Happy Anniversary to Us!

July 3, 2009

Several months ago, I wrote a post about how my dear hubby had not sent me flowers in 13 long years. Wednesday, we celebrated our 14th Anniversary, and for the occasion -- Ta-Da! -- he sent me flowers! Real LIVE ones, in a vase, delivered to me at work by a real florist and everything!! Who wouldn't keep this man? :-)

I didn't notice until after I had taken this photo that I also captured our "wedding" picture that I created a while back: it looks like we sacrificed a tree by carving our initials in it, but in reality, I just photo-shopped it to make it look that way. (Okay, end of shameless self-promotion there).

It is so hard to believe that it has been 14 years already, and in other ways it seems like it has to have been more, as is true, I'm sure, for almost every married couple out there. In honor of the occasion, I thought I'd tell our "story."

I was a recently divorced mom of a toddler and an infant when I decided that I'd better get my life back on track because I wasn't doing so hot controlling it on my own. Every day on my way to work I drove past the cutest little storefront church which always felt like it was calling to me. After about a month, I finally broke down and gave it a try. A few weeks after that I had bopped in to the Pastor's office to ask him about something, when he introduced me to this cute guy and my heart immediately did that funny little pitter-pat, which I did not want it to do. For weeks after that, I would eyeball him as he sat across the room during the church service but didn't ever try to talk to him. I had started dating someone else (yet another disastrous relationship) and was not looking for love any more, thank you very much. However, Braden, who was not even crawling yet, had other things in mind. It did not matter where I sat, or where Tom sat, but when I'd lay Bray down on his blanket to play with his toys, he would roll to wherever Tom was. Once again I tried to tell God that I had things under control, but thank heavens He had other plans!

I did what any reasonable girl would do: I quit going to church again. I'll show them! In the meantime, Tom had the same types of feelings when he saw me. After I quit attending church, he asked the Pastor where I worked. At the time, I was working for the "Big Nickel," a want-ads paper. One afternoon when I was working the front desk, guess who showed up to place an ad for his (what I now know was his beloved) snowmobile? I didn't learn until much later that he put it in for a ridiculously high price so that nobody would call him on it.

Long story short, I started attending church again, and we went on several lunch dates, most with the kids in tow. On our first "real" date, he asked me to marry him and I accepted. After he left that night, he immediately asked himself "where in the hell did that question pop out from?!" and I was in my apartment asking my ownself "what in the hell did I just do?!" :-)

Anyway, it's been a wild ride these past 14 years, but I can honestly say that I can't imagine spending my life with anyone else. We've recently had some "new beginnings" in our life, and I can't wait to see what the next 14, or better yet, 40, bring! Happy Anniversary my love...

Wow! Don't we look amazingly young? I didn't have ANY gray hair at that point, and Tom still had all of his. Makes you wonder how long after we got married before we started falling apart!