I’ve seen a lot of my follow photographers doing “introduction Friday” and telling more about themselves, and I thought now would be the perfect time for me to do just that! It gives you a little deeper connection to me, and makes you feel like you know me more than just the person behind the camera, and I LOVE that! So we’ll start from the beginning.

That’s me!  😉 [Please excuse my partial nudity. HAHA!] My name is Misty. I grew up in a small town in southwest Wyoming called Kemmerer. It’s actually where the mother store of J.C. Penney’s is. Pretty fun fact, and our claim to fame! I spent most of my time growing up there playing outside with my 4 older sisters, pretending we were models, sledding down the hill in our backyard (Wyoming winters are like 7 months long), trekking to school in 3 foot snow drifts, and playing night games with friends at the elementary school playground.

When I was 13, my parents moved us up to Washington state. A tiny central Washington town. I was in for a culture shock seeing that the area was mostly migrant workers, coming from an area predominantly white. When I was there, I made some GREAT friends that I’m lucky enough to still have as friends today, but my time there was short lived. They moved me again the summer of my junior year of high school. That wasn’t such a fun move. I was going somewhere totally new, had to make all new friends, and it was my last two years of high school. Luckily, my saving grace was playing volleyball. I got to meet the volleyball girls about 2 weeks before school even started and became friends with them. This was around the time of the summer Olympics and Misty May Trainer and Carry Walsh were killing it in beach volleyball. This dubbed my nickname “Misty May,” and it sticks to this day around those same friends. I made even more friends there, had some crazy fun times, and got into a bit of trouble. 🙂 Hard to believe. HA!

I graduated high school and knew I didn’t want to stay in that town, so I was headed to Spokane to go to college. Spokane was the biggest city I had ever even dreamed of living in, and it brought a whole new world of fun, like a mall IN TOWN! I spent WAY too much money, and ended up dropping out of school to make more money to pay for this new addiction I had. And you’d never guess what occupation I had………..GUESS!!!!!

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I was an exterminator! haha! You know those nerdy guys that come to your house selling pest control. Yup that was me. And most of the time I got “uh, where’s the goofy guy?” or “this is a joke, right?” or “you’re too pretty to be doing this.” But I would strap on my jumpsuit and crawl under these grown men’s houses because they had a little spider problem. That was always pretty entertaining. Because of it, I know way too much information about carpenter ants, bald-faced hornets (those suckers are NASTY), velvety tree ants (when you squish them, they smell like rotten bananas), mice, and more. It’s come in handy living in the boonies when I need to do my own pest control. 🙂

Unfortunately, due to a, uh, conflict of interest, my boss let me go about a year and a half into it (he made me clean up his dog’s poop in his yard, people!) and so I was stuck with a rent payment for my house, electricity, garbage, and food, all off unemployment. That was not so fun. Meanwhile, my boyfriend lived 2 hours away, I lived in the ghetto, and had to figure out how I was going to make things work. That’s another story we won’t get into.

I ended up finding a technical college (for dental assisting) that I thought “well this could be fun!” Spent way too much money on THAT, for nothing except some helpful knowledge, and an externship at a dental office, in Moses Lake. So back home to my parents’ it was. I moved out of my house, had to pay the rental company an extra $2000 because I had a dog when I wasn’t supposed to (the said there was cat hair everywhere and they had to treat the carpet for fleas….for $2000. Seriously!?!?! Ridiculous.), but I was on the way to becoming a dental assistant.

Fast forward 6 weeks, and the dental office offered me a [paying] job. WOOT WOOT! But I was still stuck living at home. I ended it with the boyfriend that lived 2 hours away (for multiple reasons, remember I said we wouldn’t get into it. He had lost his marbles. We’ll leave it at that. Chris LaDoux sings about how momma’s shouldn’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys. It should say don’t let your babies DATE cowboys.)  So there I was, [sorta] heart-broken, with a new job, living with the ‘rents, in walks my high school sweetheart.

Awe…look at us. Babies. This was his Senior Prom. 😛

We had been talking off and on from the time we broke up in high school. I cheated on him. I was THAT girl, guys. But he still cared about me, and was willing to have another go at it. We dated for a year or so, and I figured he was NEVER going to want to get married. One night, we started talking about it, and it turned out he had been thinking about it for sometime, but he was afraid that I wasn’t into it (“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.” -Second Hand Luke). We agreed that it should happen and we even went ring shopping at one point. RING SHOPPING!!! I found a ring I loved, saw the price tag and thought there was NOOOO way I was getting that. Especially since the price tag didn’t include the center stone. I figured at least he had an idea what I liked, and he could take it from there….

….We were pretty lame on weeknights and so he would come over to my parents house, we’d snuggle on the couch and watch tv, but this night was different. He said he had something for me, and I wasn’t sure what it was. He went out to his car and brought in a hot pink gift bag. “What the heck.” was pretty much all the came to mind, but I pulled out the tissue paper, and low-and-behold, there it was. A gorgeous maroon leather ring box. I looked at him, standing there, and he asked me to marry him. I started laughing and said “you aren’t even going to get down on one knee!?!” and he didn’t, but there’s no other way I would have expected it. Oh, and you know that ring I didn’t think I was getting. I did. And I still stare at it to this day! It’s amazing………

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I can’t tell you my WHOLE life story just yet, so make sure you check out the blog again next Friday to get more of my story!!! 😀

But i’m curious!! How did your significant other propose!?!?! Comment here and share your stories! 😀 I’m dying to know!
If you want to keep reading, check out the next post of the series HERE!