This One Goes Out To The One I Love

Happy Valentine's Day, Sweetheart, Love of my life, and all the other lovey-dovey names Ive called you over the years!

Today marks 13 years since our first date (I think I recently posted that it was 14, but it's 13) and I can honestly say it seems like about 5. Just recently we have begun putting all of our video tapes on TiVo and transfering them to DVD. WE invited the rest of the familyto send their tapes and we are going to put the corresponding tapes together on to each DVD so everyting about the certain event is in one place on one disc. It has been AMAZING to say the least, to basically relive the last 13 years with Nate and his family. We have tapes from the first year when his family left on vacation and I house-sat for them. (If only those frames could be converted to photos for SPT you all would get a kick out of them!) And we also came across the long lost tape of our engagement. Well, the actual engagement isnt on tape but the rest of the night is. I cant tell you how watching these tapes has brought back memories--lost memories--of all the time we have spent together.

The years have gone by quickly, and boy have we changed. Physically I dont think you would recognize either of us from the beginning. But we have changed in many other ways too...I know I sure have. I now understand what it means to love someone regardless, to trust someone completely, to live my life with hope and meaning, to never give up, to forgive and forgive again, to be patient, and to simply be happy. Of course it is Christ who has changed me, but loving and being loved by a man like mine has been the living proof of that change.

So forget the little tiff we had this morning, forget that the baby just got her shots and will probably be feverish all day, and forget that I have now had so many conversation hearts that I will surely pass out before dinner in a fit of grouchiness.

I love you.