Celebrating 8 years of "US"

Every day I  feel really blessed and fortunate to be married to the man of my dreams. I became his wife 8 years ago, on a very cold, snowy winter day but our life together has been far from that. In my wildest dreams, I couldn't have guessed how much happiness he would bring me each and every single day....and believe me, I don't take that for granted. 

Thank you, dear Lord for my amazing husband and our 2 precious angels.

For those of you who maybe haven't read the full story of how Eric and I met, my sweet hubby wrote this note a couple years ago. I love it and still get teary eyed reading it...so here it is..I wanted to share.

How I met my wife Iulia. My true love, my true Valentine.

The other day a friend asked me how I met my wife. Simple question, right? For most people the answer is also pretty simple. However, that day, as I began to write the story to this friend whom I had dated just prior to meeting and marrying my first wife... I realized, I was typing no simple answer, but the words just came out soooo fast, so easily.

I LOVE telling this story! I've told it many times and feel much better telling it in person. But today, I wanted to at least share what I quickly wrote to that friend in response. Funny thing is, I felt like I had to begin with the gap of time between "Version 1.0" and when I met Iulia. It explains alot about how fast 10 years can be spent on something that isn't right, but is needed in order to find what is so clearly MEANT TO BE. Here is the letter picking up with the explanation of Version 1.0...

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Hmmm.. short "fill-in-the-gaps" story on Version 1.0. You remember how we met in Atlanta (not to dig that up) and after 4 years of pursuit, we got engaged (surprise on the beach in Carmel) and married in '95 (Atlanta). The amazing honeymoon in Maui strangely uncovered major problems between us and after the Olympics (for which she worked behind the scenes on with IBM) in Sept. '96 we bought a house to solve a different set of problems and by Feb. '97 the solution to those problems was to kick me out of said house. By Feb '98 I appeared for our uncontested annulment (I call it a divorce) to see it all end with a pound of a gavel (taking 100% of the blame upon myself). By April of '99 I had left my job working for a great communications firm and packed it all up to live in Phoenix to be closer to Roger's kids (they moved to PHX in '93). I was a wreck, but his kids energized me in great ways. Basically it came down to the fact that I loved her (1.0) and she liked me enough to try and see if she would grow to love me. I don't wish ill will on her... but that was 9 years of trial and it tainted all the good memories of Atlanta that I have. Of course, all of that does not affect me now...

...because 4 years after the divorce... I met Iulia (sounds like Julia but with a soft J sound) online on the 4th of July, 2002. Yeah, online on a holiday morning, I was completely bored and just stumbled across her. I was doing a variety of online things back then and had finally begun dating real and virtual people right around then (Match.com and other services). We started talking (IM'ing actually) and 5 hours later, she went to bed (she lived in Bucharest Romania) and I went to watch fireworks with Roger's family in Tempe. It was love at first sight (video on yahoo was just starting up - 1 frame per second). She was taking her sister to the beach for a couple of weeks and she emailed me from an internet cafe on the beach, pretty much saying she really enjoyed meeting me and wanted to continue, blah blah blah... it was cute (note to self... I need to find and post this letter)! We continued from there and by early October, I hopped on a plane and landed in Romania (because she couldn't just get on a plane to fly to the States).

The story from here is better told in person (but I'll make a written attempt), because the first time we met was sort of a sliding doors moment (literally) as she was jumping up and down in a huge crowd waiting for the others off the plane (it was almost midnight). Our eyes met and as if in a movie, she forced her way to the end of the rope as I came out of customs and we had a HUGE embrace and very long kiss (I spun her around). From there... I stayed for 2 1/2 weeks (her mom and sister came to Bucharest from Barlad on a 6 hour train ride that first weekend) and then I returned again in Nov for 3 weeks for her birthday. On that trip, we traveled to her hometown to meet her dad and travel further into the remote countryside to visit her grandparents. By December, I returned AGAIN after Christmas knowing I was going to marry her (I had the ring) and with which I surprised her with on New Year's eve (video of the actual moment is on my profile). That was crazy and wild... but it gets crazier. By Jan. 24th we were married. Now, mind you, she didn't have her Visa approved yet.... and because of 9-11, the embassies no longer (as of Jan. 2002) had the authority to grant the visa to her. So, on Jan. 27th, I had to leave my wife and reapply in the states. That was heart wrenching! Two and a half months separated and it especially sucked because her laptop shorted out two weeks after I left (water was involved during a video session... cough ;). this left her having to walk in the ice and cold to find Internet cafes to chat with me. Nobody could fix the laptop.

A few days before the wedding. Our apartment building is down the street more on the right. This snow was what we had to deal with while going from building to building trying to get our wedding license and all the other stuff together.

I wasn't able to get back until April 9th... during which time we had to finish the visa process and do the embassy interview. Oh, did I mention the tickets home were scheduled for the day after the interview at the embassy.Cutting it close, yeah? Oh, and since the tickets were changed and international (paper), they had to be mailed... which only happend because NWA broke their policy after my dad got involved and found a sympathetic ticket agent. My brother then mailed the tickets to us using UPS and the tickets got lost in Slovenia the day before the interview. Miraculously, it all worked out... the interview went off and we were approved (even though the couple in front of us did NOT, being accused of a fake marriage), and the tickets arrived the evening before we were to return to the US (tickets in hand at 10:30pm that night flight left at 6:30am the next morning). No room for error and lucky for us, there were no more errors. That was May 9th, 2003.

During this time, I had been contracting with Pearson who had been my lone client after I resigned from the consulting firm I was working for from '99 to June of '02. The contracting gave me the extended time off between contracts that year and the flexibility to make the trip 4 times. By the time we got Iulia back to the states, I had exhausted my savings and wasn't quite sure what was going to happen next. Well, the next day, a certain project manager from Pearson called me and asked "what I was up to and if I was available to go to work". Uhmm yeah. The guy and his wife are now the girls godparents and our best friends.

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So, there it is. I gush quite a bit about Iulia and people who knew me between 1991 and 2002 often tell me of the vast differences in me since meeting and marrying her. What a gift. This may be too much information for some on FB, not enough for others. The nice thing is I get to tell the story again and again and again to whoever wants to listen. I've often thought about collecting all of our chats from when we met and making a book out of it. I know I'd be interested... not so sure about the rest of the world =)