A Look Back and a Giant Step Forward...

Here is the blog post I have been working on since June 14th.

Please allow me to explain.

We have five children now!!

Please allow me to explain.

George and I have started a new journey with our decision to become foster parents.

So things got a bit busier for our family, to say the least.  We have 2 teenage girls living with us and things are going very well.  Please contact me if you want to hear more about our new adventure, but I just wanted to say here why I have not been blogging!

I felt I owed my 2 devoted followers an explanation.


Nine years ago on June 14th, my dear friends Elaine and Tina picked me up at my apartment in Bowie Maryland and drove me to the airport.  I remember I was flying out the door with a hard boiled egg in hand to eat on the way.  It's funny the things you remember.  That hard boiled egg is etched in my brain forever.  I think it was because I was so nervous that I couldn't eat and when I was running out the door, I grabbed the egg to make myself eat something on the way.

When Tina was hugging me goodbye, she told me she would be there for me if things didn't work out.  She told me that everything would be ok no matter what.  They were both so supportive and so kind sending me off on THE adventure of my life.

See, the thing is, I KNEW I was going to meet my husband.  Finally, I didn't have to ask anyone for advice, I just KNEW.  I told very few people of my plans to fly across the country to meet George.  It was quite shocking when many of my friends received wedding invitations while not even knowing I had even met anyone!

So...George and I were matched on eHarmony....  I wrote our story for them at the end of that summer in 2005 and thought for sure we would be featured on one of their commercials.  Oh well, I guess there were others that had fairytale endings and not just us!

Here are some dates of significance.  Easy to remember because they are all clustered together.

• April 5, 2005 The day we were matched on eHarmony 
• April 17  The first time we spoke on the phone 
• June 9  For my birthday, he bought me my motorcycle helmet and jacket.  It was hysterical going with my friend,  Dottie, to pick them out.  We were a bit giddy to say the least. 
• June 14  The day I flew out to Missoula, Montana to meet George.  Then rode with him 3 hours to Salmon, Idaho where he was working for the summer. 
• June 30  The day he proposed.   He chartered a little plane to fly out to the back woods of Idaho to the Flying B Ranch, have breakfast (complete with quiche Lorraine on the menu), ride horses on an unguided trail ride, he proposed by the river and then he was actually back at work that afternoon!  
• September 10  Our wedding day in Staunton, VA

In that short time between April 5 and June 14, we logged countless hours on the phone and email.  Well, not countless because we actually counted the minutes on our cell phone bills and it was over 16,000 minutes.  We talked about everything.  We had books with questions to ask a future spouse and we went through them.  We prayed.  Yup, we even sung hymns, too.  We stayed up so late on the phone that George would call me in the morning to make sure I was up for work.  This was soooo sweet.  And, I am even more impressed having been married to him for 9 years since it is so hard to get him up in the morning!

So June 14th began the summer of camping, adventure, and riding on the back of the motorcycle all over Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.  I learned about George and everything I learned in that short time I LOVED and wanted to be a part of his life forever.

So by the time we were to get married in September, I couldn't take another minute waiting for him to arrive in Virginia.  He was driving across the country from Idaho to get here.  I broke down on the phone the day before he was to arrive and he surprised me the next day by showing up early.  How ROMANTIC!!  Really, just picture for a minute my future husband driving across the country all night on his BMW motorcycle. Alright, enough of that.  Sorry.  I got carried away...

The week before the wedding, we drove up to Raven's Roost on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  Idaho was worlds away and our former lives without each other were blown away like the falls leaves off the mountain as we watched the sunset that night.  We new that in one week, we would be married.  We may not have known each other for long, but it was a lifetime of experiences that brought us to that moment and we were grateful for every single one of them.

That is a little bit about how we met.  And I mean a LITTLE bit.

When you are relating a love story and making the biggest decision of your life, some details just have to left up to the imagination...