I Said "Yes"!

It's been 2 years since my husband asked me to marry him. April 8, 2008 wasn't nearly as nice of a day outside as it is today. It was a little warm but things weren't green yet.

We had been dating 2 months. Shocking I know, but when you are both 30 years old, you don't mess around! We covered a lot of ground in those first 2 months of dating! From the beginning my husband was a "what you see is what you get" kind of guy and was always very honest with me. It's now one of the qualities I love most about him and yet it scared me at first. Scared me to be that real and vulnerable with someone!

****I just had about 3 paragraphs in here that I deleted. One of these days I want to write out our love story and the way we met but for now, because it's the anniversary of our engagement, that's what I wanna write about, our engagement. It was just getting too long. Soooo back to the proposal. I seriously knew it was coming. I had been joking around with Brad that he should tell me when he's going to propose because ummmm.....I wanted to make sure I had my camera along. After all, every girl wants pictures of her proposal or right after right?! It was a joke with us. I didn't want to know but I kinda did!

I was still teaching school, and Brad had just had an accident at work and broken his nose, which is a whole other story. He had been stopping in at school a lot to see me since he was off of work and was bored. So Tuesday morning, Brad's cousin who goes to the school I taught at, came in to my classroom with a camera, and put it on my desk. "What is this for"? I asked him. Guess what he said! BRAD wants it for something later today! I'll give you 3 guesses to figure out what he wanted it for! Bet you need only 1!

So I sent off a text to Brad. "T brot a camra 2 skool. Wat do u need it 4?" Wish I coulda seen his face on the other end. He texted back something like..."I need it 4 somthin l8r. Fone quality pics wudnt be gud enuf". Poor guy. Even now, I kinda pity him. I wasn't very nice at all!

He came to my classroom around 12:00. My class went to computer class for an hour and I had about an hour till they got back. Brad knew this. I took my class to computer, came back and started pacing and finding things to do to keep me busy. Brad was so nervous and I knew it was coming and I wanted it to happen and yet I was so nervous too. Finally Brad told me to come sit down. I think he said more like "Get over here and sit down"!!!!! I sat down and he came over and got on his knee in front of me and asked me to marry him. The next few moments are a blur to me! He says I kept saying "Are you serious". According to him I said that about 10 times. I think he's exaggerating!!! Finally I said "Yes".

On our first date we had talked about our conviction of staying pure and not having a lot of physical contact before we were married. I told Brad that I thought it would be neat to kiss when we got engaged! We both felt the same way and decided we would not kiss until then. So now that we were engaged, we could kiss!! I was very uncomfortable kissing in school so we took a walk. We walked down to the creek and sat there and talked and finally...kissed.

It was TERRIBLE! I had always read in story books about magical first kisses. This was nothing like I thought it would be! It sounds terrible to say that neither one of us enjoyed our first kiss!! We tried so hard to make it romantic. Our teeth were clacking and it felt like he was going to swallow my mouth! We were definitely trying too hard. We didn't really say anything about it, but later that night when we were talking about our wedding day and dreaming of being married, I asked him if that kiss was as bad for him as it was for me! We both laughed so hard and decided we needed to try again! It was much, much better the next time and now....now I can't get enough of his kisses! That story is still something we laugh about alot!

We went back to school and made up these little papers to give to people. We stuck them in songbooks so that the next morning at school when the teachers had staff devotions and turned to the page that had the song "There is Love", they found this picture!

It seems like such a long time ago. It was only 2 years. I think of all we went through in the past 2 years and can't imagine my life with out Brad. We keep telling each other that we didn't even love each other then compared to how much we love each other now! And the kisses???? They keep getting better and better too!