My Husband Rocks! Friday

Katy Lin at the great adventure gave us a prompt this week for My Husband Rocks! Friday. We can choose whether or not we want to use it – no pressure. I thought that it sounded like a good idea.

Here’s the prompt:
“How did you meet your spouse? What initially attracted you to your spouse? How does that personality trait or physical characteristic affect you today? What is the same? What has changed?”

THE STORY OF US
In 2001, Chris and I became neighbors. He moved in downstairs from me in our apartment building. For a while it was just a simple greeting when we happened to see each other in the parking lot or stairway. However, one bright summer morning, my sister Eva and I were hanging out on my balcony when he came home from the night shift. I asked, “Hey, do you want a candy cane?” He eyed me suspiciously and said, “But it’s July….” “I know,” I replied. “I always have candy canes!” He agreed to take one, and we ended up talking for quite a while – him standing on the sidewalk and me leaning over the railing of the balcony. For the next couple years we developed a friendship – playing cards and board games, hanging out in each other’s apartments with our roommates, having dinner together, going for long drives down the Natchez Trace and all around Nashville, hiking in the park, and blasting through snow drifts in the mall parking lot the winter we had a freak snowstorm.

It’s still a bit of a mystery to me how it all happened. I wasn’t interested in him at all romantically, so I can’t really point to a quality that attracted me to him. However, one night, we were driving around talking about things we had gone through in our lives, and he reached over to hold my hand. It wasn’t something he even planned; it just happened. I thought, “ Well, this is new. It’s strange but OK.” Really, I thought it was more of a comfort thing than a romantic thing. Nothing was said about it, and it didn’t happen again for a bit. Slowly, we started getting closer, and one night I was getting ready to go down to his apartment to see him and realized that I was actually giddy! I couldn’t wait to see him. I told myself that I was just happy to be hanging out with my friend.

Our first official date was January 4, 2004. I had received a gift card to PF Changs for Christmas from one of my students, and so Chris and I went out to dinner. I don’t think it really started out as a date, but the way we held hands that night coupled with the way he looked at me changed everything. Three months later, on March 13, on yet another one of our drives on the Natchez Trace, Chris whipped into one of the small parking lots and told me he loved me. I laughed. He was confused. But I was just so happy; I couldn’t help it. And yes, I did finally stop laughing and tell him that I loved him too. (the summer after we started dating)

Just over a year later, on a gorgeous spring day in April, on a beautiful overlook, Chris surprised me by dropping to one knee and asking me to be his wife. (the only pic we have from the day we got engaged taken with the webcam)

We married on August 5, 2005, five months earlier than my original plan; we just couldn’t’ wait to begin our married life together.
Honestly, I am constantly in awe of the joy that being married to Chris has brought me. Just yesterday morning I told him that I am still mystified by the fact that we are married and that we have such a beautiful baby girl. I never imagined that I could be loved the way he loves me – so completely and unconditionally. I am still giddily in love with him and get excited about seeing him at the end of every day.