It's the end of...

the year!
I cannot believe how time has flown by.
Tomorrow is my husband and I's anniversary of our first official date.
For those of you who don't know - my husband and I were both divorced and doing the single-parent dating thing (which is far different from the single and dating thing) and we were both using an online dating service. We had both used multiple dating services with the same results - meeting many different people who were just not right for either of us. (At this point that's obvious, because we are one of those couples completely made for each other.)
So, I had been dating someone for a few months, when he - heck I still don't know what happened to the guy - my guess is that he got scared of the serious direction our relationship was moving towards, albeit not at the warp speed my husband and I moved at, but it was apparently too fast for him and instead of being honest with me he decided it best to just stop calling and returning calls. Water under the bridge at this point. But, it was around Thanksgiving when I finally was ready to date other people, so I put up an ad on an online dating service, thinking to myself, God will take care of me when He feels it's right - within hours I had a communication from this guy.
With online dating you have to be careful, because there are plainly and simply some very dishonest people out there. So, I would not talk to someone without a picture that was clear. I would not talk to married men, or men going through a divorce. And I didn't give my phone number out very easily. I'd been divorced for a few years and had done the online dating thing more than once. Consequently, I had learned some lessons the hard way - that may be another post. Back to my story.
So, this guy sends me a message, but he had no picture. So I was honest. Something along the lines of "You seem like a nice guy, but I don't talk to guys without pictures." He sent back some funny little quip, and had a picture up the next day. At some point that weekend we chatted online, and that became a fairly regular thing for us. Regular, like almost daily. By the time his daughter's birthday rolled around on Dec. 14, we were ready to exchange numbers. He called after his family left the house that night and his daughter had gone to bed. I think we talked until the wee hours of the morning several nights that week. We decided to meet that Saturday after one of the basketball games I had to go to because I was the cheerleading coach back then.
We met. Laughed a lot. And decided to get together sometime soon, which we knew would be difficult because it was the holidays and we shared our children with other people.
We went out on December 23rd. He picked me up at my house. We ate dinner at On The Border. We talked. We did some last minute shopping that I had to take care of for Sophie. We went to the movies and saw Fun With Dick and Jane. He brought me home and we talked for a few more hours, during which we made plans to go out on New Year's Eve. Then, he went home.
I got up the next morning and went to my part time job at Blockbuster. He called and said he couldn't wait til NYE to see me again, and said he wanted to cook me dinner. So we made another date for that week - I'm pretty sure it was just for the 30th, but it's still a fond memory.
We've been inseperable since then. We argue and disagree quite often, but we always manage to be respectful, or apologize when we're not. We can always make each other laugh. We are a team, a unit.
Now, the craziest thing about our online dating experience is that Jason had been using another dating site than the one I was on, but he decided he'd give it "one last shot" and put up an ad on the site I was using. Then he found me and paid money so that he could talk to Me! I truly believe God did all of this. He matched us together. And after three short, yet infinitely long, years we are trucking right along.
Our first date was on December 23. Our first crisis occurred sometime in January - I was at a basketball game, tripped on the sidewalk getting something out of my car, and had to go to the emergency room to get stitches. He was at the school within 10 minutes. (He lived off of Sanga and Walnut Grove, the school I taught at was at Summer and Highland.) He took me to the emergency room, brought me home. Took care of me that night, took care of Sophie the next morning - including taking her to school. And he's been taking care of us every since then.
He proposed on March 13th.
We were married on April 21st.
It's been an amazing, delightful, stressful, difficult, whirlwind - but I wouldn't change a thing.