Our story takes place over a span of 8 years, so I'll try to make it as short as possible! :)
I met Matt when I was 6 years old in Kindergarten. We went through elementary school and jr. high together and if someone had told me back then that we would be where we are now, I would have said they were CUH-RAY-ZEE! When freshman year of high school rolled around I began to think the idea of dating him might not be so bad. We went to our school's Christmas Dance together, and he was my escort when I was nominated for homecoming princess during basketball season. Needless to say, this thing was in the works pretty much all of freshman year! My best friend teamed up with his and were determined to set us up from that point forward. They spent many a drama class trying to make this thing happen! I think we both were pretty much acting like we didn't want to in order to avoid embarrassment in case the other did not feel the same way. Finally, on April 18th of 2003, he asked me to be his girlfriend. Of course, when you're 15, this is a HUGE deal!
We had kind of a rough start as neither one of us really knew how to be in a relationship (because, let's be honest, who really does at 15??). We spent the whole summer in the honeymoon stage. When school started we began to fight a LOT as we adjusted to being a couple around other people. Needless to say sophomore year was a bumpy one. That summer we broke up and stayed broken up for about 6 months until January of our junior year. We got back together and had smooth sailing from there on out.
We graduated high school together and of course the anxiety of going off to college had begun to creep in. We had chosen separate colleges but they were both located in the same city. I was nervous all summer that thigs wouldn't work out as college is a totally different world. We began college in the fall and things seemed to be going great. We got to hang out with our separate friends at our own colleges and also spend time together whenever we wanted. Everything seemed to be going great, until Christmas break when he decided to transfer. The college he was attending was very hard and demanding and there was a program that he really wanted to go into at a bigger college...2 and a half hours away. My nervousness and anxiety about not working out grew and grew throughout Christmas break and well into January. Once he got settled in at his new school, however, I got used to the distance and actually really enjoyed visiting him there. I had a lot of friends from high school that went there also, so it was fun to get to see everyone. We came up with an "every-other-weekend" plan that worked out pretty well for the most part. Of course it was hard and some weeks felt like years between visits, but we stuck it out for 3 and a half years with very few problems in between.
We both graduated in May of 2010 and moved back home to live with our parents. I got a job at our old elementary school and he is going to nursing schoo at the local community college. Finally, on October 20 of 2011, the magic happened. Of course, having been together for 8 years, we had been talking about marriage for a while, but I had no idea that it was going to happen on that particular night. We went out to eat and walked along my favorite spot in the city where I went to college, and that was where he asked me to marry him. It was absolutely perfect, and I couldn't be more excited to be marrying my lifelong sweetheart, soulmate, and best friend!
