Happy Anniversary!

On June 24th Richard and I celebrated our 13th wedding anniversary! I thought I would record how we met.

I was in a YSA(young single adult) group in Huntsville, AL. We traveled all over to meet other singles and just have fun! There was a single's conference in Greenville,SC so our group decided to attend. Usually these conferences would go from Friday to Sunday with a dance each night. We arrived Friday night, checked into our room, and then headed off to the dance. While there we spotted Richard(who lived in Dublin, Ga. at the time)-he was alone and just scoping out the crowd. Our group would often "take-in" those who looked like they were alone or not having a good time and inflict our crazy-spunky spirit on them:) Richard was one of our victims and he hung out with us the rest of the weekend. I thought it was cool that he was from the Philippines since that is where my brother served his mission....but he was too old. I was just 19 and he was 27! Man! That was OLD!:) But I did think he was cute!

So at the close of that conference we exchanged phone numbers with all our new friends and parted ways. Richard called me on occasion, talked to my brother in Tagalog and we saw each other again at the dance in Atlanta(they would have one every month for the singles and our group from H'ville would take a roadtrip each month....sooo much fun!). Then the phone calls got more frequent and I just thought it was because he liked talking to me;) I started asking him if he saw someone at the conferences or dances that he would like to date. After narrowing down the choices of people we both knew I began to realize he was talking about me! So we had our first date in Panama City, FL over the New Year's weekend while we were down there for another single's conference. We talked and dated for the next 3 months and got engaged on my 20th birthday! 3 months later we were married! I had a lot of people say it was too fast but Richard wasn't getting any younger....ha....just teasing:) It is hard to explain but I just knew. We both knew that we were to be together so why wait. On June 24th we were married in the Atlanta Georgia Temple for all time and eternity....and 13 years later... here we are! It really does get better each year!

We have had many bumps in the road but I would not change a thing! I love being married to Richard!