Date Night

We had the opportunity to head to downtown Bellevue to support the Overlake Service League and see a free movie a few days ago. We stopped by Starbucks and ran into a group of au pairs. Of course. It’s become pretty common to run into Host Families and Au Pairs every where I go. I can most assuredly find au pairs at Target, the mall, and any area Starbucks.

We dropped off our peanut butter donations, found a nice spot, put up our camping chairs, and watched the sunset. Somewhere in there, I grabbed a camera and took this guy’s picture with his wife and the President of the Overlake Service League.

Right about the time the movie was about to start, I leaned over to Sean and said, “Let’s ditch this and go see The Proposal instead.”

Off we went to the next showing movie which happened to be at Park Place. We frequent our favorite sushi bar there, but I haven’t been to the movies there in ages. Actually, I haven’t seen a non-kid friendly movie in years.

We were in line for awhile waiting for some lady to write a check. They still take those? As we were standing there, I was joking about our dating days – which were almost non-existent.

Thinking about how we hardly knew each other when we got engaged made me want to recap the story.

Sean moved to Seattle on September 10th 2002. For months I had been hearing about this guy I would get along great with. Various, non-connected friends kept telling me I had to meet him! I laughed it off – after all he was from California. He was a drummer! He went to a completely PC University and majored in politics. No way were we going to get along.

And then we met on Thanksgiving Day. There was a couple that asked us if we were dating. Sean was completely unaware that anyone was interested in setting us up and I responded by saying I’ve never met this guy before in my life! Then this ex-homeless, rough, tough guy who now works in ministries to the homeless pipes up with “Well, we’ll just have to pray for you two!” I said something about going to check on the turkey and walked away. As I walked into the kitchen I realized that it was somehow inevitable that we’d be married in 6 months. Sean thought I hated him at first until we were playing a card game that was complicated and I was the only one who could keep up.

By Christmas we were inseparable and the week after I left on a 4 week trip to Germany, Austria, Belgium, and Holland. I was home for one night before Sean left for 6 weeks on tour with his former employer. In those days, it wasn’t uncommon for Sean to be on the road 47 weeks out of the year.

In January, by day I skied, and hiked, and traveled all over Europe. By night, I talked to Sean on the phone or we instant messaged for hours. The one exception was while I was in Holland with one of my dear friends who lived there for 6 months. I didn’t have access to the internet and I wrote postcards instead.

I came home at the end of January and said goodbye to Sean who was headed to Southern California. By day we worked and at night we took advantage of our free after 9pm cell phone minutes.

I flew down in early February to meet his family and three weeks later on the 24th of February, they came back to Washington.

On March 15th he proposed. I was surprised to say the least. He had put together a scavenger hunt for me and each of the clues led to places in our neighborhood, our favorite park, and out to Snoqualmie Falls. I took the trail down to the falls gathering my notes on the way and there at the base of the falls was Sean with red roses, kneeling in front of me.

We were married on June 21st – just 7 months after we met. We’ve spent our last 6 anniversaries watching the sunset together on the longest day of the year.

We’ve been through a lot, but there’s no one else I’d rather go through life with than Sean. I’m glad he was crazy enough to propose after 3 months of knowing each other and most of it long distance.

We had a great evening out together, but I’m really thankful that we enjoy simple evenings together. We’re pretty happy to sit outside on the deck and chat over dinner while our kids play or spend the afternoon hiking or biking together. It's amazing how even after years you can love someone more and more.