We were both young when I first saw you {Love Story Part I}...

I know I am not the first blogger to write her love story but I think it is a great idea and one I have been toying with doing for a while.  So regardless of whether it is very original idea or not I am going to share our story because while the idea is not unique our story is and I want to remember it in years to come.  So here goes...

It's the first day of fourth grade.  The school smells of waxed floors and number 2 pencils.  All the desks in the classroom have a partner next to them and are neatly lined up in rows.  My teacher is new and talks endlessly of her fiance- whom she refers to as her "honey".  My desk is front and center and I am seated next to the new kid.

The new kid has red hair, is covered in freckles, and he never shuts up.  Doesn't he realize that I am the quiet girl and not interested in talking to him?  Especially when the teacher is talking???  He doesn't seem to even notice my responses.  He is kind of funny in a cocky kind of way.  He isn't like most new kids in a small town.  Later I would realize this is because he had been playing football with all the boys for years and was from the next small town over.  He probably knew more kids then I did and I had been there since kindergarten.

Over the next nine years our lives would only collide a few times.  He would be a basketball player to my cheerleader in junior high, a class together here and there in high school, but for the most part we were strangers who had happened to have little sisters the same ages {this is an important fact remember this for later}.

Ryan was the outgoing, funny, scores three touchdowns in one half of the football game kind of guy.  While I was marching band, chorus, president of the drama club girl.  The same small town but two very different worlds.  I couldn't wait to get out and Ryan never wanted to leave.  We graduated and went our separate ways.  I went on to live in New York and Germany and Ryan went to the University of Illinois to get a degree in Sports Recreation and Tourism.  

How many people can say they met their husband to be in the fourth grade?  I went all over the world looking for him and really he was there the whole time.  We just had to be prepared to met each other in the right time.  It  would be 5 years before our paths would cross again like that first day of fourth grade. Life- or dare I say fate- would bring us back together- we just didn't know it yet...