July 4th will always hold a special place in my heart, for reasons other than Independence Day. Jesse and I met on July 4, 2004 at a lake party hosted by mutual friends. I remembered Jesse as the dude with the long hair who could do a sweet flip on his wakeboard. After that party, I moved to Dallas for my first year of law school at SMU and Jesse went back to Lubbock and his life at Tech and neither of us really looked back on that weekend. However, both of us were invited back to the same party the following year and our mutual friends convinced me that I should come out and stay for the weekend instead of just a couple of hours. So, here I am in Marble Falls, TX and this amazingly cute boy is there, little did I know that it was the same dude that could do a sweet flip on his wakeboard. In fact, I didn’t even realize that Jesse was that same guy until my grandfather, who had been at the party in 2004 remembered Jesse when he saw him in Dallas in August of 2005.

Suffice to say, that weekend Jesse and I spent a lot of time talking and getting to know each other. I went with him to San Antonio to witness my first ever paintball tournament on Saturday morning, and Jesse, usually the life of the party, snuck away to Austin for a few hours on Sunday so he could spend part of the day with my family on Lake Travis. Apparently, his friends knew something was up when Jesse vanished on Sunday instead of getting in an extra ride and drove back to Austin the following weekend for my shoulder surgery. Interestingly enough, during that first weekend together, Jesse told me that he wasn’t going to tell another girl he loved her until he was proposing to his wife. That weekend, I never imagined that "that girl" would be me. Well Jesse stuck to his guns on and on June 26, 2008, a week before 4th of July, Jesse got down on one knee and told me he loved me and asked me to be his wife.

So what happened in the 3 years between July 4, 2005 and June 26th 2008? Learning to snowboard, driving, Lubbock, Dallas, friendship, fighting, swearing we were just going to be friends, talking all night, Halloween, Supergirl & Superman, loss, support, 3 weeks in Italy, honesty, live music, skateboarding, triathlons, moving, family, graduation, the Bar Exam, birthdays …. butterflies.

- Rachel