A Tribute

Twelve years ago I met this boy at a keg party with a thick New York accent who picked me up with, "Not all guys are like that", and a best friend making it known that I would marry this boy, no doubt in her mind.

March 2001

We did long distance and visited one another every four months...this was before the invention of Skype and cell phones with texting capabilities. This was with phone cards, handwritten love letters, messenger, and care packages.

March 2002

Riding this roller coaster was like searching in the fog for something solid and concrete. I wasn't sure where this was headed. I wasn't sure if it was meant to be. There were things that didn't end up right between us all the time and it was not easy. But we learned along the way to value one another, to truly love one another. To communicate. To trust. And most importantly, to find faith in God, and then put that exact same faith into us.

Engaged: 2004

He proposed on my birthday, on the beach of Anna Maria. A year later, we married in Colorado and life was "our adventure" after that.

May 28. 2005

We moved across country. We helped raise my nephew and that was the first moment I saw the man who would be the father to our future children. We became connected with our immediate love for nature, escaping to places we had only read or dreamed about. Our bucket list never contains just one of us, but where we want to go next, with each other. We fell in love with a baseball team, that we obsess over every season. We fell in love with an escape to the wild beyond, which holds many of our treasured stories and "adventures". We dreamed, we conquered, we lost, we cried, we worried, we feared...Most importantly, we prayed and we loved. It got us to...

Now. Eight years have passed and here we are, miles away from where our love affair began and who we once were. And boy, have we grown, changed, and matured. We are still defining and shaping us into us. We are learning our new roles as parents. We are still trying to figure out this whole marriage thing. But we made it to 8 years...and a milestone that is in today's divorce-happy society.

Every day I pray that I am lucky enough to be blessed with your company for many years to come. I pray that we will continue our adventures, growing old, holding hands, wishing on falling stars, and can say when we're 80, look how far we've come.

But if anything...

"You stand by me I'm forever yours Faithfully " (Journey, Faithfully)

April 2013

"Home is wherever I'm with you" (Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zero's).