Blessings

It's kind of hard to know where to start, but I guess the best day of my life is good. Tom and I were married on September 2nd, 2011. We are married for time and eternity and our life together thus far has been just a big string of blessings, the biggest being that we're expecting a little boy at the end of July. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. I'll post about the joys of expecting a baby at a later date. I'll start out with the gooshy stuff and tell the story of how Tom and I met.

Set: My second year of college, Tom's third. 
Place: The apartment complex where we were both living.
Date: Ummm...I don't remember that one. Shame on me.
Time: About 7:30 AM

Aaaaaaand, Action!

Girl walks out her apartment door and finds herself awkwardly positioned to walk down the sidewalk next to tall, dark, handsome stranger. To turn around and enter the apartment again would be too obvious and to change her pace to mismatch his would be obvious and rude. Besides, she doesn't really mind the awkwardness anyway. After a few paces side by side, stranger says, "Well, this is awkward. I guess I better say hello." 


Cut. (Because I'm sick of writing like a movie director. Sorry for the cheese.)


Strangely enough, we had the same route around campus for another five minutes or so and we found it easy enough to talk to each other for that time. When we parted ways, I thought "Hmmm...I wonder if he'll ask me on a date." After all, we did live across the parking lot from each other. Later, I found out he was thinking, "Hmmm...I'll probably ask her on a date." How nice.


So we went on the date. It was fun. And then....Nothing. For the whole semester. I barely even saw him because he was so busy with work and school, but I got to know a few of his friends and we were friendly enough when we did bump into each other. He saw me go on dates with other guys and I saw him go on dates with other girls. No big deal. 


Then one day, he made an appearance at my apartment with two of his friends for a friendly visit to my roommates and me. I found myself sitting next to him and asked him about a girl I thought he'd been in a relationship with, just to see how it was going. Of course, nothing says jealousy better than that, so that grabbed his attention and he and his friend discussed it later that night and decided it was time to take action. So, on the last day of the semester he and said friend showed up to invite a roommate and me to dinner. By this time, I'd been doing lots of thinking and I'd decided I was glad we were both coming back to the same apartment complex after Christmas.


New semester comes, we go on another date and hold hands. We go on another date and he puts his arm around me. Someone asks how long we've been dating, and my face flushes because we're not "dating"! But now Tom has to ask. I say yes and we're off on a great adventure. We date from the end of January till the end of March. And then...I break up with him. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Why? I still wonder that myself. Probably just scared it might actually go somewhere. 

You have to listen to this while reading the next paragraph. Don't worry, it's a good song.

I go home in April, lonely and sad and my mother tells me I'm not as happy as I used to be. Hmmm. So I do something I've been thinking about for the past 4 weeks and finally get the courage up to call Tom (at 10:30 PM, no less) and ask him if I can come for a "talk". "Sure...?" he says. I drive half an hour to his apartment, we take a walk, I make a fool of myself trying to explain why I'm there, and finally get to the part about asking forgiveness and all that. Phewf. Moment of truth ends with his arm around me again and all is well. That moment right there is when we both knew we were probably going to get married.

The next few weeks contain the first "I love you", the first invitation to meet the family, and the first talk about the "m" word. By the end of May, we're engaged and set to be married in the Fall. 

Being engaged over the summer was fun, but exhausting. I worked two part time jobs and Tom worked full time while going to school part time. We lived about half an hour apart and made lots of trips to see one another and make plans for our life together.

We were both so blessed to find that we were marrying into wonderful families who were supportive and happy about our decision. We've really enjoyed getting to know them better over the past few months. 

And so begins our story.