9 years ago!! A guy and a girl walk into a bar... no it’s not the beginning of a bad joke, but yes a bar! Haha of course that’s how we met! Me, way out past my bedtime — which during those days was 7 PM since I worked overnights and had to be up before the night owls even got started — for a friends birthday party. Him, on a normal Thursday night hanging out with his friends. As I was contemplating how I could sneak out without the birthday friend noticing — and because at that point I was only going to get about three hours of “beauty” sleep — I happened to look up, and across the bar I saw a handsome guy with the deeppest ocean blue eyes staring and smiling at me. Eyes every girl dreams of just swimming in to get that perfect Instagram/Facebook picture! (To this day his eyes still get me! Especialy when he wears blue! They are amazing!) But anyways, at this point my face was red as a lobster because I realized I was smiling back and he was now walking over!! In my head i am freaking out! “Oh my god, he is actually coming over here! Don’t freak out! Don’t freak out! What do I do with my hands? Do i smell!?” “Oh! Hi...” so much for those 3 hours of “beauty” sleep! After the typical introductions, where are you from? What do you do? Your’re not a murderer right?...just kidding...He bought me a drink and walked me over to meet his friends. After about an hour of talking, this girl needed to go to bed! Two hours of beauty sleep is not enough people! So I explained I needed to get up early AKA in the next two hours...so I had to leave. As a true gentleman, he walked me to my car to make sure I was safe and I gave him my number! He was going to have to be the one to do the chasing if this was going to continue.

And it did end up continuing! Three days later, I get a text from a number — that i didn’t know — and do what any normal person does if a random number texts you...delete! But, 24 hours later I get another text from the same number. This time it was with more context. “Hi this is Willem, from Thursday. How are you? Wanted to see if you wanted to grab dinner this Thursday?” Ahhhh!! He texted me! Then the next thing I did was wait the acceptable 10 minutes before I responeded so I didn’t look too excited and then accepted! We went out in Neptune Beach to a Sushi restuarant — now it is a cute, small, intimate local farm-to-table restaurant that we still go to for our anniversary — and literally talked for two hours and ate so much sushi! Yum! We then walked across the street to our local watering hole. The famous Pete’s Bar! We played 25 cent pool. He taught me how to play and let me win once or twice like a gentleman. (Warning: It gets mushy from this point on. He hates me telling it but i know he remembers the moment and it makes him smile. He will never admit that though if you ask him lol) We then left Pete’s bar and went for a walk on the beach. It was completely dark and we could just make out silhouettes of people about 100 yards ahead of us. It was quiet except the sound of the ocean. (Here comes the mushy part) Then he grabbed my hand, turned me around and as we were leaning in to have our first kiss… Those silhouettes ahead of us lit off mortars into the sky! And I’m not kidding you, right when our lips touched fireworks exploded above us! I can’t make this stuff up! LOL we then cracked up laughing! We both could not believe that just happened and that we literally saw fireworks on our first kiss! I guess it was meant to be! 😍

Seven years later, on April 11th 2019, (The date we decided on that should be our anniversary since we really never talked about exclusivity or had a set date. I just kind of moved in LOL) he asked me to be ready at a certain time because he made a reservation for dinner! I loved that he wanted to take me out on the town to celebrate the last 7 years together. He surprised me and took me to where we had our first date! We had an amazing dinner and it was a beautiful night. So we went back to the house to grab our dogs and go walk on the beach. It was the perfect Florida sunset to the west where the entire sky is bright red and orange. I let our big dog off the leash and he ran ahead of us splashing in the ocean. I was a few paces ahead of Willem just to make sure the dog was OK when I heard him say behind me; “Tina...” And when I turned around he was down on one knee! And in true Tina fashion I said “are you freaking kidding me!?!?” Lol it was so perfect! Right where we had our first kiss and now we had our little family with us! After saying yes, we hugged and laughed and said “now what?” LOL so we went out to go get ice cream! 😍