celebrating.

This past Sunday we celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary.  Ok, so we didn't really celebrate it, but that was the actual day.  Oliver was sick, so I stayed home from church with him.  Then later that afternoon we had a picnic at a nearby park with our community group, so Brian stayed home with Oliver while I took the boys.  By the time we got home, my parents had arrived.  Brian and I did get to squeeze in a little home depot date to buy wood to frame and hang the screen door (for the back door) he got me for mother's day, as well as picking up some take-out schlotzky's to bring home for dinner for the adults.  Then later that night my Aunt Kathy flew in, and we all stayed up visiting until Oliver continued to wake up with his fever.  He and I were pretty much up all night with a solid 2 hours of sleep.  Poor little guy did not feel well at all!

Then Monday morning was Henry's graduation and later that afternoon I had a doctor's appointment.  Brian did get to go with me to my appointment, which rarely happens. Quick update: got to hear the healthy heartbeat in the 150's; blood pressure looked great; and I actually gained 2 pounds.  Pretty good for feeling so crummy.

Finally that evening we got to have our anniversary date, while my mom and aunt kathy were so sweet to babysit.  We ate dinner downtown at a new restaurant called Central.  It's actually in the same space where 2Cities used to meet for worship on Sunday evenings about a year ago...the downstairs of 129 Coosa. It was so fun to see the transformation, and the atmosphere was very much not montgomery.   It had an upscale southern style to part of its menu, including boiled peanut hummus with pita bread as one of its appetizers.  Yum!

We spent the remainder of the evening walking around downtown, including a stroll down by the river, and ended the date at the Renaissance hotel lobby drinking Starbucks hot chocolate and looking at art books.  So fun!  I kind of felt like a tourist in my own backyard! :)  One of these days we would love to stay at that hotel...then we would really feel like we were on vacation!

Happy anniversary to us!!

12 years

12

years ago today we had our first date. at Chili's.

So in honor of our anniversary, we had a date at Chili's tonight. It was fun reminiscing about that night so long ago, but in some ways it feels like it was just yesterday.

12 years ago. our senior year at Baylor. It was a Friday. Brian called our apartment sometime late afternoon/early evening. (back before cell phones had really taken off. LeeAnne and I shared one, but it was only for emergencies, and we really only had it in the car). So he calls our apartment and asks me, "What are you/y'all doing tonight?" He might have said "you," but even if he had, I just assumed he meant that collectively, as in our whole apartment. (I was living with my sweet cousins, Jane and Mary Ann at the time, as well as our dear friend, Becca). So it was not uncommon for him to come hang out with us or get a group together to go bowling or go see a movie, which was a lot of our Friday nights up until now. So I tell him that a big group of us from our complex are all going to eat dinner together, and he is more than welcome to join us. So he agrees, and soon we are waiting and waiting for him to come over. (Little did I know that he was busy washing/cleaning/vacuuming out his car to get it ready for the date he's going to take me on; I just don't know it yet because he hasn't asked me). Finally my roommates encourage me to call him and find out if he's coming.

So I call him to find out if he still wanted to go to dinner with us. This was his response...
"Well, I was actually hoping to just have dinner with YOU."

Oh.

I was clueless. I agree, of course, but now a little embarrassed that I had made everyone wait, and now I had to go downstairs and explain to them that he actually just wanted to take ME out on a date!

So when I explain the situation, their responses were something like this: "Well, of course! We could have told you that!!"

Soon they all leave with our friends, and Brian picks me up and we head to Chili's for dinner and sweet conversation. Before taking me home, we walked around the suspension bridge in downtown Waco, which is always lit up at night. So pretty.

A great first date.

But then...

the next day Brian freaks out a little. maybe more than a little. He knows that I'm not one just to date for fun, so he was feeling a little bit of pressure that he was going to have to commit right away to this. (No pressure from me; just from himself). It was like he was thinking he had to know right then if he was going to marry me. He obviously couldn't answer that, and he didn't want to hurt me because he did care for me, so he called me that night to see if I could come over to talk on his front porch. I honestly can't remember what he said to me, but I left not heart broken, but just sad. He pretty much said he didn't think this should go any further than that first date because he didn't want to hurt me. I could tell he really cared about me by the way that he was trying to protect me ultimately from himself because he didn't want to break my heart.

The next two weeks were rough. Poor guy was trying to be friends with me, but I didn't really know how to go back to "normal" because I liked him, and it was hard to be around him, knowing he maybe didn't feel the same way.

Thankfully our RUF campus minister talked some sense into him during those couple of weeks and was able to take the unneeded pressure off of Brian. Tom asked him, "Do you enjoy spending time with her?"

"Yes," he answered.

"Then go spend time with her, and stop worrying!" (or something like that). I'm sure there was great wisdom and more to it than that.

Exactly two weeks later from our first date, Brian calls me up to see if we can meet and talk. He actually called several times that Friday night, but we were having a little RUF girls night, dinner and a movie. When I got home, Mary Ann told me that he had called, and I probably didn't call him back until around 11. He said he really wanted to talk, so we walked around Baylor's campus and ended up on a swing in front of the Tidwell Bible building (the same swing that would become "our swing," where he would eventually propose 5 months later) and talked for hours until the sun began to rise.

I wish I could remember what we talked about, and he can't either, but it must have been a great conversation, since it kept us up all night! Later that Saturday afternoon (after we had both gotten some sleep), he called me up to ask me on our official 2nd date. We ate dinner together at Fazoli's and then went back to his house to carve pumpkins with our sweet friends, John and Lori, who were dating at the time.

After that there was never a moment of question or worry. A month and a half later, we were talking about marriage, and by Christmas we were telling our friends and family that we wanted to get married. He didn't talk to my dad or propose until March, however, because he was waiting to have a job lined up for after graduation. So March was when he was offered the job here in Montgomery as youth pastor at Eastwood. He proposed on our swing with his grandmother's ring...but that's a whole other story! And 2 months later we were married and moving to Alabama!

So Chili's will always have a sweet spot in my heart!

11 years.

I still can't believe it's been 11 years. In some ways, it has gone by so fast, but when I look back and see how much has happened in those 11 years...wow!

I never would have dreamed that at this point in our marriage that I would be in love with him now more than ever; we would have 5 little boys, living in historic downtown Montgomery, and part of a church plant...where Brian was the pastor!

God is so good!!

Unfortunately, no date tonight. Brian was asked to give the charge at Eastwood school's graduation tonight. (There have been many anniversaries in the past spent at Eastwood graduations seeing our youth graduate, but never has Brian been a part of it!). I wish I could be there tonight, but we decided to save our babysitter for tomorrow night, so we can have a real date! Can't wait!!