When we met at the end of 2003 on our cold, college campus, I knew that I had a future with the brooding musician that worked in our student union. I didn't have the guts to properly talk to the burly guy behind the counter or in one of the classes we shared so I used my position on our school's record label to book him for a concert. During the entire Christmas break I thought about that guy and wondered about his holiday. When I arrived back to campus mid-January he turned out to be the first person I ran into. It's one of those moments photographed inside my brain and I hope I never lose the image of him waving at me through the glass windows of our school's cafeteria. He joined me for brunch with his best friend and wasn't deterred by the presence of my father, who would later need assistance driving to the St. Louis airport. An ice storm hit and my car died. While I was trying to figure out how to get my dad to the airport Kevin graciously offered to jump start my car so we could get where we needed to go.
Going to a small college meant you eventually got to know everyone enrolled and if you were a part of the unfortunate few to spend the January semester on campus before the rest of the student body arrived in February, you made friends fast or you holed yourself up in the dorms. During that January semester I kept running into Kevin and eventually we would talk in the student union. We went on our first date that February (even though he intended it to be a group outing and everyone else bailed). We drove to St. Louis, saw a movie and from that point I was completely hooked.
After countless hours on AOL Instant Messenger (this was before texting, kids), and a not-so-subtle Valentine placed in his student mailbox, Kevin made it official and we dated for the next year-and-a-half. We wrote letters and visited each other's hometowns during the summers, experienced a semester away together on Martha's Vineyard and spent our senior year in college engaged to be married.
With my eyes set on a music publishing career and Kevin's aspirations of becoming a travelling singer-songwriter, we moved to Nashville and hustled around the city for a few years, growing roots in a town we now love with all our hearts.
I ended up working for a non-profit and Kevin maintained the barista by day, musician by night lifestyle for four years and that's when we decided to try to have a baby.
I always tell people that when you decide to try to conceive you don't think anything of it. People get pregnant every day so how hard can it be? Well, after a year of trying we decided maybe it really isn't as easy as we believed and sought help to diagnose the problem. You can read the rest of that story on our blog, but it took another year and a half to get a proper diagnosis and eventually decide we needed to grow our family by adoption.
We're coming up on nine years of marriage and every day is a new adventure. We have learned the hard way that you can't take life too seriously and laughter is always the better medicine to take when things just get you down.
If you need us, we'll be gardening, playing with our pups, going to concerts, making food, watching movies, and just staring at our daughter because well...she's kinda awesome.
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