The very first time that we were introduced, we were at our home church, The Village Church ( www.thevillagechurch.net ) when Denise was saying hello to her old friend Micah. While they were talking, Micah introduced Denise to a few of his friends that were with him at the time. One of those friends just so happened to be the one and only Mr. Aaron Power. Aaron noticed that Micah and Denise were chatting about their musical endeavors and was kind enough to offer his superior bass skills to Denise should she ever be in need of a bassist for a show or something. In fact, just recently she found, in the journal that she had been carrying that day, Aaron's email address which he had so kindly written on the back page for her convenience.

Over the next several months, Aaron and Denise began cultivating an awesome friendship. Denise was dating another guy, so it never even entered her mind to consider Aaron as more than her goofy, awesome study buddy/ work out partner. Denise absolutely loved being around him, though. His witty remarks and his constant encouragement in the Lord and in His Word were only a few of the things that drew her to him. However... let's stress this again, that there was not even one time, any inkling of anything more than an awesome friendship going on in her mind... I think that's what makes it even better!
Also, just for clarification...the title of this section is actually relevant, believe it or not! One of the first times that Aaron and Denise hung out one on one was kind of a fluke, yet AWESOME... Their friend Micah (yup, same one that introduced them!) happened to not show up to a little dinner thing that a group of us were going to throw him for his birthday, so we turned it into an ALL HOLIDAYS party... we had decor from every holiday you could think of. anyways, after the dinner, as we all sat around doing various things, Denise and Aaron decide it would be awesome to prank Micah since he didn't even show up that night. What did they decide to do? Steal his computer tower and hide every single solitary thing in his bedroom... well, sort of hide it... we put everything that was in his room (including his bedsheets) into his big closet. The room was entirely bare when we left. Of course, to make it even better, we made a ransom note out of magazine clippings before we left the house, and we dressed in all black clothes and tied bandanas around our faces. We were hardcore. you don't even know!
The picture here is the actual scene of the crime. red-handed. haha!

Disclaimer: that gun in the picture is only an Airsoft Gun. no worries.

In the months following the breakup scene, Denise and Aaron continued their friendship as usual. Workouts, Chicken Express (yes, immediately following their workouts... pointless? some would say... they would not), church, "studying", which usually just turned into them sitting quietly in the UNT Library, drawing ridiculous cartoons in their notebooks instead of doing things like reading Logistics chapters or writing a 10 page essay on Homer's The Iliad... you know... the usual.
At on point that summer, a group of people went for dinner at the Denton Chili's after the evening church service. While there, Aaron comes up with a great idea. He decides that he should ask one of his female friends to go on a mock date with him so that he could act completely normal, like he would on any real date, and then at the end, his friend could critique him to give him pointers on what he did right and what could use some tweaking. Denise whole-heartedly offers to be the girl in that picture, just because that sounds like a hilarious memory in the making that she did NOT want to miss out on. Besides, who else would lay it all out for him as bluntly as his best friend?! NOBODY, BABY! haha :) We are all pretty sure that Denise is the ONLY one that did not realize that was just a funny way of Aaron hinting that he wanted to take her out on a real date... sneaky guy...
A few weeks later, their friends at the Orange/Hundley House (the house where about 8 of the guys in their group of friends lived at the time) had an Alter Ego Party. You were supposed to dress up like your closet personality. After Denise and Aaron had already left the party, gone home, and Denise was about to climb into bed, Aaron called Denise to ask if she wanted to hang out... Now, mind you, it is VERY late at this point, and they had just been hanging out all evening at the Hundley house... so it was a little strange for him to call and suggest that they hang out at that point. But Denise, trying to be a good sport and trying to not act as old and tired as she felt, agreed, and so Aaron picked her up to make a late night run to Whataburger. The entire hang out time at Whataburger seemed normal enough. They just ate and chatted like normal. Nothing fancy. Nothing strange. When he pulled up to her apartment to drop her off after they had finished, he seemed to be getting extremely jittery and nervous. After a good amount of prodding and questioning his strange behavior, they had a long talk in which Aaron told Denise of his feelings for her, which caught her by surprise. But after thinking about it, she agreed that they should date, and so that was that...

this picture is from the Alter Ego Party that was mentioned above.

In October of 2007 Denise and her best friend Caitlin decided that they were going to move to Spain to teach English for a few months whenever they could find a family to live with and save up enough money. So in January of 2008, they made the move to Spain along with one of Caitlin's roommates, Katie. It was extremely difficult for both Denise and Aaron for her to be living so far away in such a different time zone and to not be able to see each other at all... BUT in March, Aaron and the girls' other best friend, Lindsey, were both able (by the grace of God!) to come to Spain to visit the girls for a week!
While they were in Spain, one of the days they spent at El Parque del Buen Retiro. It is a HUGE, beautiful, famous park in Spain that was actually only open to the public in the 1800's, and people were required to wear formal attire to enter. Before the public opening, it was only available to Royalty! So the four (Denise, Aaron, Lindsey, and Caitlin) went to a supermercado to buy supplies for a picnic, and had a picnic lunch by the lake where you can rent rowboats. It is one of the most beautiful places in Madrid, we are convinced. After their lunch, the group just walked around the park (it is so huge, you could walk for days and still have more to see). After they visited the Palacio de Cristal (the Glass Palace), Denise suggested that they find a really green, sunny spot to take pictures since Aaron's camera can single out one color to show up in pictures while the rest of the picture is black and white. They all decided on a spot to settle in, and Aaron volunteered to take pictures of the girls. So the girls settle in on the grass while Aaron shoots away. Then Aaron says to Caitlin and Lindsey, "Hey, ok, now why don't you guys take some pictures of us now." So Aaron and Denise take a few pictures in the lovely park scene. After a few pictures, Aaron says to Denise, "Hey, let me go ahead and give you your birthday present!" (Her birthday was the upcoming week) So he pulls out of his bag, an old Hawthorne hardback book. He opens up the book, and on the right pages, he had pasted in his favorite pictures of him and Denise. On the left pages, he had cut out magazine letters to spell out the lyrics of the Leeland song "Can't Stop". So, he goes through the pages, and sings along the lyrics of the song as they appear on the pages. All this time, Denise is completely unaware that Lindsey had actually switched her camera to video, so she was capturing it all on video while Caitlin was capturing everything with snapshots...BRILLIANT!!! JEEZ! When he gets to the end of the song, he turns the page, and he had hollowed out the pages of the rest of the book and fit the ring box INSIDE THE BOOK! He got on one knee, made Denise stand up, and said to her, "Denisie, I got you this ring because I love you, and so that you can never, ever, ever leave me ever again! I've missed you so much!!" :) I'm not sure that she ever said yes, but it is widely understood that "Yes" is what she meant by the kiss she gave him and the fit of laughter that followed (pretty much for the rest of the day...).