretty girl sure is being nice to me", I thought) ...and... ("I remember meeting her two years ago at the preview weekend!", I thought).
After I mentioned that we had met back in 1997, she indicated she had no memory of meeting me, yet she did remember all of my friends.
Ouch.
Undeterred and with a sense of stubborn determination, I pursued this lovely gal from Iowa, and we hit it off quickly. Our first date was October 2, 1999, where we had a lovely dinner with our one and only awkward silence moment and then enjoyed an evening walk at Eagle Point Park.
And then we fell in love.
We had very similar upbringings and just really enjoyed each other's company! In fact, during those first few weeks, we openly discussed how much we loved each other and how we'd love to get married.
Did we move fast?
Hell yeah, we did. But we knew this was the real deal.
We both decided that we wouldn't be going back to Emmaus for the second semester (you might say that we started getting glimpses of the ridiculousness of it all).
Laura decided to move to Minnesota to start working and I would return back to the family business, where I had been from 1995-1999.
My family and I were going on our annual Fort Myers Beach trip in January of 2000, so I figured... what better place to propose!
On January 15th, I asked her to marry me on the white sand beaches of Fort Myers Beach.
She. Said. Yes.
We had decided to get married in April of 2000, so we had just a few short months to plan.
Thankfully, getting married in a small town (Atlantic, IA) lends itself to some fairly easy choices (or choice) of menu items, photographers (or photographer) and other planning items.
On April 29th, 2000, we were married in Atlantic Gospel Chapel and very quickly thereafter (hehe), departed to Des Moines for our wedding night.
Funny (?) story:
I have NEVER, EVER locked my keys in my car, and yet I found myself doing just that on my wedding night.
So that happened.
We went to Orlando for our honeymoon and enjoyed lots of theme parks, water parks, restaurants, and just enjoying each other's company.
Following our honeymoon, we moved back to MN and moved into our first apartment in Brooklyn Park.
After a year there, we purchased our first home in Columbia Heights in 2001 and 18 months later, moved to our second home in Brooklyn Park in 2002.
As our family grew, so did our housing needs. So in 2008, we moved to Rogers where we grew our family for the next 12 years.
In 2020, we moved to our current home here in Greenfield - finally, land! Growing kids meant wanting to have land for them to explore and roam, and this beautiful countryside provided the perfect spot.
We have thoroughly enjoyed growing our family.
We have realized that we absolutely love being parents and spending time raising these kiddos. SUPER exhausting at times… and yeah, kinda loud.
But freaking awesome and totally worth it.
Laura and I have been to hell and back with life’s unexpected twists and turns… and then to hell a second time… and back again.
This seems to come with decades spent together.
She remains my absolute best friend and my “ride or die”!