Our Love Story

I met Joey in July 2008 when I was a senior at Texas Tech University. I came home to visit some friends for the 4th of July and ended up meeting Joey at my favorite bar. It turns out that he had just moved back to our home town just a couple of months before we met and we had quite a few mutual friends. I was honestly not looking for a relationship and certaintly was not interested in a long distance relationship. I assumed he was in the same situation. We ended up talking on the phone every day since the day we met and he came to visit me at school two weeks later.

Here we are on our first date in July '08:

I couldn't wait to finish my last semester of college and move back home to be with him. I swore I would never move back to my home town (doesn't everyone swear that?), but love makes you do crazy things! We had a difficult 5 months before I graduated. I blame it on the fact that we just really wanted to be together and sometimes went weeks or a month without getting to. It was very frustrating. I know I have no reason to complain because military wives certainly go much longer without their partners, but it felt like torture at the time! Needless to say, I fell crazy head-over-heels in love with this man. I graduated college in December '08 and moved home the same day! Joey and I moved in together in February of 2009 (after only 7 months of dating). 

Fast forward to October 2010. We decided we wanted to expand our family and two days before Thanksgiving in 2010, I found out that I was pregnant. We had already planned to get married "someday", but really had no concrete plans until we found out the news. We decided to get married before the baby came.

Joey "asked me" to marry him in February 2011. We didn't plan to take engagement pictures or anything like that, but Joey's step-mom really wanted to send out a photo card saying that we were getting married. So her daughter took a few pictures of us. We didn't really prepare for it so I didn't have makeup on and Joey hadn't shaved! I still think he looks incredibly sexy. Here's the "engagement" photo that went on our wedding announcements:

We decided to get married before I was too big and pregnant. So we got married when I was 5 months pregnant. You can read my wedding post here. Here we are on our wedding date, March 19, 2011:

Here is Joey (freezing) in the hospital while I'm in labor. Our friends told him to dress warm because I would be hot, but he didn't believe them! I did ask the nurse to bring him a warm blanket though. I'm such a nice wife! ha!

Our baby girl, Brynlee, was born July 27, 2011. She was born with SO much dark black hair, huge lips, and big blue eyes. Here she is the day we were leaving the hospital:

 

On July 27, 2011, we became a family. Here's our first family picture:

I didn't update much after Brynlee was born (for good reason), but here is the first post I made after her arrival.