On the 2nd anniversary of our wedding, I think it'd be fun to post a summary of our life together. Let's start at the beginning:

I met Ashton on August 20, 2010 in the Garcia Dorms at NMSU:

Garcia Dorms

I remember the date because I had gotten in  some trouble the night before (we'll skip that story). That night, my friend Paige and I had decided that it would be smart to away from anything that might possibly get us in trouble again. After we ran out of things to do, we decided to go looking for a friend that lived in the dorms. Neither of us had ever been to the dorms before and had no idea where she might even live, so we just went walking door to door hoping to run into her out of sheer luck. Since it was the first day of school, a lot of the dorms had papers in the window with the names of residents. As we walked past one room, we saw "Ashton" with some cowboy images in the window. Our friend had talked about an "Ashton" so we decided to knock on the door and hope that it was the same guy so he could help us find her.

Guess who opens the door? Ashton... without a shirt and with my friend in his dorm room hanging out with him. Funny, that's not romantic at all, right? I agree. Even though he said that he liked me from the moment he opened the door, I didn't give him a second thought because he was a half naked guy with my friend in his room. Alright, we have a horrible love story. It gets better. :)

I remembered that my friend had said Ashton was Mormon, and I definitely needed some church in my life at the time so I invited him to go with me on Sunday. Technically, our first date would be here:

Seriously, how many people can claim church as their first date?! ;)

I had no idea at the time that that would be the first of many, many times we would attend church together. Told you it would get better, but sadly that was not the start of our relationship. After this church service, I would only hang out with Ashton a few times for the next 5 months. In fact, for the most part I think I only hung out with him when my brother invited him to things. My brother and I lived together and loved cooking big meals, so we'd invite others to eat with us who seemed like they could use some home-cookin'. Ashton was one of those people a couple of times. We also loved to go dancing and go to concerts, and Ashton joined us for a couple of those nights as well thanks to my brother. I think the only time I actually hung out with Ashton without my brother's help was when he'd ask for tutoring for math or when we'd actually decide to go to church together, but it wasn't frequent.

Let me back up though. In all fairness, there was this one time that I invited him over because I remembered him saying he was a mechanic of some sorts and my car had been acting up. It was Thursday and I was planning on going home the next day to have my dad tear into it, but I asked if Ashton would just come take a look and see if it was going to make it back to Duncan. He came over and looked at it for a bit before telling me "Oh yeah, it should make it." About thirty minutes later, I was driving on an interstate to class and it just starts smoking out the vents. When I pull over, the whole engine has a billow of smoke coming out from under the hood. I missed a big test in my class and had to wait on the side of the road for 30 minutes for my brother to come pick us and the car up. When Sheridan pulls up, lo and behold he has brought Ashton with him. I was so mad at him for telling me there was nothing wrong with my car when it was actually about to blow up that I didn't say a single word to him.

How sad huh?

   

After that was when I stopped talking to Ashton for a while and I only saw him when my brother brought him around or he really needed math help. In the mean time, we were both dating other people and just enjoying being single.

Even though he never came out and said it, I kind of knew that Ashton had liked me a lot. Then, one night toward the end of the semester we had gone to FHE together and he told me that he had extra food points (I don't know how those work or what they're called) on his meal plan that he needed to use. He offered to buy me a Papa Johns pizza, and then he just dropped me off at my house without even staying to eat it with me. I think this is when I started realizing just how much he liked me and how much of a gentleman he was. He was seriously putting in his time to date me, and if you hear it from his perspective he did everything he could to impress me without coming out and asking me to date him in fear that it would ruin his chances.

In December at the end of the semester, he went back to Benson to work Winter Haven. He told me before he left that if I ever wanted to come take a mule ride through it, he would hook me up. He had been offering all year to give me rides back to Arizona and I kept saying it was a good idea and then never actually following through with it, so imagine his surprise when I called him up and asked to take him up on his offer, on Christmas nonetheless. Christmas afternoon I loaded up my little siblings and drove all the way to Tucson to get an hour mule ride. I saw Ashton in a different light that day, the way that I see him now as so competent in all that he does and considerate of others. In his words, "you impressed me because you didn't want to come just take a ride, but you wanted to bring your little siblings... That's the kind of girl I wanted to marry."

Winter Haven.. Musta been all the lights working their charm ....

Ashton talked about riding his quad while we were down there and I said that Duncan had a lot of places to ride and that maybe he could come down sometime during the rest of winter break. Failure on Charmayne's part because while Ashton went home and gassed up his truck and quad in case I decided to invite him randomly, I didn't think much about it and enjoyed the time with my family. Neither of us texted or called each other the rest of break, and Ashton was too respectful to invite himself over there so it never happened. (He still rubs this in my face...)

By the time we got back to school in January, I had been in the middle of a lot of changes. After hitting a major low, I had decided that it was time to clean up my act and find true happiness again. Poor Ashton was just who I needed to be active in the church again because he was bad enough to not judge me harshly, yet he had a good heart and was Mormon so I could drag him to church and all of the Mormon activities. At the same time, I had also started dating a really, really good Mormon guy who made me want to be better, made me think about a lot of things in my life, and was a great example to me. Honestly, if I had married him instead of Ashton, I would have been happy; but, something kept pulling me back to Ashton--the better that I made myself, the better I wanted him to be. I kept telling myself that I was just friends with him, but one night I was sick and went on a thoughtful date with the other guy and all I could think about was how I would just rather be home and having Ashton take care of me. I realized after that that maybe I had been fooling myself the whole time and I really did want to be with Ashton. I broke things off with the other guy "to figure everything out" and ended up dating Ashton shortly after that.

Ashton and Charmayne--Pre-Dating...Hate this picture

Our first picture after we started dating. He looks so young!

After Church..Smokin' future husband all dressed up

Outside his dorms after a huge snowstorm..
We kept pretty warm ;)

According to his mother, "The picture that introduced us to Charmayne that Ashton had been talking about"

Flowers at work.. it almost became a regular thing.
He learned quick the way to my heart ;)

Within a few weeks, we both knew it was just right, so we were already talking about marriage. I kind of expected him to propose to me soon, but he missed all of the main events that I thought he would do it at, like a trip back home for a wedding or a George Strait concert. The night of our first kiss, we had been up on top of a hill that you can see all the lights of Las Cruces from and I was teaching him how to swing dance, so every month on the anniversary of that we went up to go swing dancing. The night he proposed, I thought it was just like any other anniversary date so I was dressed up real nice in sweats and a t-shirt (sarcastic). Then he comes out of the dorms in boots and a cowboy hat. First clue. He took me up the hill and kept fussing with the music trying to get me to pick out what our song was. Second clue. Then, I got out of the car and waited in front of it for him to start the music and get out. After forever and a day (Bingo, third clue), he got out, spun me around one time with shaking hands and got down on one knee. I have never seen a more nervous man in my life. Super cute :)

Engagement Pictures

He just looks so cute!

That was it. We got married June 18th in the Gila Valley Temple. It was a short-notice wedding so I barely had time to plan anything and half of what I did plan had problems arise, but honestly the only thing I cared about was getting married so I can't complain because at least that went exactly as planned. We've been living the dream ever since. :)

Wedding

Honeymoon