Eight Years

Today is my eight year wedding anniversary! It almost seems like a small number considering I've had my eye on Derek Thomas Michaelis since 1995. Sounds weird just thinking about the 90s. We apparently had our first encounter in the halls of Midways High School. (This is Derek's memory, oddly enough not mine). Derek, a sophomore, was on his way to get his braces checked at the orthodontist and I was for some reason not in class (also odd - never occurred any other time) and passed him in the halls. Here he was with this hot older chick (once again, his memory, not mine) and she, the junior, opens her mouth and tells him, "You should get blue elastics when you get your braces changed - that color goes with everything." And so it was for the rest of his braces days that he got blue elastics. Well, 2 years later and that older chick gets a crush on younger boy. We were both on Panther Patrol, Blue Crew, which if you didn't go to Midway then I cannot possibly describe the squad in any way to make you realize it was a cool thing to be on. We are all on a bus with the cheerleaders leaving an away football game. I notice everyone is talking except this tall, shy, younger boy who is sitting off by himself and using up 2 whole seats on the bus to drape his legs. So I, wanting everyone to have a friend, go over to him and ask if he wanted to chat. He told me he was fine. Stumped, I began to become intrigued that someone would not want to talk to me. It only took 4 more months for his friends to get him to ask me out. And that, folks, is where it is today.

We went out to eat to celebrate last night. We started going through each of the eight years, telling our favorite memory from each year and where we were on the actual anniversary. 2 years are still trying to be found (as to where we actually were on October 21 - more like which state we were living in). We were laughing at our first 6 months of marriage. We would go to the movies every weekend, seeing double if not triple features. It was a game to us - and we used our student IDs, no less. We had no friends and didn't want any. All we wanted was to be together. Derek said last night how different those two people seem today. Not that either the old ones or the new ones are better than the other. But it's just that now we can't even catch our breath on the weekends (I'm learning to say no!), much less I can't remember the last time we went to the movies. How times have changed.

But I love this man, through the crazy baseball life, the different cities we lived in during the dating years in college, through times when we had little money (and weren't we so much happier), and now the Lord has blessed us with a sweet boy and my buddy, Roxy. How do you say how much your soul mate means to you? Don't want to sap up this post, but I did want to share a few photos. I randomly grabbed a few old ones just for laughs.


First school function together: Sadie Hawkins dance, February 1996. Too many things to comment on this picture - you pick which one you want to laugh about

My senior prom (his junior)

Our first New Year's Eve 1996

Our second year of baseball together - a Christmas card for one year


I had too many photos, so these are the only random ones that made the cut. I love my wonderful hubby! To many more.....