Memories....

Sunday was our 7th wedding anniversary.

Hubby and I met in high school. My junior year I was kind of friends with a girl that hung out in hubby’s group, so in the fall, I tagged along with them to a football game. I remember him driving his parents van on the school drive with someone hanging out the door. Anyway…I remember that they were fun, but not a group that I would hang out with a lot.

Then I realized that hubby was in my math class. Hubby is a math genius. We were in honors math with a horrible teacher and I hated it. He sat on the other side of the room and always seemed to have a huge crowd of people around him. I remember hanging out with his group some other time (spring maybe?) and he told me how much he hated our math class and how hard it was. It made me feel so much better because I kept thinking I was an idiot because I wasn’t getting it.

I started dating a guy in the middle of my junior year and halfway through my senior year. I thought we would be together for a very long time (we went to visit colleges together and everything) but unfortunately a little freshman with big boobs came along and screwed that up. It actually wasn’t bad…I stayed friends with him and shared a locker with him all year. So it was February of my senior year and I’m dating a bunch of guys that aren’t really anything special. I was always used to having a boyfriend. Not dating, an actual boyfriend. So I started looking around school and I thought “hey, hubby’s (obviously not then :) ) really cute. So I put the word out that I thought he was cute and my friends did their thing. Remember that girl I was sort of friends with that hung out with him? She went up to him and said “I know someone that likes you” (gotta love that high school wimpiness and cheesiness of not being able to talk to a guy myself). His response? “No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.” He later told me that there was another girl that hung out with him that had told him she liked him and he had no interest in her, so he thought this friend was going to say it was her. Luckily my friend got through to him and all of a sudden he kept coming up to my locker and closing it when I was trying to get my books out. He was such a cute flirt! The best thing was that he would leave flowers in my locker and my ex-boyfriend would see them when he came to get his stuff :)

On our first date we had to go to the OU basketball game to look for some of his friends to get his wallet that he had left at basketball practice. We then went to Dairy Queen. When he took me home he walked me to the door. As he was talking to me, I looked in the driveway and said to him “ummm, your truck is rolling backwards down the driveway.” He had forgotten to do whatever needed to be done with a stick shift (put the clutch in?) that would prevent this. He was so embarrassed and I never let him live it down.

On March 3, 1997 he asked me to “go out with him” and we’ve been together ever since. He would come over to my house every day and play on my computer (and I don’t mean games…he would be getting into the actual computer and fixing it and figuring out how it worked and that sort of thing). I used to get so mad about his obsession with computers, and thought about breaking up with him over it many times. But now I realize how much he was learning about them, and now he’s an absolute genius when it comes to computers so I’m thankful for his passion and his ability solve any computer problem that comes along.

We always knew we’d get married…on the back of his senior picture that he gave to me he talked about the different types of houses we were going to have (he wanted one in the country and I wanted a beach house…oh those innocent high school days). We went to prom together and had a blast…despite the fact that our mothers showed up to take our pictures (thankfully since it was our senior year I did not care at all what anyone thought of me anymore).

We went to the same college and I think that was the toughest part of our relationship. By the time we got to sophomore year, our classes were getting tougher and he would spend 60 hours a week in the computer lab. We spent so much energy trying to see each other daily that it was exhausting trying to work around our schedules. We finally realized that in order to see each other, we really would have to live together, and since we didn’t want to do that before we were married, hubby proposed to me on the beach during vacation with his family the summer before our junior year. We were married 1 year later and had a cute little apartment our senior year. There were many nights that hubby didn’t come home (Valentine’s night being one of them) because he was working on programs in the lab, but we got through it!

I already had a job lined up for the following September, so in April of our senior we traveled up to the city I would be working in and looked for a house. Some crazy mortgage company actually approved us for a loan based on an offer letter for just me to start 4 months later! So in May of 2001 we purchased our first house. Hubby eventually found a job in October (talk about God being there to help us make the mortgage payments until then!) and our wonderful and happy life began.

We’ve been through serious ups and downs, issues with both of our families, friends coming and going, job changes, moves, and two wonderful kids. I can’t even begin to imagine how I would do anything if I didn’t have him right by my side. We share the same passions and dreams for life and our values and morals are identical. We know that we will be together forever and that makes all the difference in the world when going through rough patches.

Thank you for being there for me and standing beside me all the time. You are my encourager, my strength, the best father in the world, and most importantly, my absolute best friend. As you often say, you know me better than anyone else. I love you so much!

I mean come on, what other guy would willingly look forward to having 5 kids for a week???