Hey friends! In honor of Valentine’s Day being tomorrow, I’m sharing how Brandon and I met many years ago.

We tell people all the time we were babies when we met and even still when we got married, and we were! While it has worked for well for us, we do not promote getting married so young. It was brutal at first. We talk often about it.

We met at a party at my cousins house, also something we do not promote. It was summer time and I was going into my senior year of HS. Brandon had moved back to our area for college and was living with his sister for that. We had mutual friends and randomly met at my cousins house. We didn’t make the best choices when we were young.

#obviously

Anyway, one of the first pictures we had together I was 17 and Brandon was 19 I think?

Babies! Right?! 12 short years ago🙂

I should add that I was not looking for a boyfriend at the time and the thought of looking for a husband never crossed my mind then either because I was so young. However, Gods timing is always perfect and never early, never late. And can I share just how perfect HIS timing was?

You see, my sweet momma had been in a hospital bed at home that summer dying of cancer. In fact, we didn’t have “dates” until after she had passed away because I wanted to be home helping my dad and cherishing those last few weeks with my amazing momma. Brandon and I sat on the front porch many nights chatting about life, and serious things because my family was going thru serious times then. My mom passed only a few weeks after Brandon came into my life and we carried on our relationship. Again, Gods perfect timing. He knew what I needed and when I needed it. We stayed together thru my senior year in HS, and the weekend after my graduation my dad passed away. Very sudden, extremely unexpected, tragic for all of us and to this day I’d say it’s the death that I really struggled to deal with the most. Life is short, and I think we say that often but maybe don’t always process how true it is.

So, we all got thru my dads death by the grace of God and decided to get married a few months later in the Fall.

We were 18 and 20.

So many precious people in this picture that mean so much to us. We celebrated 10 years of marriage last September and can I tell you the last few have been the best? We talk often about the rough years and how they were the first one or two of being married. I think it’s all so new in the beginning, learning to live together, learning to pickup after each other, finding out pet peeves you never knew each other had. It’s just a lot for a newly married couple to step into. If your newly married can I speak life that it gets better? People often talk about honeymoon stages but I think real life should be talked about also. In the years since have went thru more tough losses, a time of infertility, health troubles with kids, job changes, college, and so much more but I can’t imagine doing life with anyone else. Hope I didn’t make you guys bored while reading🙂

I’ll be back on Friday with lots of favorites from the week. You can follow along on Instagram until then @polkadotsandpopcornblog

Have a great week!