Eves and Twos.

To explain the title, I'll start with "Eves". I'm not referring to biblical "Eves" or metaphorical ones either; I'm talking about the night before something. To further explain this, I need to refer to the second part of my title which is "Twos". Two years ago, tonight, the night of our work back to school BBQ, was the eve of a big day for me. 
Now, I need to go back a bit further here. Miguelito and I started this great thing of ours near six years ago; we were still in college, but in the last few months {late winter-spring 2006}. We graduated and went our separate ways, albeit sadly, but we both had plans {me: a teaching job lined up in my home town [many miles away from St. Paul, MN, where we went to college]; him: peace corps [many miles from anything familiar to us]}. Mike ended up moving back to Arizona {and with his folks, bless them} until he left for El Salvador and the Peace Corps a year later {end of spring 2007}; do you follow still? By the end of summer of 2006, though, we had rekindled our love over the phone and thus ensued three years of long distancing it up. The first year {almost}, Mike was just in Phoenix, a quick airplane jaunt away. The second two years {June 2007 until summer 2009} he was in El Salvador {not much further away than Phoenix, much to my bank account's delight}. 
Those three years did so much for us. We learned to talk. That was pretty much all we could do apart from visiting a few times a year and emails.Mikey didn't have internet except in town and Skype wasn't a thing most knew about. Had we been in the same city, we probably would have gone out and done all sorts of cute couply things and whatnot, but I wonder if we would have just plain-old talked as much as we did. I'm grateful for this time. It was really challenging for me and us, it was not all butterflies and roses, but I am so glad that we became as able to communicate as we did and still do communicate. This does not mean we're fabulous communicators, be-tee-dubs, but those hours days months years apart really pushed us in the right direction. I can't get away with just pouting over something he did or didn't do, since all I could do then was explain it in words {over the phone}, that's what I can and choose to do {most times} now {rather than take a long shower and hope it blows over, whatever "it" may be}.

Anywho...Michael completed Peace Corps {and learned so much from it; check out his [now defunct] blog HERE [bet you didn't know HE had a blog, did you?!] Now you do!} and we had made plans for him to move to here, joy of my heart {understatement of 2009; it was all I could talk about}.

Two years ago, the night of our faculty/staff family BBQ, I was practically buzzing with anticipation because the dude and his dad were scheduled to arrive in our fair burg the next day. So this was an eve for me, going back to the title. The eve of the arrival of my sweetheart. That was two years ago, hence the two. Since then, we've had a blast, talking it all out and just "being" together; I can't get enough of it {thus, I've signed up for the rest of my life}.

Wait. There's another eve plus two. In two weeks, two weeks from tonight, it will be the eve of our wedding. If I had known two years ago that two years later we'd be getting ready to get married, I might have imploded with happiness and glee. Does that tip off to you how I'm feeling? Michael, if you read this post {it's "ok" to not read all of them [though I did read all of yours...], they can get verbose}, know that I count myself an extremely lucky girl. I'm SUPER excited and happy to be your wife and am looking forward with a great amount of excitement and joy for the day and life we've planned. 
I'll cut the cheese here {get it, a double edged joke?!} and wish a great weekend to the world.
Happy Friday y'all.
xoxo, natty ♥
PS
If a certain coworker with a very handsome new little man is reading this, I LOVED getting to visit {ever so briefly} tonight!