The Story of My Valentine

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, I’d like to tell you a little history about my honey and me.

Chris and I have been friends since we were kids.  He was in my second and third grade class. He was even my boyfriend in third grade.  Awww!  I know. Isn’t that sweet?

Back then, I rode horses and raced barrels at the riding club every week.  Chris played baseball at the fields next to the riding club.  I would walk over to the baseball fields to watch him play and then he would come back to the riding club to watch me.

A funny thing about him being my third grade boyfriend is that he also had two other girls that were kind of his girlfriend too.  I’m not so sure why I was ok with is.  I mean, that show Sister Wives is like a car wreck, I might watch it for a little while just because I want to see what’s going on, but I would never want to be in that situation myself.  Anyways, one day during recess, the four of us somehow managed to get out of the teachers’ sight.  We were all sitting on the ground with K and M sitting on one side of Chris and me on the other.  We decided that we were going to all give him a kiss on the count of three.  We counted, I leaned in and kissed him on the cheek, and then the other girls were all “Ooooo, Jaime really kissed him!” HEIFERS!  They tricked me.

Chris liked me all through middle and early high school, but we never got together during those years.  I thought we were just friends and didn’t think of each other that way.  I dated an older guy for a year and a half during high school.  I thought I was madly in love with him. In the end, he hurt me pretty bad.  The day after he broke it off my girlfriends were trying to get me out of the house so I wouldn’t feel so bad.  We went up the high school baseball game.  At the end of the game, Chris came out and asked where L (my boyfriend) was.  I told him it was over.  He thought I was kidding until I teared up.  He gave me a big hug and joked around a little to cheer me up.

That night he called to check on me and asked if I’d go to Memphis with him the next day.  I agreed and the following night we went on our first date.  I’d like to say “and we lived happily ever after”, but that wasn’t the case.  I still had feelings for my ex and let him toy with me for the next 7 months.  I flip-flopped back and forth until the ex and I completely cut off communication.  Chris and I continued to hang out through it all and a few months later we decided to be “official”.  Persistence paid off for him because we dated until we were 22 at which point we got married.

We were hippies following high school and travelled to many places to hear good live music.  Please ignore our appearance.  We had been camping for several days in really HOT weather at this music festival.

Chris and I at our wedding rehearsal in September 2005

This was obviously late into the night at our reception (you can see we have a good time with each other and my dad’s wine and can just be ourselves)

The Christmas before Bennett was born (already big with 4 months to go)

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Thanks for reading,

Jaime