how we met.

in two weeks Gregg and I will celebrate our 7th wedding anniversary. it's hard to believe this time 8 years ago we had just spent a weekend together in Austin, meeting in person for the first time. i don't know that i've written out our story so i thought i would take the time to do that this year.

it's a long one..so

in december of 2004 i graduated from Texas A&M and started looking for my first post-college job. i had a BS in Sociology so it wasn't one of those degrees that guarantees you a job right out of school. i ended up moving back to Brenham and working at the restaurant i had worked at off and on throughout college. after a few weeks of living at home with my parents, i moved into an apartment with a friend in brenham and spent a lot of my non-working time online looking for jobs. i also spent a lot of time reading blogs. back then, blogging wasn't it's own industry like it is now. it was just people writing about the randomness of their lives and days and i loved it. i was skimming through blogs and looking through blog "groups" when i found one that was Christian themed in some way so i clicked on it. the next page had all these little profile pictures of it's "members" with a few sentences about the person's blog. i remember clicking through a few pages and for some reason Gregg's picture caught my eye. i can still picture it my head, a tiny tiny little picture of him in a blue polo. i clicked over to his blog and started reading and immediately thought to myself how similar we seemed. i noticed that he lived in florida though so i didn't really think much of it but i did continue to go back to his blog and read it daily. this went on for ONE YEAR. yes, i blog stalked him for a year before he knew i even existed.

flash forward one year and i'm living in austin now. i had moved in june of 2005 for a job and was living on my own. i loved austin and i loved living by myself but i was struggling with feeling lonely and so, so broke. i had just stopped dating a guy from work and was still hanging on to some confusion and hurt from a college relationship. all this time i had kept reading Gregg's blog and thinking about how we seemed so much alike. one day he had a song playing on the background (it was dennison witmer 24 turned 25) so i decided to leave him a comment asking about the song. the next thing i knew he had responded on my (super interesting..) blog and our back and forth conversation continued with paragraph long comments for a few days. i remember getting so excited every time i logged in and saw another response from him. now, this was in January of 2006 and AOL instant message was still the way to communicate online, so naturally we moved to that. we spent hours talking on AOL for a few days before he asked for my number. i'll admit i was a little hesitant at first, talking to guys online wasn't really normal for me but something inside me just knew it was okay. the first time gregg called me, i looked at the ringing phone for a few seconds wondering what in the world i was doing, but then i answered it. as soon as he said hello all the power in my apartment went out. i am not making that up, literally, as soon as i heard his voice, the lights in my apartment went out. i did panic for just a second thinking maybe the two were related and he had tracked me down and was about to break in or something..but then i realized it was just random timing and we talked for hours that night....and the next night. we also emailed long emails all throughout the day to one another. this went went on for about a month before he asked to come visit. again, i was hesitant at first but just knew it was good. i did not want to tell my parents because what parent is cool with a random internet guy coming to visit their daughter?? no parent. but gregg insisted that i tell them and my friends so it was some sketchy, secret thing. so i told my mom and she made me promise to take a friend with me to pick him up from the airport. my lucky friend samantha volunteered/was coerced into risking her life and coming along with me.

these are pictures of samantha and i on the car ride to pick up gregg for the first time. we were practicing our scared faces but i was too excited to look scared...

i knew before we even met in person that i was going to marry him but was just not ready to go there yet in my mind. the night before he flew in, i sat on the floor of my apartment and cried and cried. i was scared of moving forward and letting go of the past and i knew that is what was coming.

i'll never forget gregg coming down that escalator. he was wearing khakis, a blue and white striped GAP polo and some sort of brown loather boat shoe type things- a look i have not seen him recreate yet in the years since we met. ha. there was flight drama with him getting here (another long story i will skip..) so he didn't get in until 10pm. we picked him up and immediately went to kerbey lane for pancakes.

that first dinner at kerbey lane 

i remember just wanting to be close to him on that car ride and it taking a lot of self control to not grab his hand. after a few days of hanging out, it was obvious he was serious and knew the same thing i knew-this was "it". again, it scared me to no end so i wasn't ready to verbalize it yet.

a few months went by and a few more back and forth visits were made before he ended up moving to austin for the summer. he found some roommates through my church and lived in a ridiculous hot and cheap attic apartment by the UT campus from may until the end of august. at the end of the summer he had to go back to florida to finish college (we are the same age...he just took his time in college) and i knew i was going to go too. i was antsy at my job and liked the idea of moving somewhere new. i ended up loading whatever belongings i could fit into his 2 door ford explorer and making the move with him. i rented a house 2 blocks from the ocean with a couple of girls and we got engaged in Savannah, GA the week after we got back to florida. 6 months later we got married-almost exactly a year from the time we first met at the austin aiport.

seven years and three kids later, i forget that our story is unique and so sweet. i never thought i'd get engaged 6 months into a relationship and i NEVER would have guess i would meet my husband online in such a random way. of course, i don't really believe it was "random" but rather God using the internet to bring us together. i'm thankful for our story and it's craziness. and, more than ever, i am thankful for Gregg and the way he has always pursued me and made me a priority. it's a blessing and gift to live this life with him.