The Story of Us ...

A friend of mine asked me last night to tell her the story of how Wayne and I fell in love. I thought I was post the story here since I am hard pressed to come up with a topic today since Wayne is still on the same clothes and hasn't said anything witty today. Today I am on my own.

Long, long ago I was transplanted from Gillette, WY to Sturgis, SD during my middle school years. We moved due to my Mom and Dad divorcing, so the reason for going was really sad, but just as I was SURE my mom was ruining my life to force to me to leave my friends in Gillette, something amazing happened. I found myself flourishing there. I made wonderful, lifelong friends. I liked my teachers. I was happy! So, 7th and 8th grade were wonderful. The usual things kept me busy like cheerleading (I guess this isn't so popular anymore?), writing for the school paper, passing notes, and figuring out how to navigate into a teenager.

Then 9th grade happened. In Sturgis, 9th grade means High School. Me and my friends were happily unaware that we were nothing more than shark bait for the senior guys. The guys made a list of us (along with comments) as if they were picking out cattle.

Cattle.

So, there we were, on the "list." And there were these guys who befriended us. Purely innocent, no?

No.

Oh my gosh, how we had fun. (Please remind me to delete this post before Caeden and Claire learn to read.)

Wayne and his group of fellas and me and my group of friends all hung out that year. We learned what Purple Passion (grape flavored liquor ... like a wine cooler, if I recall) tasted like. We "cruised" in cars. We hung out. We laughed A LOT.

Now, what you need to know is that Wayne was quite resourceful. Somehow (I will spare the details, but lets just say he was brilliant. If only he used that brain for good instead of evil ...!)
he had a fake ID. But real good. This was back when kids could still outsmart the authorities. Back before technology took away all the fun ... (I say this as I look back on those days, but NOT as a Mom, because we all know I will most certainly deny all of this story when my kids are old enough to hear it).

So, I knew Wayne. But not very well. Then, one COLD night, I lost a friends' wallet (fell out of my pocket) along the road, and so there I was, walking up and down the street looking for this wallet ... and here comes Wayne in his dad's corvette.

Yes! I know!

Wayne and Tom were cruising around (that's what we did back when gas was .85 a gallon) and picked me (and Amber Flint) up to help us look for it. That was the beginning.

We dated behind my Mom's back (Sorry Mom! I know you understand it was completely worth the sneaking around when you look at your beautiful grandchildren, right?). I'll never be able to watch "Dirty Dancing" without thinking about how Wayne was too nervous to hold my hand while we were watching the movie, so I had to GRAB his.

That wonderful year came to an end and Wayne graduated high school and headed to basic training. My family moved back to Gillette, so we went our separate ways.

When I graduated high school, one of the first things I did was call Wayne. His parents have a super easy number to remember, I had it memorized for 3 years! It's 605.787.... Just kidding. Not going to give it away. You never know when solicitors are blog surfing.

Dang solicitors.

Anyway, I called him and he immediately came and picked me up... I don't think we were apart again. Co-dependent, but deliriously happy.

He proposed to me at Roughlock Falls ... he had me hunting for a tree with his parents' initials carved into it. And then I turned around. There he was, on one knee, asking me to marry him. I played hard to get and told him I'd have to think about it.

That isn't true. But I swear the rest of the story is.

We married young, I was 19 and he was 21. We will be celebrating 15 years in September. 15 years. We're getting to the point of being together longer than we have lived apart. How strange (and wonderful) is that to think about?

We spent 10 years without children - we spent many a weekend sleeping in ... spending money frivolously (does anyone remember his Audi A6?), and traveling (one of my favorites was Valentine's Day in London...).

Then we had Caeden. And Claire. And now we are wondering why in the world did we spend so much time sleeping in?? Seriously, we waited too long. They are our everything.

So here we are. The story of us in a nut shell.