I think this might be a little shorter than Aaron’s story ….. I grew up with a younger brother and a younger sister. I always knew I wanted to get married and have kids …. 4 kids, to be exact. Things don’t always go according to our plans, though. I wanted to be married in my early 20s so that I’d have plenty of time to have my 4 kids. For a while, I also wanted to homeschool them, so I figured the younger I was, the better.
Throughout my 20s, I dated a little bit here and there, but nothing too serious. My mom always said I was too picky. My response was that I SHOULD be picky when I was deciding who I’d spend the rest of my life with!!! I spent my 20s moving to a few different states and investigating various careers. I ended up in Maryland in late 2000 with a job at Northrop Grumman. I had had a few different jobs at that point and I was having trouble figuring out what I really wanted to do. My jobs had been in different areas of education and the pay was beyond terrible. So part of my goal of working at Northrop was to increase my salary situation. Once I was in Maryland for a few months, I bought a house. I never thought I’d do that on my own … as in, being single.
Well, once I turned 30, I was starting to think I might not get married. I was really fine with that. I owned a house, I had a great career, I had 2 master’s degrees, I had cats!!! What more did I need? In fact, my master plan was that if I wasn’t married by the time I was 35, I was going to investigate adopting a child through the foster care system. I figured that there were so many kids out there that needed homes, and a single, stable mom was better than nothing at all.
In 2003, I decided to return to education ….. teaching high school. I know, I know, I must have been insane. I found a teaching job at the high school about a quarter of a mile from my house. My first day of work was a Friday, Halloween. That night, I went to our church’s Fall Fest. I ran into Aaron there and we started talking. Now, we had met several times over the previous 2 or so years, but I don’t think we ever said more than 2 words to each other. Well, the night of the Fall Fest, we talked for quite a while. We said goodbye and I didn’t think too much more about it.
Our friends that Aaron was visiting when he came to MD worked a little matchmaking something or other. I’m still not sure exactly how it happened, but Aaron and I ended up emailing each other. To this day, our friends deny doing anything shady, but we know better!!!! Good thing it turned out well!!!
I was a little wary of getting involved with someone who lived 4 hours away. But I figured at least he didn’t live halfway across the country or something. So we started emailing each other and pretty soon, we started talking on the phone. I was so nervous for that first phone call. Aaron and I can both be pretty quiet, and I was worried we wouldn’t have anything to talk about! We started visiting each other in January. We got engaged in the spring and got married in August 2004.
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