Our Story

How we met.

Sorry for the delay … it took us some time to get our stories straight. Just Kidding.

As you may or may not know Erik and Melinda both work in Church related jobs, the Lutheran Church to be exact. Erik co-owns a company that provides products to Lutherans and Churches (oldlutheran.com) and Melinda works as Director of Education and Family Ministry at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Everett, WA. Each year the ELCA Youth Ministry Network holds a conference for continuing education, networking and etc. Erik has attended this annual event for 10 years and Melinda has attended this event for since 2000. Despite the fact that we have many mutual friends and colleagues, we had never met until the 4th of February of 2006 in Phoenix, Arizona.

The night in question:
Erik was having drinks with friends Holly Johnson and Michael Sladek in the hotel bar. Melinda and her friends and colleagues from Northwest Washington were returning from a night out celebrating the Seattle Seahawks first appearance in a Super Bowl at the Alice Cooper Sports Bar, where they had taken part in the whole experience and had eyes painted in Alice Cooper fashion. The group ended the evening at the hotel bar where Melinda spotted friends Holly Johnson and Michael Sladek and joined them to chat.

The next morning during the passing of the peace in worship, we shared the peace and Erik used his best pickup line “You clean up pretty well.”

Later that evening during the Super Bowl Party we ended up at the same table were we got to know each other a bit better, Erik learned that Melinda is a sports fan and Melinda learned that Erik is a pretty good guy (he didn’t make too much fun of her when she cried when the Seahawks were cheated out of a victory). With the help from our friend Holly we started talking and getting to know each other better. When Erik visited Seattle is June, we went on our first “real” date. And the rest is... history.

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