I'll never forget the day that Jared, my husband, and I were swimming in my neighbors pool. We were having a good old time, being crazy (imagine that), playing as if we were children. Doing handstands, flips off the diving board, going down the slide, and...I'm not gonna lie, I think there's a possibility I may have flipped my hair like Ariel from the little mermaid a few times. It happens. We were using some boogie boards at one point and I said,"this is what I had to do during swimming lessons when I was little, and the teacher would yell, 'Kick, kick, kick' and 'Deep breath and tuck." He looked at me and said, "That's what we did when I was in swimming lessons." I said," Well ours was at a woman's house, and her daughter helped teach." He said," so was mine!" I said, " Ours had this huge blow up whale we got to play on during play time." "Ours did, too!" he said. We had been together for years at that point and we never knew that we took swimming lessons at the same place and were quite possibly in the same class!
This was not the first incident where we could have met each other and didn't. It starts way back to before we had ever started dating. I was working as a manager at the Gap, saving up money to go to cosmetology school. I remember people talking about Jared Storm and how cool he was. Apparently, he was one of the people that left for whom I hired in to replace. He had moved to Chicago and transfered to a Gap there. He came in with his friend one time, back from Chicago to visit, and everyone was whispering, "Oh my God, there's Jared Storm!" I was like, "Big whoop! Who cares? I don't see what all the fuss is about!" Little did I know....
After finishing cosmetology school, I decided to move to Chicago myself, my favorite city. My friend Kristin and I decided to move together and become roommates. We were getting ready to go up and look for apartments, and her cousin, one Mr. Jared Storm, was going to meet us and we were all going to go out that night. Fortunately, though we didn't realize it at the time, Mr. Storm ditched us and didn't return our calls. Apparently, his friend Josh's band was in town and chose to hang out with them instead. A jealous ex-girlfriend happened to be there, too, so I'm thinking there were multiple reasons we did not get to meet that evening.
The very same weekend that Kristin and I moved to Chicago, Jared moved back to Decatur, my home town. We just kept missing each other. My best friend Randi was working as a teacher at that time, and was also working hard to put herself through cosmetology school in the evenings. She was talking to the receptionist at the school in which she taught. She mentioned that her son had just moved back in town and was looking for a place to stay, and that he would be a great roommate. That receptionist was my mother in law. Randi had also known Jared from back in high school when he was in Big Yellow Ball, a local band, and he took her sister, another one of my best friends, Tracy, to homecoming. When I came home to visit, we soon hit it off. From there, its history.
These photos are from our wedding 6 years ago, I had to post these because they are very indicative of our relationship. Loving, grateful, sassy, and full of real life humor. We crack each other up.
As we started dating, we could not believe how many mutual friends we had. We did not go to the same school or anything like that. It was pretty bizarre. Not too long after meeting his family, my mom and I were out at the mall. We ran into his aunt Leslie, and immediately, she remembered that she used to go to the step aerobics class that his aunt Leslie used to teach when we were very little. His mom used to go that class as well. Jared and my sister and I probably played in their playroom while our mom's were sweating their little buns off!
Timing is everything, people. When I say that I met my husband at the right time, I'm not kidding around. It was a miracle. I should have met him all of these different ways, but I didn't. It's not like we both loved gardening, and remodeling, and cooking, and exercising at the time we met, because really, all we had in common was some music, (oh and he danced the first time we saw a band together, so I knew he was a keeper) but that was it. *Side note* That same dancing night, we witnessed some guy hopping along, dancing to "Rock You Like a Hurricane" with a beer in his hand, and got so excited about the song that he fell backwards into the drum set knocking all of the drums down but the snare and the high hat, and the drummer continued to play with one drum stick along with the rest of the band! It was like a hilarious scene from a movie!! *End side note* My point is that we have grown together, and have all of these wonderful new things we love to do because they are things we have tried as a couple. Had I met this amazing man at any other time, I know he wouldn't have liked me, and I probably wouldn't have liked him either. We were both completely different people each and every time that we should have met. On that particular day that we met, we were exactly who we were supposed to be, having had all of the experiences to prepare us to be that exact being that we each were at that exact time. Even when he thought I was probably snobby before we talked... perfect timing. (He, he!) I am the luckiest girl in the world, and there are LITERALLY no words to describe my love and appreciation and respect for this man, so I'm not even gonna try. All I can say is thank God for that perfect timing. Boom! Miracle.
