From Beginning to Beginning

12/11/11

The first time I met Katie Parker I just thought she was a normal girl.  It was spring semester 2007 (our sophomore year) and we were walking towards the gym after Psychology Lab let out.  I was headed to practice and she was headed back to her dorm room.  We sat relatively close to each other in class but that was the first time we actually had a conversation.  We talked about basketball and how her father was from Kentucky.  As our brief conversation ended I honestly never thought anything of it.  I thought she was a nice girl, but I never imagined I would ask her to be my wife.

We really didn't talk again until spring semester 2009.  Two years had gone by and we both went our separate ways.  I was balancing school, basketball and I enjoyed being single, although I did dabble in the dating world.  She was doing the same thing relationship wise while making better grades than me and preparing for graduate school.  Our paths really didn't cross all that much, but they definitely should have.  At the time, Belmont was roughly 5,000 students and it felt as if everybody hung out with the same crowd.  The on-campus environment was known to have a small feeling atmosphere.  Katie had different roommates that dated athletes, including a couple of my teammates.  We always knew of each other, but never really hung out together.  She came to most of the basketball games (but claims she didn't come to watch me).  We had mutual friends, but it never got to the point where we had a full-length conversation.  Things started to change during her last semester.

Katie was on schedule to graduate May 2009 and was heading to Birmingham in August for graduate school at UAB.  I was on schedule to graduate in August 2009, but I was going to be at Belmont the following year because I red-shirted my freshman year and still had one year of eligibility left.  We had two classes together that last semester (we both were business majors), but one class was off campus about 20 minutes away in Cool Springs.  Out of the blue, I asked Katie if she wanted to carpool with me.  I, still to this day, have no idea why I asked her.  She seemed like a cool girl that smiled a lot and it was going to save us both some gas money, so why not?  She agreed to carpool and that changed everything.

It turned out that Katie Parker wasn't a normal girl at all.  She had the best personality I had ever been around.  She was intelligent.  She was pretty.  She was funny.  She liked sports.  And she laughed at my cheesy jokes.  We probably carpooled together 6 or 7 times that semester and each time I enjoyed her company even more.  Not to mention, she helped me study for tests on the ride there by quizzing me because I had done minimal studying prior to the ride to class.  So as our conversations deepened, it turned out that we had a lot in common.  Here are 5 quick things that made me fall in love with Katie P.:

• We had the same favorite band in High School...The Used.
• Someday she wants court side season tickets for an NBA franchise.
• She had 81 steals during her senior season at Davidson Academy.  Was dubbed "The Glove" by her teammates by averaging 2.7spg.  (I made that last sentence up but they should've.)
• She has a special place for KY men in her heart.  Her dad is from Bowling Green.
• She prefers dogs over cats.

Although those 5 things ignited our love interest for one another, the most important thing is that I can see myself spending the rest of my life with this girl.  She brings a type of positive energy in my life that I have never experienced before.  She is going to be a great mother and wife and I can't see myself without her in the future.  After dating for about 2 years, I knew that it was time to make Kathryn Elizabeth Parker all mine.  So after having the engagement ring in my possession for only 60 minutes, I proposed to her the day after Thanksgiving, November 25, 2011 on campus where we first met .

So far, it has been fun and exciting telling our family and friends about our engagement.  It has also been fun planning our wedding even though it is still 10 months away.  The wedding will be on October 20, 2012 at City Road Chapel United Methodist Church in Madison, TN where Katie grew up.  We plan to reside in Nashville.