Seems Like Only Yesterday.....

This week Larry and I celebrated our 13th wedding anniversary. What a crazy time of our life that was. For those of you that don't know, Larry and I met in college. Now there does seem to be a little confusion as to when we actually met but we both agree that it was in college. The confusion comes from the fact that when we met the first time, I had my eye on someone else. So much in fact that I didn't even remember meeting Larry. He however remembered me and had plans to ask me out. But I started dated the other guy and Larry had to wait in the wings. Sigh......Actually he went on to date other girls as well, don't be fooled. And then we met again, or for me we met for the first time. For a long time we were just friends. He would stop in and see me whenever he was in the mall where I was working a totally fun retail job. Seriously, it was like a little sorority house. Very fond memories of my time in that little store. He would casually ask me if i was dating anyone, scoping out the situation. And then one day I found out that a friend of mine was getting married and she wanted me to sing at her wedding. The guy she was marrying was a guy Larry knew and since I was unattached at the time we went together. And that was the beginning of forever for us. We had an immediate connection.


We would talk for hours and hours about all kinds of different stuff. He understood me in ways that no one had before. And we laughed all the time. One of my favorite memories from when we were dating has to be the fact that he carried hockey skates in his truck all the time. Strange I know, but in the Midwest in the winter you can find frozen ponds all over the place and he would just pull over, strap on the skates and go. A lot of times he would pull out the old hockey stick as well. We had so many good times. This was from a Halloween party at the Schmidt's house. They had a house out in the country and they turned the barn into a haunted house. I completely embarrassed myself when I backed into a wall that was actually the door and fell right on out onto the ground. It was things like that which earned me my nickname of Gracie. We dated for a long time and then finally we both knew that our dating days were over. So Larry popped the question and we started to plan the main event. Weddings are so crazy aren't they??


And our's was not an exception. I had no idea how to plan everything. But somehow we pulled it all off. At times I am not sure how. The week was full of chaos. But two particular things stand out in my mind. One is our groomsmen\pianist got attacked by a german shepherd probably four days before the wedding. He was a mess. I felt so bad for him. His face was swollen, bruised and stitched. And I couldn't even look at his eyes. I had never seen anything like that. Secondly Larry and I learned that we were going to need to learn to work better together under pressure. We just kept butting heads about everything. The night before the wedding Larry, his sister Nancy and myself were working on something. I actually can't really remember the details but Larry who is a very calm person by nature cracked. Took his frustration out on the barn and had to go to the emergency room late at night to have his foot looked at. We weren't sure if he was going to be able to walk the next day or not. That did wonders for the stress level.

The morning of the big day dawned sunny and beautiful. But as the afternoon came the sky got darker and darker. And then it began to rain. No, correction, it began to pour. So much in fact that they would close the road along the Mississippi that many of our guests needed to travel on. Outside pictures for us were not an option. But, at the end of the day, everything worked out. We were so grateful to have the love and support of our friends and family. And now here we are; thirteen years and four kids later. It's amazing to think how far we have come and how much further we have to go.