Favorite Date Story....

Today is day 2 in Mama M's VDE.

Yesterday I wrote about how Francis and I met. Today we get to talk about our Favorite Date Story. Mine certainly isn't a favorite because of all the happy exciting things that happend...but it certainly was a memorable one!

The above picture was taken on November 16, 1997 on our 1st date. We weren't "dating", but went out together as part of my dorms' floor Find Your Roommate A Date event. It was supposed to be a secret, but since my twin sister and I were roommates we had a little say in who we picked for each other :) She knew how much I liked Francis and set us up on our 1st date. Our entire floor (2nd Lambein!) went out for bowling and pizza. I know we had a great time, but I honestly don't remember much about the actual bowling and pizza (the actual DATE part of the night)! :)

It was a snowy night and on our way home one of the vehicles in our group had gone off the road. Everyone was safe, but we stopped to make sure that someone was going to be coming to help them. By this time it was well after midnight. For whatever reason I had to pee SO BADLY. If I remember, there wasn't a bathroom at the pizza place we stopped at. We got back to campus...dropped the boys off at their dorm...then headed back to ours. As we got out of the car someone shouted "I'll race you to the bathroom". Oh boy...fateful words. We all took off... somehow I managed to get to the door first. I stopped, swiped my card to get in then stepped into the dorm. Unfortuneately, there had been other people going in that night with wet, snowy shoes. There also wasn't a very large mat between the door and the stairs that led up to our floor. I took two steps...my right leg hit the wet floor as my left leg was heading to go up the stairs and I slipped. My left knee came crashing down on the edge of the bottom stair. I grabbed my knee and nothing was there. I was in agony. Of course my poor sister is there hearing my pained cries. Jess ran and got our RA (Hi Kelly, are you remembering this?!?)... and made a call that I will never forget. She called Francis! He came running to our dorm (thinking that I just needed help up! HA!) and found me in extreme pain. He came and sat right by me and held my hand, stroked my face, and kept telling me it was going to be okay.

I was taken to the hospital and Jess and him both rode along. He lovingly took a picture of me in the ambulance! He was making me laugh the entire ride to the hospital and while I was there waiting to be seen. What was so bad with that was I STILL HAD TO PEE!!! Remember...that was the whole reason I was in a rush to get inside. It was hours before I actually got to go and he was even pushing on my stomach in the ER...nice, huh? :) :) So much of the night I don't remember but it is amazing to me how much is coming back as I am writing this. LONG story short... I ended up breaking my knee cap in half. I had surgery that day (the 17th) and my buddy was there with my sister watching out for both of us. He certainly saw me at one of my worst moments and even the weeks that followed weren't pretty as I recovered. But he stuck with me and has through so much more in the 13 years since then. Atleast he knew what he was getting in to :) My dad told him, when he asked if he could marry me, that he better make sure he had good health insurance! Funny! :) Anyway, it was definitely a first date to remember.

(Oh yeah, and less then a month later on December 10th, I REBROKE my knee cap...but that's a blog post for another day! :) )

How we met...

Mama M is hosting a Valentine's Day Extravaganza this week... Here is how hubby and I met...

Francis and I actually met in August of 1997 on our 1st day at college (we remember seeing each other at our Welcome Weekend the previous spring, but we didn't meet then). My twin sister and I went to school together and were roommates. We were sitting in the campus center when Francis and his friend came up and introduced themselves to us. Having not been the most popular in high school, Jess and I found it quite intriguing that 2 boys would come up, out of the blue, and talk to us. It was a mutual attraction from the beginning, but our journey was a long and bumpy one.

We hung out with the same group of friends our entire Freshman year. Our first "date" was a floor activity of "Find Your Roommate a Date" (more details tomorrow!). We both really liked each other and eventually had a discussion about our mutual interest, but decided that it would be better not to date right away and just be friends. For some reason, hubby did end up dating someone else our 2nd semester which was heartbreaking for me at the time, but now we know that it was the best thing that could have happened. Our friendship blossomed and we truely became best friends. We saw each other at our highest and our lowest and loved each other more because of it. That relationship ended at the beginning of the summer, but ours continued to grow. We spent the summer writing letters and having a few phone calls back and forth.

We officially started dating November 27, 1998, during a visit to my house at Thanksgiving. I wasn't able to go back to college after my freshmen year because of the cost, so our entire dating relationship was long distance (as was our engagement). VERY difficult, but again, one of the best things, because we were able to learn so much about each other through phone calls, (handwritten) letters, and e-mails. Our times together were few and far between, but very special. Francis graduated from college in May of 2000 and we were engaged on July 2nd. 11 months later, on June 2, 2001 we became husband and wife.

(photo taken August 1998, 1 year after we met)