10 Years

I can still vividly remember the first time Robbie and I met. I was standing in the kitchen at The Blu Tomato, cutting paper to put on a 4 top. He walked by to the food line, and I was instantly drawn to him. The rest of the shift that day involved some witty banter and a lot of flirting. While I don't know that we would say it was love at first sight, there was definitley instant chemistry and a pull towards each other.

We were both babies when we met. He was 18 and I was about to turn 21. The first couple months of our relationship, we were friends with the expectation of more to come. We spent lots of nights at a local pool hall. Classy, I know, but it was somewhere he could go and I could enjoy my newly acquired legal drinking abilities. Once we decided to officially start dating, we spent our days hiding our relationship at work. Every free second not at work was spent together.

Within 4 months of dating we were already talking about marriage and moving in together. 13 months after we met, be bought our first house, and 2 months after that we were married. Now here we are 10 years, 2 kids, 5 dogs, 1 business, a few job changes, and a couple houses later.

Our life has not played out at all like either of us expected it to. There have been some serious bumps along the way, quite a few course changes, but we have managed it together. I know we both say that marrying each other at such a young age is probably the best decision we've ever made. Having Robbie as my spouse, partner, and best friend on this journey is the biggest blessing I've ever received. I would make the decision to marry him over and over again every time.

We have always talked about going on a big vacation for our 10th, but when we weigh the options between trying to have another baby vs. a couple weeks in St. Lucia, the baby wins out. We'll save the big trip for our 15th. So instead of lying on a beach in the Caribbean, we're going to kick it old school date style for tonight. Indoor miniature golf, dinner at Eddie's, and an On Demand movie. So maybe not completely Old School, because we definitely couldn't have afforded Eddie's when we first got married.

We have exactly 0 non blurry pictures of the two of us from our wedding. I am beyond thankful for afordable digital cameras and of course quality camera phones, because the pictures from when we first started dating and got married are not the best quality. Never the less, here's a picture from our dating days, with our wedding party, and from shortly after we were married.

As Robbie pointed out while we were lying in bed last night, we've been together for a third of our lives, and it has flown by in the blink of an eye. I literally can not imagine spending my life with anyone else, and I look forward to the next 10 years and making it half of our lives that we've been together.