Holly: The first time I remember meeting Jerry was in a conference planning meeting at BYU (August ’04). I was working for BYU Conferences and Workshops and Jerry was a grad-student employee in the Center for the Study of Europe. A few days after our meeting, I had lunch with Erika (mentioned above), who happened to be in Jerry’s ward. She invited me to a ward activity where I hung out with Jerry and got to know him better.
Jerry: To make a long story short: we got married. Okay, that might be a little too short. She started hanging out with some of our mutual friends and showing up at various ward (an LDS congregation) functions. She did an excellent job of opening the door.
Holly: Yeah, I thought he was pretty cute, and pretty smart, and pretty sweet…a bit cocky, perhaps (hee, hee, hee); but I was intrigued and made an effort to get to know him better – he was unlike anyone (yeah, anyone) I had ever met.
Jerry: After two weeks of hanging out with our mutual friends (including a great symphony concert we all went to up in Park City), one night during a mean game of foosball, I realized she was not only beautiful and smart, but tough (you should have seen how competitive she was during the game) and a lot of fun to be with. Needless to say, I asked her out for that weekend.
Holly: I was pretty excited (understatement).
Jerry: Some grocery shopping, a great French picnic while watching the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival, capped off by some great conversation while climbing a 70 foot pine tree (one of Holly’s favorite pastimes—try it sometime), a movie and we hit things off right away. From that night on we saw each other every day until Christmas.
Holly: Needless to say we fell in love meanwhile.
Jerry: Oh, yeah…I forgot that part…whoops…. Anyways, we really did enjoy talking with each other, and within a month realized that we just wanted to keep on talking. Surprised, anyone?
I was juggling three jobs, a couple of classes, and my sanity, and she had a full-time job at BYU, but somehow we always made time to be together. Two months after our first date, I asked her to marry me in the same tree we climbed on that first date.
Holly: Wow…was it really only two months?
Jerry: Yep. Three months later on January 29, 2005 we were married in the Provo Utah LDS Temple. Rain had been forecast, but we had beautiful blue skies. That night we skipped off to Seattle for our honeymoon (actually flew—skipping would have taken too long).
Holly: I really liked Seattle.
Jerry: I really liked Holly.
Holly: Anyway, moving right along. Jerry and I had an awesome first year together, the highlight of which was our month-long trip to Europe that summer.
Jerry: After she double-checked everything to make sure we were ready to go, and I scrambled the night before to get my part packed (in my typical style of scrambling the night before leaving for Europe – done it 3 times now)…we almost didn’t make it…
Holly: Yeah…that was my bad…somehow I forgot to change my name on my passport, but with the help of the airline representative we were able to get everything worked out. It was scary though.
Jerry: I had always said I would take my wife to Europe for our honeymoon, and thanks in large part to my parents’ wedding gift, it happened. We decided to go as a belated honeymoon, and I tell you what, it was a great experience and recommendable for all newlyweds or anyone else for that matter: we evaluated our first six months together, had a wonderful trip, and learned a lot about each other at levels and in ways that would have been difficult otherwise.
We saw Rome, Florence, Ravenna, Milan, Lake Como, Garmisch, Oberammergau, Munich, Cologne, Brussels, Bastogne, Avignon, and Paris. In typical fashion, I ran her around at breakneck pace, but that’s part of what had made my first trip so magical.
Holly: What an awesome experience! It was hard to leave Europe, and I’ve been eager to get back since…but we were on to our next adventure.
Jerry: My goal in life has always been to be a father, and in November we learned the happy news that a baby was on the way.
Holly: In February we found out that we were expecting a little girl and started calling her Hannah. I’ve always liked the name Hannah: it’s a great scripture name, and it had additional significance for Jerry.
Jerry: I had a sister named Hannah who was killed in a car accident while I was on my mission in Romania. As for a middle name, one night Holly asked me what some nice French names were and I suggested “Aimée,” meaning beloved (pronounced ehm-ay; not Amy).
Holly: So Hannah Aimée Hansen made her appearance on July 4, 2006, amidst fireworks and celebration.
Jerry: My parents called shortly after she was born; in addition to hoping everything had gone well with the labor, they told me my Grandpa Hansen had passed away just a half hour before the birth. In recent days, he had been declining so we had somewhat expected it. But it was still very hard to take, particularly since I’m his namesake and we were extremely close. Like Jefferson and Adams who also passed away on July 4th, my grandfather was a patriot in the best and truest sense of the word: indeed, one of the best of men.
But that moment when I saw little Hannah for the first time was one of the most precious in my life. The nurses were dorks for not letting me hold my daughter till five hours later, but there had been some minor complications (nurses and doctors are horrible actors), and in the end both mother and baby were well and I finally got to hold my little girl.
Holly: We could not be happier! She has been such a delight and joy to us and is constantly learning and changing. Every day there is something new.
Jerry: Plus, Mommy and baby get to hear all the crazy noises Daddy can make to keep his little girl entertained.
Holly: The latest has been the dancing/chanting man…it beats the barking dog with a bone stuck in his throat!
Jerry: As for current events, Holly enjoys taking care of Hannah, reading, cooking, being close to her family, and keeping me sane while I write my thesis. I just finished taking classes, had a blast teaching Humanities 101, and spent what seemed a lifetime (a month) doing PhD and fellowship applications for Fall 2007. The PhD programs are all in or connected to Comparative Literature, and I’m excited to get to study Romanian, French, and English literatures more extensively. Comparative Literature lets me study all of my varied interests from Early Modern English to current events in the European Union and a lot in between. Moreover, I will have opportunities to travel to Europe with my wife and children. I also recently got accepted to speak at the Student Religious Symposium here at BYU in February. Well, this is getting long so we’ll just send pictures and make sure to keep in touch in the future.
Holly: So this is the end of what we thought was going to be a short update. We wish you all the best!
Jerry: Noroc, sanatate, numai bine, ciao, tantot, and goodbye.
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