HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!

This picture was taken this morning as Jeff was running out to work...We will go to dinner tonight, but in two weeks we are going to LA to see the play "The Color Purple"...soo excited.

35 years ago today, Feburary 1, 1975 I married this wonderful man and changed my life forever more. 

Jeff & I met on a blind date in the summer of 1974.  I was a mere 19 years old and he was just here for the summertime (or so he thought) having just finished college at Nebraska.  I remember like yesterday my girl friend Sue calling me up and saying "Deb, I have a great guy I want you to meet."  When she gave me the details, he was from South Dakota and had gone to Nebraska on a football scholarship and was in California for the summertime just to see the sights, my initial reaction was, could be fun...but I wasn't really looking for a summertime romance, and I certainly wasn't looking to move out of state eventually should the "romance" turn into anything more.  I liked to think I was more mature than the average 19 year old as I was already a single mom to an 18 month old little boy.  I was a brand new Christian as well, and very careful about who I dated as I was not only looking for a husband, but a father for my son.  Somehow I had my doubts as to rather or not a "football jock" would fit the description of what I was looking for.  She pressed me a little bit and I decided to just see for myself.  What a wonderful decision that turned out being.  By late summer we were very much love and had more in common than I ever dreamed possible.  He too was a new Christian and our relationship right from the beginning was very firmly planted in Him.   His relationship with my son Joe, was one I had barely let myself even dream about as being possible.  As the summer was drawing to a close I had begun to wonder what in the world I had been thinking of or why  God had allowed any of this to happen.  How would I ever bare him going back home to South Dakota.  By early September (just a few days before he was suppose to leave) Jeff asked me to marry him and decided he would just move permanently to California.  5 months later we were married.  Sooo, Jeff & I were basically engaged and married just 6 short months after we met.  Looking back now, if one of my kids had decided to marry so soon after meeting someone I might have had a heart attack, haha.  But I believe from the bottom of my heart that the Lord picked him out especially for Joe and I and worked out every little detail.  Our wedding was small but beautiful.  We did not have a professional photographer, but we did have a friend who took some really good pictures for us.  I don't have a single 8 x 10 of the event however, and the pictures I do have are in a box in our garage.  Why does that sound soo horrible, haha.  But my point is I don't have any pictures of our day to show you (without digging around in the garage anyway).  Not that I have a scanner right now anyway.  Or know how to work it if I did.  lol 

Through the years I can honestly say that I feel like I have been married to not only my very best friend, but a one of the most wonderful husbands God ever created.  He is not perfect of course, (who is?) but most of the time it seems that way to me.  I can be high maintence at times I guess is a nice way of putting it, haha, and yet he is usually the picture of patience and tolerence on all my little quirks.  He has been a wonderful father to all 4 of our children.  He adopted Joe formally shortly after we married.  He has been the spiritual leader of our home, and has provided for us all over the years with much more than I ever dreamed of.  I have been married WAY over half of my life to this man, and look forward to growing old with him.  We still find the same things funny, know what the other is going to say before they say it, (most of the time anyway...or maybe it just is we "think" we do, haha) and can look at each other and smile and know all is well with the world.  I thanked God for this man 35 years ago when I woke up that morning, and through the journey of our life together I am still grateful, and will love him unconditionally till the day the good Lord calls me home. 

This picture was taken dancing at Mike & Melody's wedding 19 months ago.