There’s been a lot of reflection lately around here, as I can only imagine is fairly common for one to do when they pass over that threshold of bringing a new life into existence and all, and so in that same vein I thought it might be appropriate for this year’s First Date Anniversary post to take a little trip down memory lane and look back at some of those first pivotal moments from way back in the day when we were just starting to get to know one another… 😀
Date #1 – the infamous date that started it all on April 20th, 2006 – found us meeting for the first time in person at an Applebee’s not far from Sara’s apartment for dinner after work. The food was, well, it was Applebee’s, but we ended up hitting it off well enough that we ended up going back to her place afterwards and talking for another 3 hours … good start!
Date #2 took place a mere two days later when I used the excuse of “going over to Disney to buy a present for somebody” as an in to invite her to come along with me to Epcot for the day. It’s kind of crazy considering how many dozens of times we’ve been there together since over the last 8 years, but that was apparently her very first time. I guess she liked it… 😉
Date #3 is admittedly where things started to get a little fuzzy just because it didn’t take us long to hit a period where we were pretty much seeing each other every couple of days. I do recall one slightly rough patch where I came over to hang out in the evening and Sara had a bunch of stuff to do, so I ended up going on a scavenger hunt to find a copy of Osmosis Jones on DVD for her science class instead. It took me forever because nobody had it, and by the time I got back with the DVD (and ice cream!), I pretty much got sent home empty-handed because she was getting ready for bed (…because somebody had been keeping her up far later than she was used to going to bed…).
Thankfully she made up for it pretty much the next day, which is still impressive considering my tendency to hold onto things that I’m forever working on…
Fast-Forward maybe a month and we had already made a huge step in that I let her stay at my apartment while I was up in Michigan for a week. It actually hadn’t started out that way, but Sara had a lot of problems with the people she was sharing her apartment with … to the point where she had been pretty much staying with me more nights than not for the past couple of weeks. I got a call maybe the second night I was away that ended with me getting a hold of a friend who had my spare key to hand it off to her … and aside from a minor smoke alarm scare, thankfully I returned to find my home not only not looted, trashed, or otherwise burnt to the ground, but I also found myself in a relationship that was a bit stronger based on that trust and hope that was building between us.
And jump forward another month to see the next progressive step from that because if we were around May when our last trust exercise concluded, it was barely a month later when we were actually moving in together for real. It was a very spontaneous decision that stemmed from those previously mentioned terrible living companions back at her own apartment that found her very suddenly and very unexpectedly without an apartment to call her own, and although our first discussions had talked about maybe thinking about moving in together at the end of the summer, fate decided to accelerate our process and thus on the 4th of July (2006), Sara and I officially began cohabiting my apartment together.
As you would imagine, it was quite the whirlwind summer from there – at that point we’d still only been dating for a couple of months, but throughout the course we traveled back home to both New York and Michigan and got the opportunity to meet each other’s family. It’s kind of funny because one of the most notable moments from meeting hers was when I was in the bathroom and overheard Sara reporting back to her family, “I’ll have a ring within a year…” – I say funny because as flattering as it was to hear that she herself was that happy in our relationship that early, I specifically waited until a couple of weeks after the 1 year mark to propose just out of spite after hearing that comment!
Sometimes it’s the little things… 😛
And that was all just in the first year! It’s kind of crazy to think that we’ve known each other for a whopping eight now, and even considering all that we’ve been through thus far, I think we’ve still got plenty more to keep things interesting at least for a couple more years. 😉
