My Story, Your Candy ;)

One Memorial Weekend, a long long time ago, I arrived home from work and saw the most gorgeous guy sitting in my apartment. He was a friend of my roommate's boyfriend, and just arrived in Hawaii to begin his military career.

I dare not say it was love at first sight, but I was smitten.

We talked and hit it off immediately. I even ventured into the kitchen to cook homemade dinners when he visited.

He came from a good family and had so much more life experiences than the college guys I knew!
I made a note to myself:

He is the one.
Apparently he felt the same way too. We saw each other whenever it was possible, although he had to drive 45 minutes in traffic just to see me. Even through periodic overseas separation and all of his training in the field, we kept in touch and left messages on each others' pagers. Yes. Pagers. ;)
He eventually popped the question, so we chose a beautiful Spring day to get married.

And on March 18th in front of friends, family, and my wonderful Mother In Law, we exchanged rings.

Many thought we chose shades of greens for our wedding to embrace the natural surroundings. Truth be told, it matched his Army Dress Greens which helped us save money by not renting tuxedos.

Now don't get me wrong, it wasn't the white horse/castle/knight in shining armor sort of beginning. I was a young college student still in school and he was a low ranking enlisted soldier. We had a lot to learn!

We got through the hard times but celebrated all the good times even more.

 

And yes we even held true to our decision to have 6 kids: 3 boys...

 

and 3 girls.

Somehow we find a way to make each other a priority: a phone call, in-home date night, doing each others' chores, an inside joke that we laugh about in front of our kids.
While I don't have any of the answers for the perfect marriage, I do know that he and I strive to celebrate 40 years together as his parents just did, and 50 years together as my mommy and daddy would have if he was still here. What we do know is that God put us together and we have so much to learn from and with each other.

And that's the story...

 of how I met my Soldier.

Now you can celebrate our wedding anniversary with us!

Leave a comment here for your chance to win everything (plus some that I couldn't find a way to incorporate into the story) that was shown on today's posting, including Hula Anya and Soldier Ian who are on their way to jump into your box. You have until April 3rd to enter, I will randomly select one person on Easter to send this blog candy to.
*Please note: Due to postage and handling, if an international friend's name is picked (outside of Canada and the US) I will compensate with an online gift certificate to their store of choice. Thank you for your understanding!

{If you would like to post this in your sidebar, please take the picture above OR the Hula/Soldier Ian picture. :D}

Thank you so much for letting me share my story, have a wonderful and blessed day!
♥ and Aloha