Show and Tell Tuesdays: How I Met Your Father!

It's time for Show and Tell Tuesday again! This week's topic is still related to all the love we've been feeling since Valentine's Day, and we get a chance to tell the story about how we met our spouse. If you want to join in, here are our topics:

This post will be word heavy, since I don't have many pictures of our early days as a couple saved on this computer, or online. I'll post what I can find easily. We have tons of snow outside that needs to be played in!

Steve and I met in September 1998, but that's not truly where our story begins. Let's start from the very beginning...

My BFF Alisa went to school at Carson Newman College, and just happened to be assigned a room with another friend from our high school, plus two strangers. One of those strangers (Sarah) went to Halls High School in Knoxville. My BFF and Sarah became immediate friends, and decided pretty quickly to get their own apartment off campus. They had an apartment-warming party, and Alisa invited a bunch of her high school friends (including me) and Sarah invited a bunch of her Halls High friends, including Steve. Now, I should mention here that Steve dated Sarah's high school BFF and things didn't end well. Sarah didn't have the highest regard for Steve, but they had enough mutual friends that she invited him anyway. 

He didn't come. He had to work, and decided he didn't want to drive to Carson Newman when he got off. However, his good friend Clay did come, and hit it off with my friend Megan. Their relationship started off that night, and for the next nine months, all I ever heard about was Clay's buddy Steve and how he thought we'd be perfect together. 

I was single that whole nine months, so I kept telling Clay to make it happen. He drug his feet until that fall, when I moved to East Tennessee State University, and Megan and I got an apartment together. Clay says that he thought Steve moved to ETSU, too, so he looked him up (back when the phone book was Google). Turned out, Steve lived in the same apartment complex I did! He walked over, sparks flew, and we've been together ever since!

That was in September 1998, and Steve proposed in April 2000. We had been looking at rings, and found one that we both really liked. I knew we were going to get engaged, I just didn't know when. I walked into his apartment one night, and he walked out of his room with the ring box in his hand. It wasn't exactly a grand gesture, but effective nonetheless! He told me later that he had intended to propose on our family's annual beach trip to Myrtle Beach in July, but he just couldn't wait that long. Turns out, we ended up not going to the beach that year because my sister was in the hospital trying NOT to have Tatum (who ended up being born July 28th anyway, 5 weeks early but perfectly healthy), so his plans would have been thwarted anyway. 

We got married in May 2001

Look! I found a picture!

And we lived happily ever after...

Sorry for the lack of pics! I need to get old pictures scanned into this computer. 

Can't wait to read all the love stories!!

XOXO,

Andrea