Ali and Ethan sitting in a tree...

The house where we met and had our first... cuddle. ;)

In the fall of 2001, as a new college freshman, I visited the Carleton College's sci-fi house for their open house night. That's where I met Ethan, a junior computer science major with really nice hair. Later that month we went on our first date, first we went out to a coffee shop (where neither of us drank coffee) then went back to the sci-fi house to watch Mystery Science Theater 3000. Days, and  a little confused waffling later we had our first kiss while watching an episode of Star Trek. After kissing, I totally freaked out, like, absolute panic because my last relationship had ended very badly. But Ethan didn't run away, despite my craziness, and we kept dating.

At Carleton Mid-Winter Ball, 2002

Dating Ethan was one of the many things that made my time at Carleton awesome. We discovered that we shared a goofy sense of humor, love for food and travel, and unabashed geekiness. He was a the sweetest guy I'd ever met, bought me flowers, gave me fudge when I was PMSing, came to all my hockey games, and held my hair the first time I got drunk and puked (even though I drunkly told him I'd never love him as much as I loved Star Wars and hockey). It didn't take us long to start talking about the long term, it just felt right.

In the spring of 2002, over a nice dinner at Fuji-ya restaurant (his first time having sushi!), Ethan proposed to me with a poem. Of course I said yes. We were so happy, we rushed back to call our parents and tell them the good news. Well, I was 19 and he was 21 and they did not take it well (at the time it felt so unfair, but now that I have kids I totally get it). So although we were still in love, and still planned to get married, we backed off the official engagement (there hadn't been a ring yet anyway) but we continued dating with the same commitment to each other in our hearts.

A year and a half later Ethan had graduated and moved to North Carolina to work for IBM and we finally got engaged "for real" and I got my ring. At this point we got full support form our families. But being engaged to somebody that lived over a thousand miles a way was hard. During those long years, I visited him on my school breaks and he came to Carleton for as many weekends as he could. And we spent a lot of time on the phone and on chat. Thank god for cell phones and internet. I don't know how long distance relationships survived before them. We did the long-distance relationship thing for 2 years before Ethan moved back to Minnesota.

Finally, on June 25th, 2005, Ethan and I were married, at Carleton, surrounded by friends and family. Since then, we've  traveled abroad, bought a house, moved, bought another house, had two kids, gotten new jobs, adopted a dog, and overall built an amazing life together. Eight years later we're still in love. I still love his goofy sense of humor, how he manages to put up with all my craziness, and, of course, his awesome hair. He's a wonderful husband and amazing father. Like any relationship, we've had our bumps along the way, but we've come through them all stronger than before. And I'm sure we have many more years of kissing and watching Star Trek together to look forward to.

Happy anniversary, Ethan. I love you. So much.