From a 6 hour first date at a coffee shop, to 13 days later when Michael asked me to meet his parents, you could say we did a good job of taking things slow. Most of our early relationship consisted of a lot of "playing it cool". Michael pretending he could function on as little sleep as I could, me pretending I didn't really like him THAT much. Both of us trying our best to act tough. But it wasn't long before we got over ourselves and our lives were totally wrapped up in each other. If you know either of us, you know we tend to not leave much margin. Somehow we both suddenly found ourselves doing twice as much and with schedules that were twice as busy. And we loved it all. We fell in love in the in-between moments: half asleep handholding on long flights, short glances from across a room of high schoolers, through letters written during weeks apart, taking turns cheering each other on, in playing "monster" with our favorite littles, through un-friendly competition at game nights, in bad news and loss, through picking up the slack when the weeks get hectic, in trying new things, exploring together and saying yes as much as possible. We fell in love with each other as we fell in love with our life, and our people, and doing it all together.