Happy Anniversary to Us!!

17 years ago today, Andrew and I left my house at 6:00 a.m headed for Kentucky, our mission- to get married, technically we eloped, though my mom knew we were doing it, as did just a few of my friends. See, we had been dating for 6 weeks, we realized we both had a three day weekend on the 6th, 7th & 8th of December. On Monday, the 2nd, Andrew asked me if I would like to go to St. Louis for the weekend--his plans were to ask me to marry him at the top of the Arch. I told him, I really thought he was the one and the thought of me going someplace alone with him overnight would make my mom never like him. So he says, "Then lets go get married Friday morning". I about fell over, and said, "What about rings" which he replies--I bought them today, they are being sized and I will have them Thursday. This was also the night he put up the Christmas tree for me--another post before Christmas, I promise. Of course, I said yes, and went home and asked Mom how serious she was about her suggestion we elope (we had started making wedding plan "unofficially" and it was getting out of hand so she had practically begged us just to do this).

On Thursday night, the rings were in, I had worked in Decatur all day and was coming to Effingham to go bowling with a league I was on there. I stopped by the store to see Andrew and he took me to the office, got down on one knee and asked me to marry him--YES, AT WALMART!! So, if you are getting all this, it was the anniversary of our offical engagement last night, we were engaged for about 15 hours.

We made it to Henderson KY, about 8:00 and was already third in line to get married. We had to sign papers that said we were no closer than 3rd cousins (all the things they say about KY--it's true). Anyway, we got to pick our ceremony, so we had the traditional Christian-"Do you take this man....thing" with the justice of the peace who looked like Colonel Sanders, and the door of the court room proped open to the secretary's office, so the two women typing away were our witnesses.

We went to Hardee's and had Cinnamon and Raisin biscuits, naming that our official wedding cake- so yes, we normally visit a Hardee's on our anniversary, and we will today.

I had known Andrew for 2 years, we had always been friends and I think it was around May of that year, that I realized I really, really liked him. I guess it started being aparent to everyone else that he liked me that summer but we worked in the same store and he was my boss so that was a no-no. When I transferred to Decatur to catch shoplifters, he asked me out. We still have people who work for Walmart that believe we were dating behind everyones backs, we weren't but I knew 20 minutes into my first date, I was going to marry him and obviously he did too.

Happy Anniversary Honey!