happy anniversary sweetie!

happy anniversary to my wonderful husband tim! we have been married 5 years today! how did that happen? we have now known each other for 15 years and have been dating/married for 11 years!

tim and i met at his aunt's house when we were in 8th grade. i had recently moved to germantown from meridian, mississippi. i was attending disciplenow weekend for the first time. tim and i were both assigned to his aunt's house. i remember thinking he was so cute from the very first moment. his parents came in when they dropped him off since we were at his dad's sister's house. he hugged and kissed both of his parents when they left. i remember thinking that was so sweet (and looking back on it, REALLY unusual for an 8th grade boy)! tim and i flirted in that silly, innocent 8th grade way the whole weekend. i really don't have many specific memories of tim over the next few years. we continued to attend church together, but he was doing his thing and i was doing mine!

the summer before our senior year in high school, we were again in the same group of friends at church. tim had moved to florida for his junior year of high school. the day after he got back, he was over at our mutual friend ashley's house and i stopped by to borrow some clothes. we hung out with our group of friends almost every night of the summer. we were both going to be counselors at a children's camp at our church. we decided that i would ride with him. the night before we left, we were again at ashley's house after church on sunday night. there was a really crazy heat lightening storm going on and tim asked me if i wanted to watch the storm in a dark bedroom (sounds much worse than it was)! we were standing by the window watching the light show and tim asked me, "how did the prince wake up sleeping beauty?" i had NO idea what he was talking about. then he kissed me. wow! was i surprised. now, i should tell you, tim had a reputation in our youth group of being the "stud". i couldn't believe that he was interested in me! thinking it was totally a random, fleeting thing, i worried about the ackwardness that the next day would bring riding to camp together.

well, we went to camp, and ended up sneaking out every night after our kids were asleep and hanging out for hours and hours. at the end of the week, we told our friends that our new "friendship" was a camp thing, and not to expect it to continue when we went home to memphis. boy! were we wrong :)

tim and i ended up having our first official date on his birthday, august 17th, 1995. we went to pizza hut and i got him an indigo girls cd. the next weekend, we went to the drive in movies. he packed strawberries and played the firehouse song "i live my life for you". i thought it was all SO romantic, in that high school sort of way. throughout our senior year, tim continued to surprise me with "happies"--putting my favorite cookies in the mailbox on his way to school, sneaking a rose into my car while we were in church, etc etc etc. tim was a very romantic and thoughtful boyfriend.

when it came time for college, we decided to do what we each needed to do individually for our educations. i ended up in st. louis at saint louis university, and tim ended up at university of tennessee at knoxville. we decided to date other people--i mean, how could you have possibly met the love of your life in high school?!? we thought we were being so grown up and logical.

it turned out we HAD met our soulmates in high school. after 2 years of attempting to date around, we knew it was time to quit being ridiculous. tim and i returned to our exclusive, and HAPPY relationship. the fall of our senior year, tim surprised me with an engagement ring. that story is the subject of another extremely long post. so, we married in june of 2001 and have been blissfully happy since then. not to say that marriage is always a piece of cake...but, we have made it through the good and bad together.

tim is the best husband my parents or i could have ever prayed for. he is so patient, kind, loving, fun, and devoted to me and the kids. his world revolves around our family. that's not something that i take for granted out of a 27 year old guy. he always puts our needs first-- sacrificing his hobbies and friendships for our family. i am so thankful to have met him so many years ago. and i can't wait to spend the rest of my life with him. he makes waking up each morning exciting. although i don't say it nearly as often as i should, I LOVE YOU TIM!!!