Nicole and James

Approximate Date of the Photo
May 20, 2012

Where in Balboa Park was this photo taken
Air & Space Museum

Share your Love Story
Back in November 2007, James was home in San Diego, CA for his two week leave from his 14 month deployment in Iraq. One night he was online on "MySpace" just browsing around and came across my profile. He said he thought I was cute and sent me a message not expecting a response. However, I did respond and we emailed back a few times but we never met in person before he left back to Iraq. We continued to email back and forth for the remainder of his deployment and hoped to finally meet in person when he returned in early February 2008. When he returned, we sent a few emails but he started seeing someone else and our emails dropped off. However, I reached out sometime in April just to say hi and realized we were both single. We then exchanged phone numbers and began talking on the phone. We set up a meeting in person the last weekend in April on a Friday, which was actually the day he was leaving for a weekend in Texas to visit a friend. We met that morning at a Starbucks after I got off of work and he said the first thing he noticed about me was my eyes and just how pretty he thought I was. I told him I didn't think he was too bad himself :) He left that Friday and was to return on Monday. We spent the entire weekend texting back and forth. On Tuesday after we got back he back we had our first date for lunch at a diner and we went to the Art Museum at Balboa Park. It's hard to remember a day that we spent apart since then, unless it was when he was gone for the military. From that moment on we were insuperable and he became the perfect father to my then 3 year old. He also likes to tell people how we met that it was "through our mutual friend Tom", which is the founder of MySpace, but many people just think we have a friend named "Tom". He proposed to me the evening of January 8th, 2011 (day before my birthday) in front of our two closest friends after asking my son for his permission to "ask mommy to marry me". He even took my son out to help him choose rings and asked Owen, my son, his opinion of if I'd like them. We married at the Air & Space Museum on May 20, 2012 in front of about 100 of our closest friends and family and are going on 3 years married and this April 2015 it will be 7 years together.

Name of the Photographer
Nick Smith