Our story - part 2

Part 1 can be found here.

So on May 20, 2007 I set out in my little blue Vibe to meet this amazing guy from Kentucky. He lived in Eastern Kentucky, over 3 hours away, so we agreed to meet in Chillicothe for a late lunch after church on Sunday. We decided to meet at a BBQ place near the river but then I got a call from him - the restaurant was closed on Sundays. So I met him at the BBQ place anyway and I remember seeing him walking towards me with a huge grin on his face. Yay!! Better looking than the pictures in his profile. We decided to go to a Bob Evans that he passed and offered to drive. I normally would never get in the car of a guy I just met but I felt like I could trust him. (Girls, I really don't recommend doing this!) I get in his car and there was a little coleus plant sitting on the floor. He said he wanted to get me flowers but he didn't think they'd last long enough for me to get them home. Aaaawwwww!!!

We talked for awhile at Bob Evans, just hanging out chatting - favorite movies, tv shoes, music, that sort of thing. He suggested we go walk around a park nearby and we drove over there. It was a beautiful day with the sun shining and the perfect temperature. We sat in one location and then walked around some and sat in another location. At some point we just started holding hands and I didn't really realize it until he asked if I was okay with holding his hand.

So while we were sitting in the second park bench Jason looks at me and says "I'd like to declare my intentions to pursue you." Wow. Really? Like no more guessing if a guy likes me or not? I said "please do." :) I think that was when I started really falling for this guy. I have bugged him about this to no end, asking him if that was a line from a movie, or if one of his girl friends suggested he say this. No, he just knew exactly what to say right when I needed to say it.

As we were sitting there the clouds started to get dark so we had a decision to make - end the date or find dinner? Yes, we had been talking for several hours at the park. I wasn't ready for the day to end so I agreed to dinner. We headed to Applebees (near the Bob Evans where we ate lunch) and sat there for a couple more hours just talking. When we needed to leave (our waitress was giving us dirty looks) we couldn't decide where else to go. It was a Sunday night and the malls were closed, so we ended up back at his car at the BBQ restaurant.

It was getting late and I needed to get some water for my coleus plant but I couldn't seem to get out of his car and go home. While we were sitting there delaying our goodbye we noticed that the house next to the restaurant had a lot of people on the porch and elsewhere outside. His car looked like a police car (a Crown Victoria) and they had pointed at us a few times. I thought they were waiting for us to start making out or something (we didn't) but he pointed out that maybe they thought we were the cops. Slowly the all went in until no one was left outside. A car pulled up and someone got out and knocked on the door. The person who came to the door pointed at us and they both looked at us. The guy went back to the car and it pulled away. Hello!!

So we consider that day to be our first two dates (lunch and dinner) and our first stake-out. Ha! :) As I drove home that evening I was wondering if this guy was too good to be true. Really. Most guys who start off seeming to be perfect are usually just big smoozes who will say whatever you want to hear. I had been let down by those types a few times and didn't want it to happen again. Was he just another "pleaser" type? He was coming to Dayton to visit me the following weekend, Memorial Day weekend. So I hoped to see a little more of who this guy really was.

A few things from our first date that really impressed me - he opened all my doors for me, including the car door which he also shut for me, he insisted on paying for both meals, and he followed me to the gas station after our date to make sure I got back on the highway alright. I remember thinking that we had the same sense of humor and that I had the best time just goofing around with him. I was really looking forward to seeing him again, but not looking forward to missing him.

I wanted to copy & paste a few bits and pieces from emails I saved after that first date. I thought you'd enjoy this...

Really really enjoyed hanging out with J yesterday. It was so comfortable hanging out with him. No red flags at all, didn't seem the type to be over-anxious to get into a relationship (he didn't pee on my foot).

Great smile, great laugh, and so funny and so CUTE.

And he's just a down-to-earth nice guy. I'm dating someone. I love that. I haven't really DATED someone since last July.

There's a three house distance between us, but we've agreed to make sure we see each other at least once a week. He's said he'd move here if it came to that because he can't see a woman being happy in his little tiny town.

Gotta love that last one! :)

Well, that's it for now. I found more emails from his first weekend in Dayton - what a learning experience!! I'll be reviewing those to prepare for my next blog - and laughing. First impressions are kinda funny sometimes. :)

Our story - part 1

I've been neglecting my blog for the last few months and I apologize. There's just so much going on that I've had a difficult time knowing what to say or where to start. Things are starting to come together now, so I thought I'd start at the beginning which will better explain what's going on now.

This is going to be a long story so instead of boring you to death, I'm going to chop it up into bits and pieces. This is more how I think anyway. Call it ADD blogging if you'd like. :)

In Spring of 2007 I had been single for over a year without anyone even asking me out in the previous year. There had been several guys whom I had met online, but the chemistry just wasn't there. I asked one guy if we were dating and he said he didn't know. I told him I'd make it easy on him, we weren't. My one requirement was that the guy had to call me up, talk to me, and then ask me to go do something. When you've done this a couple of times, it's called "dating." The men I was talking seemed to prefer online interaction. I had enough online friends, I wanted MORE.

Around that time I was involved in a singles Bible study. One Sunday morning only three of us showed up, the teacher, another woman and me. So we decided to postpone the lesson and share what was going on in our lives and pray about decisions we were trying to make. The other woman was considering moving back to Columbus, which she eventually did. I was considering opening up my search criteria on yahoo personals. I wasn't meeting men through church or friends, and I think I had chatted with every single online guy in Dayton that met what I was looking for.

I was thinking about changing the search radius to 500 miles on my internet dating site. What this means is that yahoo personals would take all the things I was looking for in a man and look in cities and states outside of my area. I knew this meant that I may have to move out of Dayton, or even out of Ohio, but I was willing to consider it if it meant finding real love.

After we prayed I felt like I had gotten the green light to look outside of Dayton. If I had to move, I trusted God that it would be taken care of. That afternoon I went home and changed my search from 50 miles to 500 miles. I hit "search" and had hundreds of results. I decided to sit back and see if any fish would bite (now that I was willing to move to where they were).

A few days later yahoo personals emailed me my top matches. The number one match was a guy from Grayson, Kentucky. The write up on his profile was nice - close to his family and friends, taught Sunday School, and had a few hobbies - but what I noticed was his smile and the laughter in his brown eyes. I actually sat there smiling back at him. Oh, I liked this one.

So how a girl does this online dating thing, if she doesn't want to make the first move, she views the guy's profile. He can tell that she viewed his profile and if her picture is appealing, he'll view hers. And sometimes this goes back and forth a few times and then the guy gets the guts to send her a smile/wink/whatever and if she smiles/winks/whatevers back, then he sends a message.

So I viewed this Grayson guy's profile and I waited. Nothing. A week later I get another email from yahoo personals and he's still number one. I viewed his profile again and waited. Still nothing. I viewed his profile a couple more times and still nothing. I was about to give up but decided to change my picture to something a little more flirtatious. This was my last ditch effort to get this guy's attention. If he never saw my profile, he'd never know how fabulous I was and how much he was missing out. So I viewed his profile one last time and waited.

A couple days later I got a message from him. Yay! Finally! Yes, it was the flirty picture that finally got his attention. He explained that he wasn't really interested in dating someone 3 hours away but after reading my profile, he wanted to know more.

After exchanging a few messages we talked on the phone. He had the cutest southern accent, which sometimes was a little difficult to understand. And as he listened, he kept saying "right" but it sounded like "wrought." We made plans to meet the following Sunday in Chillicothe at a Barbecue restaurant we found on the internet. I let my friends know where I was going and asked them to text me 2 hours into the meeting to give me a reason to get out of it if I needed to.

I put on my favorite denim skirt and a pink top and started driving 75 minutes to meet the man who would be my husband less than a year later. :)

Good stopping point, don't you think? I'll pick this up later. Check back in a couple of days and hopefully I'll have part 2 done.