Chapter 1 - In the beginning

*picture taken Feb. 2002 on our way to Hawaii.

I thought I'd write about how Mr. Wonderful and I met. It's a complicated story and for the fun of blogging, I won't reduce it to the short version.

Chapter 1 - Everyone knows Everyone

I was renting a room from a guy named Kevin.

Kevin and Chris were friends.
Chris and Wendy don't know each other.
I knew of Chris through a girl named Carla because she was madly in love with him.
Carla and Chris were friends.
Wendy and Carla were friends.

It's Boulder - everyone knows everyone somehow, some way....

I ended up going to a party (Ward Baker -Summer of 2001) everyone was there - Chris, Kevin, Carla, me, etc. This was the night Carla introduced me to Chris. From the way she talked about him, I thought they were an item (but this apparently was only in her book...poor thing).

Chris and I chatted and he said he was really into hiking too (ok, whatever) and liked my favorite hike (yeah, right...isn't what you mean to say is you really like my butt in these pants and want to jump my bones) so I gave him my number so we could hike together (yeah, right, more like leave me alone now). At this point, I'm just through breaking up with the famous Tim (my mom was secretly happy) so I'm NOT interested and giving Chris my phone number was the only way I could see of him leaving me alone.

Alone? Yeah right. The phone number was like a shoe in for him and he was always so charming, well mannered, innocent, slow, friendly. We did end up hiking Sinitas and talking, talking, talking. I can still remember that hike and sometimes when I'm there by myself, I can feel him there with me. I can remember the rain as we ran all the way down, drenched. It was glorious. On that hike, he said he was going to marry me. You know, one of those stupid comments that no one really pays much attention to (no offense babe).

It wasn't long before we became friends. But that didn't come without hiccups. He floated some of race pictures from the internet to Kevin via email which made me furious. It still does to this day. I'm a private type of person (that's an oxymoron since I blog about my life but whatever) so it really upset me and I gave him the silent treatment for a while.

By now, Kevin has decided to move to Europe and it just happens that Carla has a room for rent, so now I'm roommates with Carla and I'm friends with Chris. (She had smelly cats and she wasn't clean so I stayed in my room alot.) Anyway, I finally decided to forgive Chris and we made up after a couple of months. Besides, he was always at Carla's house dropping off sweet Nilla for Carla to run with. Chris is such a tease and flirt (don't think I don't know this about you darling. I do and I accept it.) Carla still had the hots for him. And you call me a player! Ha.

By now it's December, then New Years and just before going out with a bunch of my girlfriends, I get the flu at like 9 pm New Years Eve. LAME. I'm down for the count and sick sick sick for a few days. It was nasty. But I remember Chris coming over and taking care of me. We hung out quite a bit; snowshoeing, he'd cook me dinner, a romantic Valentine's (remember all of the little valentines card you put all over the outside of my car...awe, so thoughtful, romantic....again, I know you were just trying to get in my pants and it worked!). After awhile I asked Chris:

"I have a free airplane ticket to use. Where I should go?"
"Hawaii," he said.
"Do you want to come with me?" I asked.
"Sure," he said.

And in one weeks time, we had a week long vacation planned for Hawaii with a guy I don't really know all that well and a guy that my current roommate is in love with. Hmmm! And that's the beginning.

So in short,

Wendy was roommates with Kevin
Chris and Kevin were friends
Chris and Carla were friends
Wendy and Carla were friends
Carla and Wendy were roommates
Carla loved Chris*
Kevin loved Wendy*
Chris and Wendy loved each other*

*this is the juicy stuff. I'll leave that chapter for another blog post.

It's funny to document it, to try to remember the dates of all of this (we've known each other for 8 years already and married 6). Where does the time go?

It goes to creating all of our wonderful memories, our stories, our life. I love you Mr. Wonderful.

Thanks for tuning in. Stayed tuned for more, it only gets better.....