For better or for worse...

Today is our sixth wedding anniversary.

When I think back over the past seven years since we met, at a little pub in Concord, Massachusetts, and I think about the person I've come to love with every part of my heart, I am so thankful to God for bringing us together.

Of course, as blissful as our new found romance was then, I knew that Patrick was the kind of person that I'd been dreaming about.  I could tell that he was special.

And the more I get to know him, the more I know for certain that I was not wrong.  Because not only is he the kind of husband who makes me feel beautiful, and special, and treasured.  The kind who isn't afraid to roll up his sleeves and help with whatever needs to be done.  The kind who loves children and being silly with them and singing to them, and comforting them when they're crying.  The kind who loves God with all his heart and soul and mind and strength, and not just on Sunday mornings at church, but in every part of his life.

But he's also the kind of husband you want with you when you go through a year like our past year has been.  The kind of husband who holds you when you are afraid.  Who cries with you when the doctor tells you he's sorry, but there is no longer a heartbeat.  Twice.  Who works a full day and then prepares dinner and packs up the bags for your three young children and then drives them almost an hour away every single Tuesday for months because you have a hospital appointment the next day.  Who brings every meal up to you in bed every single day for eight weeks, while working a full-time job.  He's the kind of husband who gives you unbelievable amounts of slack when your emotions are all over the map and you can't rein them in.  Who can see you at your absolute worst and still think you're great. He is the person who supports you even when you know he needs support, too.

I have never known a love like that from another person, and I'm convinced that God knew what lay ahead for us when we met way back on that cold December night in New England.  I remember him walking me to my car and thinking I'd really like to see him again.  I didn't know yet that he was the one for me (it would only take me about three more dates to know), but I just liked him.  He's unbelievably likeable.

Yes, God knew that we had a rough road before us, and that we would fit a whole lot of living into the next six years, but he also fit us together perfectly.  See how even the curves of our faces fit together?  He knew that we would each be the missing piece the other would need to get through something like we just went through, and I am so grateful that He did.  Because there is no other person that I want to go through this life with than Patrick, and I can't wait to see what the future will hold.  If we could get through that, we can get through anything.

Bring it.

Anniversaries

Patrick and I celebrated our fourth wedding anniversary on November 5th, and the fifth anniversary of our first meeting on December 5th.

It's hard to believe that in just five short years, we met, married, moved to Pennsylvania, and are expecting our third child. It was a whirlwind romance, sort of buckle-your-seatbelts-and-hang-on-for-dear-life, but we are both so blessed.

I was sick for our wedding anniversary, so instead of a weekend away, we spent one night overnight in Annapolis, Maryland. It was lovely and we had a great time. On the ride home, Patrick's phone rang, and in a RARE (as in probably the first time it's happened) instance, he asked me to answer it for him. The number was listed, but there was no name given, so neither of us knew who it was, and the conversation went like this:

Me: Hello?
Her: Is Patrick there?
Me: Can I tell him who's calling?
Her: Uh...um....it's....uh.... (mumbling) it's Royer's Flowers.

Oh no.

My wonderful husband had ordered flowers for me and they were ready to be picked up. Sweet man. He knows that my favorite flowers are ranunculus (the orange ones above) and freesia (the white ones above), and they were absolutely gorgeous.

I am so blessed to have such a thoughtful, caring man for a husband!

I love you, Patrick!

The Story of Us - Part SIX!

The day before we were supposed to meet, I emailed Patrick to ask him if he might send me a photo. You see, he didn't have one posted on his profile and I wanted to know who to look for, though at 6'6" tall, he would have been hard to miss.

The photo he sent me was from his sister's wedding a few months earlier.

He was wearing a kilt, but he was cute and had a friendly face.

Anxious to meet the guy who was so confident that he'd send me a picture of himself in a kilt as my first image of him, I left a little early to get to our meeting.

(I'm an early person. I don't like to rush. I like to have time to find where I'm going, park, and get there without feeling stressed.)

Fifteen minutes before we were supposed to meet, Patrick called to tell me he was running about 30 minutes late.

(I'd come to learn that he's a late person.)

I killed time by driving around Concord and checking out all of the Christmas decorations. Concord is a beautiful little town - the epitome of New England charm - but I'd looped around twice and still had 15 minutes to waste. I ended up calling my friend and was talking to her on my cell when I saw Patrick walking up.

I can remember exactly what he was wearing, and he was much more handsome in person than in his photograph.

We went inside to the quaint little pub, sat by the fire, listened to the jazz band playing, and got to know each other.

I wouldn't say it was love at first sight, but he was charming, intelligent, funny, handsome. It wasn't like pulling teeth trying to maintain a conversation with him. I found myself wanting to put my arms around his waist and hug him because he was so tall. I definitely wanted to get to know him more.

When he walked me to my car at the end of the evening, we parted with a hug and a "Let's do this again sometime," and I hoped to myself that we really would.

The next morning, he sent me an email thanking me for a lovely evening.

We went out again the following weekend. He was late, but he brought me a huge bouquet of beautiful flowers.

It was the little things that told me this guy was different from the guys I usually spent time with. He held my coat for me while we waited for a table in a restaurant in the North End. He opened doors, pulled out chairs. I was used to being treated like "one of the guys," but he was making me feel like a princess.

There was just one little thing: he smoked. As he lit up on our second date, I was shocked. I wondered how on earth I had missed that fact on his profile. Smoking, for me, was definitely a deal-breaker. I had lost two grandfathers to smoking-related illnesses. I think God somehow kept me from seeing it because he didn't want me to write him off. I'm so glad I missed it. (He's since quit.)

We went out a few times before I went home to Pennsylvania for Christmas, and he picked me up at the airport when I went back to New England for a New Year's Eve party at his house. It would be my first chance to see him among his family and friends, and they could not have spoken more highly of him.

It was evident that he was a diamond in the rough. A genuinely good guy.

It was just a few weeks later that we brought up the "L" word and started talking about marriage. I couldn't believe that I'd finally found the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with!

The Story of Us - Part Five

Just how many installments is this going take? I'm as curious as you are.


I can tell you, we're more than halfway to the end.


More than a little disenchanted by the hooligans gentlemen I was meeting on Match.com, I joined a similar dating site called Catholicmatch. Actually, I joined to keep a watchful big sisterly eye on the people my little sis was meeting on there back in Pennsylvania.

I could tell that the caliber of person on this site was different. It didn't seem like such a meat market.

I mean, don't get me wrong, it had its share of weirdos too, including one guy who learned I spoke French and, when I told him I wasn't really interested in giving him my phone number after we'd emailed back and forth a few times, wrote me a HUGE letter professing his love for me and telling me how he had envisioned us together under the Eiffel tower. There was something about roses and violins playing in the background.

Seriously. You can't make this stuff up!

But I liked knowing that at least we were coming from the same basic worldview. I had talked to one guy in particular (not Patrick) who interested me for several weeks, online and on the phone, only to have the same thing happen again once we met in person: no sparks, strained conversation and no communication afterwards.

Frustrated and seriously fed up with the entire process, I considered bringing my Internet dating era to an end, and wondered if I really was going to wind up alone.

Was that God's plan for me?

Could I accept that?

I wasn't sure that I could, but figured I'd better start working on it, since He wasn't really asking for my input.

I knew His timing was best - I'd seen it evidenced in my life over and over again - but I didn't want to keep waiting for something that wasn't ever going to happen. I remember praying in the shower every day: God, please help me to trust you!

I was homesick and sad and not sure what to do next.

Can you see where this is going?

When exactly was it that I received a "smile" from someone named Patrick? It may as well have been the very next day after I hit my emotional rock bottom.

Just a smile.

A feature that let me know that he looked at my profile and was interested.

It didn't show a ton of initiative, and by this point, I was really good at sorting the wheat from the chaff, but his profile seemed intelligent, well written. He liked some of the same movies I did.

None of the same music (does that really say Steve Winwood? What year is it?) but hey, he could change.

I sent him a short email and he replied by giving me his phone number and telling me to call him sometime.

Um...no.

That was not going to happen and I told him as much.

It was just before Thanksgiving, and I remember trading a few emails with him while I was home with my family. It was the year the power went out just about 2 hours into cooking the turkey. I told him how we had waited a half hour or so for it to come back on, then when it hadn't, we'd loaded everything up in the car to take it to my Aunt's house...only to have it come back on as soon as we'd gotten the last thing in.

Patrick was living in New Hampshire with his mom and three of his sisters. His father had passed away nine years before and he was helping his mom take care of the big farmhouse they lived in.

He worked outside of Boston, in Waltham, and suggested that perhaps we should maybe meet in person to get to know each other better.

After all of my other experiences, I thought this sounded just wonderful. We wouldn't have the time to romanticize, and I'd get to see him for who he really was, not just who he was on paper.

Er...on screen?

I agreed.

His first suggestion was go-karting, but I shot that one right down.

He came up with something much better - drinks at a little pub that had live music in the Colonial Inn in Concord.

We'd meet December 4, 2004.

The Story of Us - Part Four

I figured that since I knew no one in Boston, and since I was living on a teacher's salary (Savings? What's that?), the best way to move there might be to find a job as a live-in nanny and maybe go to school at the same time.

I found a job with a family in Wellesley, Massachusetts (posh posh!) and lived with two amazing kids and their mom, who was a lawyer and traveled a lot.

My belongings fit into the U-haul like a jigsaw puzzle, and used just about every single square inch of space. (How does a single woman accumulate so much junk?) My brother and I drove the U-haul up from Philadelphia while my parents and sister followed in their car. It was a hot Friday in July, and the air conditioner in the truck didn't work. Matt kept challenging people to races at the tolls through the open window, which was hilarious considering the thing was fully loaded and topped out at about 50 mph full throttle.

The family was away the weekend I moved in, and so we had the house to ourselves as we unloaded my things and put them into my little rooms above the garage. This was to be my new home. For how long, I didn't know.

I cried when my family left. I didn't think I would.

It just hit me: What on earth was I doing here?!

The family returned that Sunday evening, and I settled into life as a nanny. It had its challenges, but I loved spending time with the kids. On weekends, I'd venture into the city to try to learn my way around.

I loved Boston. I loved the history (and I hate History). I loved that I could walk around the whole city in a day. I loved the museums and the Commons and the Garden, walking around Beacon Hill and window shopping on Newbury Street. I loved watching the street performers outside of Quincy Market. I went into town every Saturday and walked around by myself.

I took my GREs and applied to Boston College for their Master's in Teaching program.

I tried Match.com again, in an effort to get out and start meeting people since I often had weekends off. I went on a few dates, but didn't really click with anyone.

By November, I had been in Boston for four months and I was starting to get pretty lonely. I mean, sure I lived with a family, but they weren't my family. I was alone most of the day while the kids were in school - running errands or doing laundry, alone in the evenings after they went to bed, and alone on the weekends.

I felt like maybe I'd made a mistake.

The Story of Us - Part Three

I figure I'd better get this story moving along. November 5th is just around the corner.

The day I turned 30, I cried from the time I woke up to the time I fell asleep. This may be ok if you work in a cubicle, but it's not such a great thing when you're a teacher. I'd be able to pull myself together for most of the teaching time, but if the students were working on an activity, I was stifling sniffles and wiping away tears.

It wasn't really the turning 30 part, but rather, the idea that I'd hoped to be married by then. For whatever reason, I'd always had it in my head that 28 was the ideal marrying age. When 28 came and went, I thought, well maybe if I'm married by 30...(then what? My life would have purpose? I'd be validated as a person? Everything would be okay?) I never knew how that sentence was supposed to end, but here I was at 30, and I had hardly even dated, let alone had any serious relationships.

It was around this time that I'd decided to start giving Internet dating a try.

But Internet dating, I found, is a very bizarre way to date.

People can, and do, put up a good facade online.

Or they don't and you're left wondering why, if someone only has a little blurb in which to convince a member of the opposite sex that they're worth getting to know better, they didn't try a little harder.

Here are some actual samples from the profiles of people who contacted me.

Describing himself and who he'd like to meet, this one said:

A girl that likes go away at spermont on the weekends or go long rides or walks. Would like meet a women that likes joke. Likes scary movies and a women likes sex. A women that can open up to me.Im very normal guy wonts same as all other guys.I love to maintonbike and play sports.I dont like games of any cond.I like to cook.Looking into buy a house.I like play at the park play frezby or thorl ball around or rollerblade.

His headline said "Don't Pass Me Up!" Really? Watch me.

I mentioned that I taught biology, physics and French, and one guy emailed me with the subject line "Newton was right..." The message:

Hi, Well for every reaction there is definitly an equal and opposite reaction, nes pas?
I enjoyed your profile.....Tell me more?

Totally corny.

Another guy described himself in this way:

I am a responsible,down to earth guy....intelligent,honest,caring,loving,generous,goal oriented,adventurous, a Leo,romantic,fun, occasional drinker,healthy mentally,physically,and dentally! (LOL!),opinionated,an excellant lover,with a great sense of humor,and own my own vehicle.

To which I thought, Dude, you're 42. You have to say you have a car? (And you can't spell "excellent"?)

Perhaps I was a bit too critical, but there were many others like this, and it just made me wonder why, at a minimum, someone didn't just take the 30 extra seconds required to do a spell check.

There were others, of course, that were much more interesting. A few times, I'd exchange a lot of emails with people and maybe some (or several) phone calls before meeting them in person. This was usually a recipe for disaster, as we each tended to romanticize what the person was actually going to be like and inevitably, we'd fail to live up to each other's expectations.

Frustrated with the whole process, and feeling relatively stagnant in life in general, I decided it was time for a change. I needed to shake things up a little bit.

I decided to move to Boston.

The Story of Us (Part deux)

So I looked through all of the travel brochures for student travel and finally settled on one that met my criteria for price, length, and location. I was going to take 50 high school girls to Paris, Provence and Barcelona. YIKES!

As it turned out, the company that offered the package I liked was the one I'd gotten the phone call from.

You know, the phone call.

Determined not to make any more out of the feeling I'd had about that person on the other end, I decided to call and pretend I'd just perused their catalog and decided to plan one of the trips they offered, making no mention of the aforementioned phone call.

I got the receptionist and did just that. Didn't mention my name, didn't mention the call. She told me she'd connect me to a consultant and put me on hold.

Well, you can guess what happened, right?

It was him.

So weird.

There was nothing really significant about him other than the fact that he was really funny and over the course of the first few months we were working on the trip, we started talking and emailing more and more about ourselves.

He lived in Boston, and as it turned out, he'd written a bestselling novel.

Pretty cool.

We talked on a regular basis - usually not about the trip - and after a few months, when a coworker of mine in Pennsylvania asked if I'd like to go to Boston with her, I met him for lunch.

Nice guy. No sparks.

But, I loved Boston.

Loved it!

And I started getting one of those feelings again.

The Story of Us (Part 1)

Our third anniversary is on the horizon. It's close enough to start budgeting for something special to celebrate - dinner out or a weekend away - but far enough away that The Story of Us can be told in four or more parts without any of them being back-to-back (Because who wants to read all that in one go? I'm doling out bits of my life to you little by little...can you tell I'm a gradual band-aid taker-offer instead of a band-aid ripper-offer?).

It all starts with a phone call and a trip to Paris.

Neither had anything to do with Patrick.

I get feelings about things. Do you? If you do, you know what I mean. If you don't, you'll think I'm crazy. I can live with that. Sometimes, something isn't just what it seems. Sometimes a phone call isn't just a phone call.

This time, I knew there was something significant before I even knew what the significance was.

It was a voice mail - one of several left for me by educational travel consultants who somehow had my name on a list of foreign language teachers (Je parle francais, mais je ne parle pas HTML. Je ne sais pas comment faire des accents avec mon ordi portable.) and were calling me all summer hoping I'd book a trip for my students with their company. I was working as a nanny that summer, taking care of my next door neighbors' 5-month-old little girl, and when I got home at the end of the day and listened to the messages, there it was - just another cold call, but for some reason, I had the feeling that this one was different. I felt like somehow I was going to become friends with this caller.

I don't what it was that made me think he seemed particularly friendly. The Boston accent?

Of course, the logical part of my brain is especially persistent during these moments of extrasensory suspicion. I'm a scientist at heart, and if I can't use logic to describe something, my brain has a hard time accepting it. Certain that I was just being silly, I wrote off my feeling as hunger and went for the fridge.

But that night, I took out the stacks of brochures and catalogs I'd accumulated from these educational travel companies and looked through them for the trip that suited us best. That year would be my first time leading a group of high school girls to France and Spain, and as the summer was drawing to a close, that task started to feel more and more daunting.

End part one.

It's hard to believe, two kids later, that we haven't been married three years yet. I didn't date a lot, so after I turned 30, I really started to think that maybe it just wasn't going to happen. Maybe my standards were too high, or I was too set in my ways to get married.

And then, BAM! Married, new house, and two kids in two-and-a-half years' time.

We don't mess around. (Actually, we do - hence the two kids.)

So your video clip du jour is one of my faves. Before PJ started rolling over, we'd often prop him in the corner of the chair or couch if we had to go to the bathroom or run upstairs for something. This one particular day, I needed to go get my glasses upstairs and left Jack looking at a book on the floor while PJ was on the chair. I came downstairs to this: Jack had climbed up in the chair next to PJ and was showing him the book.