The History

Ahh, yes…Where it all began…

Well, once upon a time (i.e. eight years ago) I was 17 years old. I was your typical high school student: bouncing in and out of cliques and sporting the most repulsive trends hip fads of the early 2000′s (feathery bangs, braces, Avril-Lavigne-style ties over white tank tops). Let’s just say that I thought I was H-O-T, but looking back now, I feel like crawling into a hole. Wanna see what I mean?? (I can’t believe I’m doing this…)

(that's my best friend, Bethany, on the left and me on the right)

Man, we were smokin’ right? Well SOMEHOW we made ourselves some friends with boys from a different high school in town…

(JT on the left, John in the middle and Ryan on the right)

You’ve got it - The John in the photo above is none other than MY John today! Although his memory seems to fail him on the details whenever I bring up “the good ole’ days…”, we were best friends. We each remember a little something different when we reminisce about all the crazy times we had together as “the group” (which definitely makes for fun conversations today – “Are you KIDDING me?!! You don’t remember when we all did that?!”).

The five of us had the kind of friendship you see in the movies, complete with windows-down, music-blasting car rides to nowhere in particular on any given summer night, camping trips on Bethany’s family farm, cook outs and endless CD mixes of the boys’ favorite rock bands (many of which are still John’s favorites today, but he’ll have to tell you about that himself).

Up until we all graduated between 2004 and 2005 (Ryan and JT were a year behind) most of us lost touch…However, Bethany and I remain best friends and John and JT still maintained a friendship. We’re not sure what happened to “RyRy”…

Fast forward seven years: My younger sister and I were walking through Target last summer and LOW AND BEHOLD there was John! Lookin’ a HECK of a lot older (and much more “dishy”) then I remembered from our teenage years…Complete with a sleeve of colorful tattoos and a shaggy beard, he was a stop-in-your-tracks type of guy. So we lingered and chatted for a bit in the aisle, saying we’d DEFINITELY have to meet up sometime to catch up!

We never did.

Yeah…I know what you’re thinking. How could you let that chance go?!!? Well trust me, I’m wondering the same thing myself in retrospect! Honestly, when we were 17 years old, John and I had little in common besides our group of friends and the simple life we had collectively learned to appreciate in our little home town. He was into cars and mischief (as most 17-year-old boys are…) and I was into rules (still am…), being cute, fitting in and making sure I always had a boyfriend.

While the impulse-driven parts of his life and teenage insecurities of mine have changed and matured immensely in the last decade, the core of our personalities (cars for him and not-breaking-the-rules for me) are the same. Or so I found out when we FINALLY got together around New Years…

So before…

And now today!!!

Photo copyright: Katie Stoops

It’s been a whorl-wind romance, but I wouldn’t trade it for ANYTHING! We both feel like we’ve finally found the person who can appreciate (and sometimes put up with) our crazy need for schedules and lists and routine, among other things. The fact that it all began as a friendship eight years ago is the icing on the cake…

So now you know where we’ve come and where we are today! Hope you enjoy witnessing our lives come together all over again