Happy Date-a-versary!

The first picture ever taken of us--2 weeks into dating

We went to the same young adult group at our church.  I hadn't noticed him though, and I don't think he had noticed me.  It was spring break, so the crowds were down.  The leaders had us combine tables.  Our table ended up being myself and 3 of my girl friends along with 4 random boys.  The meeting went on as usual.  Afterwards the girls and I went out for coffee like we normally did.  We were discussing the four boys.  We made mention of who we thought was cute.  I thought Michael was cute, but referred to him as "the mute" because he didn't hardly talk the entire time we were there.

 

 Two weeks later we were back at the group.  Michael came over and talked to our table for a little bit, but it was very casual.  Then we talked to him again on the way out the door.  We realized that we had a connection.  He went to high school and was best friends with Tommy, who I happened to have gone to college with (at a very small Christian college).  Oh, and Tommy's mom was my boss!  We left it at that. We said that if we saw him at church on a Sunday morning we would try to sit with him.  The girls and I went out again afterwards. They were all insistent that he was interested in me.  I totally missed that fact in the conversation.  I thought he was just being nice and talking to all of us.

The next day I mentioned to my boss (who was constantly trying to set me up with her son's friends) that I had met one of Tommy's friends.  We chatted briefly about it, but left it at that.  Fast forward a few days and she stops me on the way from teacher devotions back to my class.  She asked me if I would be interested in going out with Michael.  Yep.  We took it back to 7th grade! :) She was suppose to be sly and sneaky about it, but she basically came right out and said that Tommy told her to talk Michael up to me. Ha ha!  At one point another friend came over to say something to us and I said, "Don't interrupt us. We are discussing my future husband."  Little did we know...

Thursday night of that week I got a friend request on Myspace from Michael.  All he knew was my first name, the college I graduated from, and the year I would have graduated.  He went to my college's website and started looking for Bethany's that graduated that year. Once he found my name he looked me up on Myspace.  I got the request kind of late, but we started sending messages back and forth.  I finally told him that he could just call me.  We talked until about 1 in the morning.

I was all giddy when I got to work the next morning.  I sat down to my computer and had an email waiting from him. We wrote back forth all day--as much as I could as a teacher.  We made plans to go out on Saturday.  I pretty much knew that if the date went well, he was going to be the one I would marry.  And I was pretty sure the date was going to go well. :)

 

  He picked me up at 4 in the afternoon with flowers in hand.  He opened my door to a newly cleaned car and we were on our way.  We went to dinner, walked around the mall, got movies from Blockbuster (yep. people still did that back then!), picked up some ice cream from Kroger and headed back to his apartment.  We talked, watched a movie, talked some more, watched another movie and I finally said I needed to call it quits and get home to bed. That was at 1 in the morning.  We had a 9 hour first date!

That first date was 8 years ago today.  The rest, as they say, is history.  We are a perfect match.  We are so much alike in a lot of ways.  It helps to make our day to day life flow easily.  Yet, we are just different enough that we balance each other out and keep things interesting.

Michael-thanks for that first date, and for every one after.  Happy date-a-versary!  I love you.  You are my meant to be.