Before Valentine's Day, I asked my friend Nancy to put together a lil something for Jas. Something that was special to both of us; the locations of the biggest turning points in our relationship. I surprised him with it and he was just overcome with emotion. It was something so special and something he was looking into himself! He now wants to put in on canvas. I am so thankful for Nancy for making this happen (with everything going on in her life)! He loved it girl!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In addition, I entered a contest for free couple's massage through our military housing office. Not sure if the winner was announced or if they were still planning doing it, but I entered with the following love story below. It was a good reminder of how this wonderful journey started.
"What started off as a casual meeting at a wedding turned into our forever. We met on March 20, 2004. I was finishing up college and he was embarking on his Fire Fighting ventures. We had no real intentions of starting a relationship nor did we know where our friendship would take us. We exchanged emails, texts, and talked on the phone for the next two years and became well acquainted. Finally decided we wanted to try and see if “us” could work, I met him in his home state of California and from there we embarked on a 2 year long distance relationship; 4 months of which was spent in boot camp with rarely any communication. Upon graduating, he set out to his first duty station located in Beaufort, SC (Air Station Beaufort). At this point we knew this was a huge turning into something more. “Every great love starts with a great story.” This quote comes from one of our favorite books (turned movie) The Notebook. When this movie debuted, it became “our” movie. In March of 2008 I went out to SC for another visit. Two days into the trip, we decided to venture up to Charleston and see to sights. To my surprise, we went out of our way to Martin’s Point Plantation on Wadmalaw Island. We pulled into a location that looked somewhat familiar. As we got out, I noticed that it was the exact house Noah (from the movie) restored. It was a great surprise, best really! We didn’t want to trespass, so we stayed in the driveway for just a minute. It was wonderful, I thought of what this house meant in the movie and how I was sharing it with my love. I was thankful. I figured we had stayed long enough, so I headed back toward the truck. My sweetie pulled my arm and said very simply, “Is this a good spot?” I turned and with that he got on one knee and said, “Saundra will you marry me?” I was literally in shock not expecting this and all I could say was, “Um, yeah, what are you doing?” He just smiled, put a ring on my finger (we had matching Celtic rings that came from Ireland), and gave me the most tender hug in the world. We both knew that we had found our forever love like in the movie. We still live by the ending quote from our beloved movie, “I think our love can do whatever we want it to, I’ll be seeing you.” The power of love is great, and ours is!" Almost 15 years later, 4 beautiful children, 10 moves, loads of adventures later and we are more in love than we were that day."
