Alrighty! My name is Kyle Cochenour, I am 23 years old and am pretty "normal" (if there is such a thing). I come from what most would consider a very large family. I am one of six boys in my family, and the second oldest. If that's not big enough for you my father has 7 siblings who all have children, and my mother has 9 siblings most of which have children. Combined I have 23 aunts and uncles and in the neighborhood of 100 cousins. I was born in the state of Utah where I lived until I was about the age of 7. That is when my family moved to Arizona where they currently reside. My 3 youngest brothers (ages 8, 14, and 15) still live at home. My elder brother, 20 year old brother and I have all left home and are exploring new phases of life.
I love playing music, I play 3 instruments (if I were better at the guitar I would say 4). The Electric Bass, the Double Bass (the big one that is played with a bow), and the Baritone (looks like a tuba sounds similar to a trombone). I was in symphonic as well as marching band all throughout high school as well as a couple of garage bands. It was the motivating factor that helped me to be involved socially during that time. I have always been a pretty soft spoken person, but I was especially quiet during that time.
This is where things start coming around to where this blog comes in to play and my reasons for doing it. During high school I went on some dates and have a few girlfriends even, but there was one girl in particular that I never "dated" but always seemed to be around. We met at church around the age of 12. However, me being my quiet self I didn't really talk to her much although she always struck me as attractive. As the years went by we bumped in to each other at church, school, and other social events and became pretty good friends. My whole family knew her and my mom even invited her over to my house from time to time to babysit my younger brothers, hang out for a little while, and sometimes help out around the house. I was never around for any of that though, I spent a lot of time away from home. Anyway, she would run up and jump on my back in the school parking lot whenever she saw me there as well as always say "hi" whenever we passed each other in the school hallways. During our Junior year I even asked her out on a date! She accepted, so we went and ate hot wings at Native Newyorker and then went and saw the movie "Clash of the Titans". That was the only date that we ever went on though. At one point I found out that she was interested in my older brother so I honestly gave up on ever being anything but friends with her.
Eventually we graduated high school and went our separate ways with life. She moved to Tucson, Arizona for college and I served a full time mission for the LDS church in Buenos Aires, Argentina. During the time that I was gone (2 years) she decided that Tucson wasn't for her and moved back home. From there she left and lived in Hawaii for about 7 months, and from there decided to move to and study at BYU-Idaho. Keep in mind that I was in Argentina this whole time. For those of you who aren't familiar with BYU's school year, they have what's called a "three track system" which means that they have 3 semesters per year. To keep their students from not burning out they have you study for two semesters and then take one semester off. I arrived home to Arizona days after she started her second semester in Idaho.
After a couple of months being home and being unemployed my older brother called me and offered me a job doing door to door sales during the summer of 2014 for a retailer of Directv. I snatched up the opportunity and began my first summer home knocking on people's doors in Texas, Kansas, and Nebraska. My plan was to never live in Arizona again, I was going to live in Utah! I think that Someone Else had a different plan for me though. Weeks before the summer season ended and I was going to live in Utah I felt like I needed to go home, back to Arizona. Which I did, thankfully.
She went back to Arizona about a week before I did. The day that I got home my family told me that she had been over for dinner the night before. I thought about her off and on during the following week as I applied for jobs and figured out what I was going to do next with my life. That Sunday, August 10th was the day that would change my life forever.
I got up that morning and got ready for church. As I drove she popped in and out of my thoughts, I hoped that I would get a chance to see her there. A few minutes before the meeting started I got up to use the restroom. On my way there I saw her, Brandi Harlan. The girl that I had known for years but hadn't seen for nearly 3 of them, was right in front of me. We exchanged an awkward hello as I rushed past her to go to the bathroom.
After the meeting I asked her to come over to my house so that we could catch up and maybe watch a movie or something, to which she politely consented. After that the rest is history! We spent the rest of that day together as well as every day since. After a few weeks I asked her to be my girlfriend and a few months after that I got down on one knee in front of the castle at Disneyland and asked her to be my wife, lucky for me she liked me enough to say yes! We were married in the Gilbert, Arizona temple on February 14th, 2015 (yes, that is Valentine's Day). We have now been married for what will be 11 months in a couple of days now. I can't imagine being happier with the woman that I am sharing my everything with. She amazes me every single day in more ways than one. You will all come to know her fairly well as you read my blog posts in the coming weeks and months.
Now, let me explain my blog a little bit. Brandi has a blog, and a YouTube, and a vine, and a twitter, etc. and has so much passion for them that I though it might be fun to try having one myself. It also helps that she reminds me that I want a blog. That is why I made this blog. You may ask why about marriage, and why 50 Things I Have Learned About Marriage?
Frankly, my marriage is the most important thing in my life and as such is my favorite topic. Also, this blog is actually not for the readers, let me explain. My idea is that by having a blog that I have to be concious of every week I will really evaluate my marriage and myself more deeply than I normally would. In short, this blog is actually for me and my marriage, because of the nature of this blog my hope is to gain more insight into who I am as a man, husband, and future father and become better than I am.
Don't get me wrong, I am thankful for anyone and everyone who reads what I have to say because who knows, maybe I can help someone in their marriage? Maybe one of you can help me in mine? I would love for either one to happen, and if not then hey, I made a blog to better myself and nobody read it, oh well. I want people to read my blog for one reason only and that is to learn from my mistakes and successes and maybe have a better relationship because of it.
Also, 50 Things That I Have Learned About Marriage, there is one for every week in 2016. So every week I will post one thing that I have learned about marriage and when the year is over there will be 50!
There you have it, the introduction is over! Now comes the fun part, let's write some blog posts! Oh, and by the way, feel free to comment any time on anything that I post, comments are not only welcome, they are encouraged. I want to better myself remember? Don't be afraid to give your input. Also, if you have any ideas or questions for future topics I would love to hear them. Thanks everybody! My first thing that I have learned about marriage will be posted on January 12th, 2016 so hop on then and see what it is! Thanks everybody!
This is Brandi and I at our high school graduation.
Here we are as a newly engaged couple :)
This was on our wedding day!
No comments:
Post a Comment