Adversity makes you in love

Weren't we adorable?

Dave and I just passed our eleventh anniversary.  I intended to post something nice four days ago on the actual event, but I didn't have the words and couldn't find them.  Fast foward to today (is it annoying when people say that?): I still don't have the right words, but as I always say, you cannot edit something you have not written.

I can actually remember the very first moment I saw Dave.  Crazy, eh?  I saw him going up the stairs at Harrison Heights with his roommates, and I said, "Who's that?" and Kristin (was it Kristin?) said, "You haven't met Dave?  He's kind of weird, but nice."  And being both weird and nice myself, I knew I wanted to meet him.  This kind of sounds like love at first sight, right?  It wasn't.  *It took me a long time to fall in love with Dave.  In fact, I am still falling in love a little more each day all these eleven years later.

I kind of think this is how it is supposed to work.

Maybe eleven doesn't sound like a lot of years to you.  To many it probably isn't.  It's not a nice round number like ten or twenty or fifty, but it does have the happy advantage of being my lucky number.  But I'm not sure the number of years necessarily means as much as the quality of those years and the experiences within them.  We've had quality and we've had experiences.  You might not believe it, but if you understand life at all, you will know what I mean when I say probably the worst experiences we've had have fostered the greatest amounts of quality.  (That's the convoluted way of saying adversity makes you strong, or in this case, adversity makes you in love).

I didn't fall fast, and I didn't fall hard, but this is what made me look twice.  When we met, I was taking this poetry course for an upper level English credit in college, and we all had to get together in the Special Collections area of the library on campus one night and read the poems we had previously read to each other (in the guise of critiquing) in the classroom.  Only for this special occasion, friends and family were invited.  I had lots of friends, and I have a big family, but when it came down to the dorky poetry reading, the only person that came for me was Dave.  (As an interesting side note, the selection I read was a poem I had written about Dave).

This made an impression on me.

I am obviously bright enough (obviously) to realize that poetry bores the masses, so Dave showing up that night might have tipped me over the edge of a precipice I had been shying away from (*see comment above).  I don't know what made him come that night.  Something more boring than poetry?  Probably don't want to know.  Only know it was the start of something I'm proud to be a part of.

Aren't we adorable?

Boo!

My cowgirl

I said to smile

Out to dinner

First day of Kindergarten

You get the picture