Our Love Story: Part Five. Love, Laughter, and Happily Ever After :)

We honeymooned in Branson at the Big Cedar Lodge. We had both just turned 20...we weren't even old enough to have a drink on our honeymoon! Three weeks after the wedding, school started back, and I had changed my major-nursing school! I was going to be an RN like my mom. Chris continued on his path in business, while working 40 hours a week to support us and carry health insurance so I could fully devote myself to Westark's challenging nursing program. Our parents were concerned we would start having children right away before finishing college, but we made a promise to them and to ourselves that we would wait. To help settle my (sometimes extreme!) longing for a baby, we got another dog. We decided to get a 2nd Jack Russell Terrier, our little Jack (Jackers). He was nothing like Andy, and we soon realized that Andy was an usually calm JRT. Jack was 100% JRT and then some! He kept things interesting for sure! (pushing out screens and escaping windows to chase other dogs; being prescribed doggie Valium by the vet to take for his nerves, growling when the wind blew a bit too hard... just as a few examples!) My brother had moved out when Chris and I got married, and Chris and I were now proud owners of our first home, a mobile home in what my brother nicknamed "Trailerparkansas". We have a lot of great memories of our time there!! We were very happy, but very busy with school, and had one major focus--to buy a real house without wheels beneath it and start a family! Chris was so supportive of me while I finished nursing school. One night I even called into the Delilah show and dedicated a song to him. Nursing school was just about the most stressful time in my life, and I was so lucky to have such a supportive husband! The first 4 years of our marriage we were both full time college students. We realized that we were taking a less traditional approach to marriage, and it certainly had it's challenges, but it was so nice to curl up next to my husband in bed on the many, many late nights I was up until 3 am studying. I loved having him there by my side. (And he never once complained about my lamp being on half the night, or even when I practiced some of my nursing skills on him!)

Chris and I with our first "babies"

, Summer 2002

Also, me before I had weight loss surgery...yikes :-/

One of my favorite pics of us. May 2006.

After graduating from college, we made our first dream come true and bought our first real house in Greenwood. We were ecstatic! We had a huge fenced backyard for the dogs and 3 bedrooms/2 baths...time for kids!! Ayden Christopher made us parents on August 17th, 2007. We were so in love with our new little man!! Sadly, a year later, our little Jackers died and we mourned the loss of our spirited little dog. In the fall of 2008, Chris was finishing up his MBA and was offered a job with the Walmart Home Office in Bentonville. It was basically his dream come true! We moved to NWA, eventually sold our home, and settled in with our new jobs. When Ayden was about 18 months old, we got another dog, a yellow lab named Gunner. But we still wanted more babies! On September 6th, 2010, God blessed us with another little bundle of joy, Ethan Jeffrey. We were overjoyed to have 2 sweet boys! We were renting a house at the time, and planned to buy a home soon.

Currently, it is September 2011, and I am sitting next to Chris, my best friend and the love of my life, in our dream home that we just bought in June. Our sweet boys are asleep in their rooms upstairs, while Gunner and Andybear (he's almost 11!) snore at our feet. I thank God everyday for the blessings I have right here in this house. I knew what I wanted from a young age, and God blessed me with a wonderful boy-turned- man that would help make all my dreams come true. We have grown up together--made mistakes and lived and learned, and I'm sure we have more to go! But there's no one I would rather make mistakes with...cry with...laugh with....live life with than Chris. I wouldn't go as far as to say we are living in a fairytale, but we are as close as I could have ever dreamed :)

The first thing I bought for our bedroom in our new house, a picture that hangs above our bed, it says,

Love, Laughter, and Happily Ever After

Summer 2011
9 years, 2 kids and a Yellow lab later,and  I'm still making us wear matching Old Navy t-shirts :)