Will you be my Badingspouse?

They met in 2018 - actually no - they met about 20 years ago when Natalie was working at the cafeteria at Perfect North Slopes serving warm cookies at the ski lodge. Whether their paths intersected at this point is lost in time, but only these perfect warm cookies could have diverted Gordon's attention from someone as radiant and beautiful as Natalie. Years later, Gordon and Natalie's lives would cross again after both having accepted a job at First Transit, on the 13th floor of the building at 600 & Vine Street in the Cincinnati Central Business District. Gordy was hired on the Finance team in 2016, Natalie joined the Business Development department a year and a few months later. It was here on the 13th floor that their respective deskmates accidentally set them up. On a random Wednesday afternoon, Gordy’s deskmate Mike Cocita was celebrating his 5-year anniversary with the company. In lieu of any kind of monetary reward for his years of service, Mike was given a shiny red helium balloon. Alyssa, Natalie’s deskmate, noticed the balloon and, thinking it was Gordy’s, sent him a message and asked if she could have it for Natalie. Not wanting to give away something that didn’t belong to him, Gordy asked Mike if he could hand it off to a girl in the Business Development department. Mike was ready to be rid of the balloon, and agreed. "Yeah, get it out of here!" Natalie, unaware of these interactions, got a Skype message from Gordy: “Hey, do you want a balloon? Alyssa said you wanted to play with it.” She responded with immediate enthusiasm (as Alyssa astutely predicted), “I SURE DO!” Through the life cycle and eventual demise of the balloon, Natalie found reasons to send Gordy updates about the status of her gift (e.g., “I have tragic news. The "Thank You" balloon you gifted me is finally starting to fall down."). And then that was it! They found a reason to reach out to each other on Skype every single day, building our friendship over a workplace chat feature. A little over a month later, the day after Valentine’s Day, they stayed after Friday Happy Hour until 12:30 in the morning. The following Sunday, they admitted their feelings for each other and planned their first date for later that week. Who knows whether it was fate, divine intervention, chocolate chip cookies that were too delicious for their own good, Mike Cocita's career choices, or Alyssa's understanding of Natalie's childlike tendencies, something brought Natalie and Gordon together at exactly the correct hour. It led them to celebrate one of the biggest moments with the most important people of their lives.

Gordy proposed in June 2024 on a trip to a bed and breakfast in Melbourne Beach, Florida. They had just left the bed and breakfast's "social hour" and had to run through the pouring rain to get back to their room. Natalie was drying off in the bathroom and Gordy walked in and told her had a very important question to ask. He knelt down and told her that he had known very early in their relationship that he wanted to marry her - and he knew exactly how he would ask. "Natalie Badinghaus, will you be my Badingspouse?' Natalie laughed and cried and laughed and cried and said "Yes!"

We have three cats, adopted between May and June of 2020. Because we (read: Natalie) talked Gordy into adopting three cats, she agreed to allow Gordy to be the naming committee: the president, vice president, and the only member. CLEO | Cleonitus | Cleeeeee | Cleetiss | Cleeto | Miss Cleo | Meow | Precious Doll | Cleo is our resident matriarch; she's about 14-15 years old, the adoption agency wasn't sure of her age. She was originally named "Nin," and Natalie was drawn to her immediately when we were browsing the shelter's website. When we went to meet her, the shelter volunteer was giving us some background on her personality - she was only able to tell us that Nin was incredibly shy and spent all her time huddled in her litter box. When we opened the cage to meet her, she was clearly starved for affection and couldn't get enough pets from Natalie. There was no way we were leaving without her! She spent her first three months hiding under the bed, coming out every so often to eat and use her litter box, then back into hiding. Almost four years later, she is still timid and shy, most visitors to our apartment never even get a glimpse of her. We have since learned that she is mostly feral, and that at some point in her life, she was shot with a BB gun, and the pellets are still lodged near her hip bone (they don't cause her any discomfort and would be harder on her to remove them). Now, she is pampered and given only the best canned food. She spends her days napping in her closet or hanging out in the office while we're working. POOKIE | Pook | Pookarino Romano | Pooksylvania | Pookimanjaro | Pookiss | Miss Pook | Pook-a-Look | Spooks | Spooky | Spookiss Pookiss | We were also immediately drawn to Pookie when we were browsing adoptable cats. We submitted our application and as we continued to browse the site, we saw that her application fee had been waived, as she was the shelter's longest resident, having been there for more than two years. We met her and couldn't imagine leaving her any longer, although she ruled the shelter - everyone had to stop us to say goodbye to their best pal. Bringing her home was a breeze - she wasn't shy or afraid, she walked around the new digs, checking things out, then made herself comfy on the couch and stared to purr. She is clearly a people lover; she constantly grumbles at the other cats, but always wants to be around people. She greets guests and is (not surprising) the only cat who ended up in our engagement photos. She still rules the roost, eats only the dry cat food in her bowl, and is sitting her while I (Natalie) write this, angry that I'm not petting her. STIMPY | Stimp | Stimpson | Stimpo | Bubba | Bubs | Bubbas | Bobo | Boba | Bobes | Natalie's college friend ("bffffffff") Kristen is a fellow cat lover. In April, on her birthday, Kristen sent Natalie a photo of a kitten she was fostering, this tiny grey floof with big "baby blue" eyes. Natalie lost her mind and knew that night she had to adopt this boy. After taking care of "Pigeon," Kristen and her husband Zach drove the tiny little boy to Cincinnati to deliver him to his new home! He was fierce, hissing at everyone for the first few hours, until he decided to play and earn a nice nap on the couch. He is now just as spicy, but 100 times more cuddly, sleeping in bed with us every night and chatting away anytime he's awake. His eyes are now a warm yellow and he's grown quite large, weighing around 16 pounds on his last vet visit. He loves "treats" (say that word around him if you'd like to be his best friend) and loves to chase pheasant feathers and give his sisters soft "cat slaps." He'll turn 4 a few days before we getting and he's finally losing most of his "kitten" tendencies. He still loves to play, but doesn't hiss much at strangers anymore, although he's usually aloof, watching from the staircase, the arm of the couch, or the top of the cat tree.