Seven Years Ago Today...

'Looks aren't important to me, because I know that God will make my wife the most beautiful the woman in the world to me!'

These are the words that caught my eye 7 years ago, when I met Bonham online at christianmingle.com. For those of you who didn't know, Bonham and I met on a dating site. We had both recently signed up to try to meet someone and we did during our 7-day, trial period, so we were able to cancel before had to pay anything for the service. What a deal! =)

When I looked at his profile information, I saw the line above and I thought, 'this is the man for me!' I didn't really know exactly where Abilene was, but I knew that it wasn't too, too far from Fort Worth and I had driven through there once to go skiing.

I saw that he had already looked at my profile information, so I decided to send him an instant message.... this dating site had these little lines that you could choose from to send to people like, 'I was looking at you, looking at me...' I'm pretty sure that this was the one that I chose, but I can't remember exactly. Whatever it was, I sent it and he didn't respond.... for a really long time.... finally, he sent me a message. I think he said, 'hi there' or something like that and then I responded with, 'Well, it's about time!' He was really confused....

Didn't find out until later that he never received my first message, because of a pop-up blocker on his computer. So for the longest time he thought that he contact me first. We joke that he thought it was kind of weird for me to say that and that he considered not talking to me, but he did! It was some time before he said anything to me about it. Funny how things work out!

That night, we 'chatted' for 4 hours via the instant messenger. The next night, we scheduled a time to talk to each other on the phone. I was supposed to call him, but I was nervous, so I waited and I got online and almost instantly, he sent me a message! We 'chatted' online for a little while and he asked me to call him, so I did. I was nervous about pronouncing his name, so when he answered, I asked him, 'Who is this?' and he said, 'Bonham. Who is this?' and then we talked for 6 hours that night!!! During that conversation, we picked out names for our 4 children... and then we would say, 'That's crazy! We don't even know each other! We can't talk like this!' So we would change the subject, but we kept going back to the topics of marriage and children.

The next night, we talked online again for several hours and then every night after that we stuck to talking on the phone.
On the 16th, we met in person. On the 23rd, I met his sister and brother-in-law (which are now my sister-in-law & brother-in-law). On January 4th, I met his other sister and his parents. January 4th is their wedding anniversary. I was so nervous to meet them. His parents were having their Sunday lunch and they made fajitas. At the time, I couldn't stand eating fajitas! I had told Bonham that some of the foods that I couldn't stand were fajitas and grilled chicken. I asked him not to tell his parents... I would just eat it anyway. I tried them and they were the best fajitas I had ever had! I have been a fan of fajitas ever since! =)

In May of 2004, Bonham and I got engaged and we were married on January 8th of 2005. Our 6 year anniversary is coming up in a few weeks. The years have gone by so quickly. We currently have 2 of our 4 children that we originally discussed! LOL We didn't use the names that we had talked about, but here they are: Kelly Jo, Rebecca Faith, Andrew Bonham, and Robert Wesley. We did use Robert for Barrett (Robert Barrett), but I don't think we will use any of the others...

What fun times!