Derek's 27th Birthday!

The love of my life turned 27 yesterday, and it felt like I’d been waiting for this day all my life. Getting a chance to celebrate the life of the person I love most in this world, the person I pledge to love forever daily – what could be more special than that?

On Thursday, we went to shop for some supplies, but I banished Derek to Petco until I was done because I didn’t want him to see what I was buying or where it was from. I got some decorations, and ingredients for some treats I wanted to make for him, and I was set.

On the breakfast menu was french toast, cinnamon rolls, beef bacon and chocolate covered strawberries that I had stayed up all night making, lol, those were mostly for me. Speaking of which, isn’t it awesome being married, because everything they get to enjoy, you get to enjoy right there with them? Lol!

On his birthday, I got up early, made enough food to feed a small army and waited on him to show up for his first surprise – breakfast. I’d told him he’d be just be picking me up to go do something fun, and to text me when he arrived and I’d meet him at the car. So he didn’t know I’d cook or have anything ready at the house. When he got here, I ran downstairs with a little banner that said“Happy Birthday” and told him to come inside, and this was all set up. Plus mood lighting during breakfast, because that’s just how I roll, lol.

Yes I got a husband card, because we’re getting married in less than 40 days!!! 🙂

After breakfast, he opened his card which told him what the rest of the day consisted of, plus some mushy words from me, and then we headed out!

The second surprise was him and I taking a trip to the city, since we haven’t been there together since we moved to our little town. The third surprise was dinner at one of our favorite restaurants and watching Central Intelligence which had just come out, and because Kevin Hart is one of his favorite comedians. That movie is HILARIOUS, we definitely recommend it!

We walked through the city, went into some shops that are definitely worth going back to, including this store, Electric Gentleman, that sells jeans made from real, made in the USA denim, using the same techniques Levis used back in the day before jeans were mass produced. We got a couple of things for the wedding, and got Costco memberships. #adulting

The next day (Saturday) we celebrated Sabbath, by reading our Bibles and going into town to take some pictures and practice working the camera. We caught the tail end of the farmers market, and took a long walk on the beach and watched the boats going by. It was a pretty chill day.

Sunday, we went out to our wedding location with our friends who’ll be photographing the wedding, so we could get some test shots and figure out where the best places to set up for pictures are. You definitely have to figure out the lighting if you’re having an outdoor wedding, especially being at the beach and having minimal shade. After the photo session, I’d arranged a mini birthday-party involving our friends, which we ended up having back at my condo.

Our friends brought some steaks, I made some hamburgers, and we sat around the living room and talked for a couple of hours, it was a really good time. Oh and I made black forest, strawberry cake. It turned out pretty good. I didn’t remember to take a good picture, apart from taking this while I was frosting it, to send to my mom. So for the finished result, use your imagination, lol.

It was opening weekend at the ski resort we live by, so we got to ride the ski lifts to the top of the mountain. There was a lot of food, live music, and so much to see!

Long story short, it was a really great weekend and fingers crossed, I’m pretty sure I’m entering marriage with a surplus of wife points, lol.

Hun,

3 days were barely enough to celebrate who you are, and the impact you make daily in this world. I love you more than words can say. 

Your future wife, 

Jo

Our Love Story - Boy Meets Girl

The Woodsman’s Side

Hi there ladies and gents. I suppose you are all wondering what the story is behind how Joanne and I found life together. So, this is my perspective to the story. 

I was in transition moving from Indiana to northern Idaho, when a good friend of mine told me about this particular site that was intended for online dating, but also had enough filters to allow for one to find friendship of like faiths and personalities as well. So I got on and made a profile. After answering a bunch of questions, the site gave you matches based on compatibility percentages, so far, the closest percentage to me was only in the high 70’s. I’d talked to a few girls, but found that their profiles only said all the right things but their conversation was totally opposite. It was that way for a few weeks when one day I had decided to log on and delete the profile.

Little did I know that going online that last day was going to lead me to the woman that I am now writing about! When I logged on to delete my profile, I saw her. I saw a new profile at the very top of my page. The personality compatibility was 99%, by far the highest I had seen yet. Being very surprised to see the rating so high, I clicked on her profile to see what it could possibly have to say that matched her so close to me. It was almost too good to be true. It mentioned God everywhere! Her interests were the same, priorities of life were the same, desires were the same, pasts were very similar, future plans were the same, on and on it went, and I couldn’t help but message her and keep my profile active for a little while longer. 

I thought this was meant to be, right up until I realized she had seen my message but totally ignored me! (Later she explained the week she had had, which took some of the sting away, but still…) When she finally did respond, a day or so later, our conversation took right off. For two weeks straight, all we talked about was about our faith and what Yeshua meant to us and everything else I could think of under that umbrella. Her every answer was on the money what I was looking for. The interesting thing was that I was only looking for friendship, but I was quickly developing feelings of more interest for her. We were only on the app for a couple of days before I knew I had to get her number and find out more about this girl.

We talked all day, everyday for a couple more weeks, then started using Skype, and lost a lot of sleep because we would stay up late talking for hours. Things were going great, until this didn’t seem like enough either. I decided to come up with a plan to fly her out to Indiana to meet me in person for the first time and then meet my friends, family and fellowship group. 

I showed her around my home town in Indiana and met everyone of importance to my life there. After missing her flight home, we ended up driving cross country together to Idaho, where she met my friends and I showed her around before taking her home to California. The trip was originally intended to be for 10 days, which ended up turning into around 23 days, and it was truly the best time of my life thus far. The time with her was so great! 

We had a chance to experience everything together, or that’s what it seemed like. We had engine problems on our way to California that I had to fix myself on the side of the interstate. Then we got there only to discover that my identity had been stolen, which meant having to cancel all my cards, and being “stranded” in California, waiting for my bank to resolve the situation. We made the best out of a bad situation, and we were still together and having the best time. I was truly in love with by this time, I knew life was going to have her in it from now on, forever and always…which became the catch phrase I use on the scale of my love to her, by the way! 

After these amazing couple of weeks came the hardest part of this whole experience. The stolen money showed back up and it was now time to say goodbye and go back home. The whole drive back to Idaho I was a wreck, just reflecting on the great time we had, how much I loved her and how much I was going to miss being with her. We had talked a lot of what our days apart were going to look like and tried to come up with a plan as to how and when we would communicate with each other. 

We had to learn how to communicate in this long distance courtship and how to trust each other being thirteen hours apart. We battled through the obstacle of time and distance in this relationship to the degree of loving each other so much that we are now talking about when and how to take the next step in our love story…marriage! 

As of this day today, we are moving forward with life with each other and in a couple of weeks, my girl will be with me in northern Idaho learning how to maintain what we built in that long distance season, enjoy seeing each other everyday, and watching love grow in the order of Yahweh’s grand plan for our lives together.

There’s a couple of cool details, like her fitting qualities I had prayed for specifically with a friend a couple of months before, and ways that the Father has spoken to me about the purpose of our relationship, that I didn’t mention to keep this short, but I’ll save those stories for another day. Hope you enjoyed this…