eric and i go back a LONG way. alright, well, not a long way, but ya know.
the summer before my senior year of high school my youth group went on a missions trip to a mission in georgia. this just happened to be the same mission that eric's parents and grandparents worked at.
while we were there our youth group did lots of work around the mission, including washing dishes after meals for the missionary candidates.
one night eric and i (we really didn't know each other) were washing dishes, side by side. he washed, i dried. i remember thinking at the time '...doesn't he know that he is supposed to rinse the dishes after he washes them?'
so after a week in georgia we went back to missouri and eric and i didn't think of each other for another year until we saw each other at calvary bible college in kansas city the following fall semester of our freshman year of college.
we became fast friends and hung out together all the time.
much went on between our freshman and sophomore years... things like:
*i told eric that i liked his roommate (i didn't know that eric liked me at the time, whoops).
*i dated eric's roommate.
*eric prayed for us (even though he liked me...isn't he awesome).
*we wrote letters back and forth all summer between freshman and sophomore years.
*we still didn't 'like' each other but we were best friends.
*he helped me walk down to the gym often to wash the boys basketball jerseys (i was the manager).
*we began to realize that we liked each other.
that christmas my brother and his wife were going to be traveling to georgia for christmas. i asked them if i could drive down with them and surpise eric for christmas. he was quite surprised!!
we began dating that christmas. he actually asked me to date him while we were washing dishes =) just like when we first met =)
i ended up transferring schools for my junior and senior years. so eric was in kc and i was in branson. this long distance relationship lasted for two years.
april 12th- eric came down for easter break... he took me on a canoe trip (of course, it had snowed the morning we went... it was a little chilly)
i found a cool bottle. well, eric actually found it and finally convinced me to pick it up. after getting the bottle and rowing our canoes back to the truck we ran to the truck to get out of the cold and wind. when we got to the truck eric brought back up the bottle that we had found.
i looked and finally noticed that there was a message in the bottle.
i took it out and there were three pages in it that looked old and had writing on them. it was a beautiful poem.
i will had no idea that this was a marriage proposal. in fact, after i read the poem i looked at eric and told him that this was a great way for someone to propose to their significant other (i swear i am not blonde!)
when i did look up, he had pulled a ring from his back pack and i finally got the hint!!! this WAS a marriage proposal. i said yes. we waited around for a while. (until it got dark) eric had given fireworks to my sister and her then boyfriend, tim for them to shoot off once it got dark.
we were engaged for 13 months and were married on May 31, 2008. we had a beautiful outdoor wedding in my parents backyard.
