What's your love story?

     I have been trying to think of a blog post to celebrate Valentine's Day, so when I saw a link-up offered on the blog From Mrs. to Mama, I knew I needed to sign up. She posted a list of questions to help tell "our love story."

1. How long have you and your significant other been together? 
     Tim and I went on our first date in August 2004. We officially began dating exclusively in October that year. This will be our eighth Valentine's Day together. 


2. How did you meet? 
      We originally met in high school French class. He was the annoying guy who had to answer all the teacher's questions and be the center of attention. His French name was Luc. Mine was Isabelle, but our teacher always called me Jess-E!-ca. We flirted a bunch about a year later (in French II or III) and he gave me my first kiss in October of my junior year in high school (2001). Things fizzled out because his parents wouldn't let him date and he was busy with football and track and I with theater and dance. Instead, I dated another guy for a couple of years and then started at the University of Georgia. 
     My freshman year of college, I began attending church at Watkinsville First Baptist Church in the spring where I happened to run into Tim, who was a senior in high school and attended there with his parents. Later that fall, once Tim had also started at the University of Georgia, my roommate (and good friend to this day) Katie wanted to go on a date with a guy she had a crush on and begged me to find someone to go on a date with me so that I could double date with her and the guy. Having no serious prospects at the time, I asked Tim. We talked at church and he would flirt and make faces at me while I was singing in the choir loft. I guess since we didn't have the pressure of it being a serious date, things went really well for us. Not so much for Katie, who I'm pretty sure never had another date with the guy she was with. (Don't worry. She's happily married now). 

This is us at the beach the summer after we started dating.

This was about a year after we started dating when we went to Tennessee for a Georgia away game. 

Hiking on Spring Break trip to Tennesee with Tim's best friend Josh and his now-wife Tegan.

One of a million Georgia games we attended together with our friends Tom and Amber.

3. Tell us how he proposed. Tim proposed on July 21, 2008. We were on vacation with his family in Montana. He proposed at Fairy Lake, just outside of Bozeman, MT. It is the most beautiful place I've ever seen in my life. I was super surprised. And the most surprising part was when Tim got completely tongue-tied and could hardly speak. He says he had an entire speech planned, but all he managed to get out was, "Will you marry me?" after seeing how surprised I was. 

The sign for Fairy Lake. 

The view from the exact spot he asked me. Breathtaking, right?

Tim's family took some pictures of us afterwards. I was still in shock. 

He also surprised me with the exact style of ring that I had liked at the store. 

We had our engagement photos taken on North Campus at the University of Georgia.

It was raining, but our photographers were awesome and we were willing to try something different.

And that's how we got awesome photos like this. 

4. If married, how long have you been married? We have been married for almost 2 and half years. We have lived in three separate houses in two different states. I have had one job since we got married (two, if you count stay-at-home mommy). Tim has had three jobs since we were married. We've bought a car together. We have a 10-month-old son. We celebrated our first anniversary in Elberton, GA at a beautiful plantation house that we had to ourselves for two days. We spent our second anniversary in Seattle, WA, with our then four-month-old son.


5. If you are married, where did you get married at? Big or small wedding?  We were married on August 29, 2009 at the church where we re-met: Watkinsville First Baptist Church in Watkinsville, Ga. It was the perfect day. We had a relatively small-ish wedding with mainly our close friends and family in attendance. My wedding colors were cornflower blue and gray. We had beautiful, simple decor with lots of blue hydrangeas, mason jars, lace, and little birds. 

We were married in August and while it was hot outside, it was a beautiful blue sky, fluffy cloud day. 

I choreographed our first dance to Jason Mraz's "Lucky."

Our friends and family blew bubbles as we exited our reception.

We drove off in Tim's old car, a red Mazda Miata convertible. Which our sneaky friends filled with white balloons so that when we opened the top, they all floated to the sky. It was awesome.

6. Where did you go on your honeymoon? We went to Ocho Rios, Jamaica for our honeymoon. We stayed at a Sandals resort in a beautiful one-bedroom suite in the "mountain" portion of the resort. We spent our days swimming in various pools around the resort, laying out on the beach, riding in a glass bottom boat to look at fish, competing in newlywed competitions, and eating a ton of great food. 

Sorry for the blurry photo, but we don't have a lot of pictures of the two of us together.

One of the employees at the resort took us to this spot, which he called "the perfect picture place."

A whole week in paradise with the man I love. It was perfect.

7. Do you have any nicknames that you call one another?  We don't really have nicknames for one another. I mainly call him honey. He calls me Jess.  


8. Name 3 things you love most about your honey. I love Tim's confidence. He is always very comfortable around new people and makes friends easily. I've always been impressed with his ability to do that. I also love his corny sense of humor. He doesn't think he's all that funny, and it's really cute when he says something that makes me laugh really hard because I can tell that he feels really proud of himself. I also love how sacrificially loving Tim is. He is always putting me and Owen first. He is a wonderful provider for our family, a great husband, and an awesome father. Watching him with Owen is one of my greatest joys as his wife. 


9. Is he a flowers and teddy bear kind of guy for v-day, or strawberries, champagne, and rose petals? I would say that Tim is more of the flowers and teddy bear type of guy. Though he's never bought me a teddy bear that I can remember. But he isn't really the grand romantic gesture type of guy. Maybe somewhere in between?


10. Are you a sunset dinner on the beach kind of girl, or pop a movie in and relax on the couch? If we were near a beach and had the money and a babysitter, I would love the dinner on the beach option, but I'm just as happy with watching a movie on the couch. 


11. Tell us one thing you'd like to do with your significant one day. I would love to do some more traveling with him. We've been to several places together: Sanibel Island, FL several times; the mountains in Tennessee several times; Philadelphia, PA; Bozeman, Montana; Ocho Rios, Jamaica; and Seattle, WA. We've also gone camping a couple times. The places that I would most like to go are Hawaii and Europe, particularly England, Italy, and Greece. 


12. Tell us what you plan on doing on this Valentine's Day. I have a really special surprise planned for Tim this Valentine's Day. I am so excited about. I will post pictures of what I did after Valentine's Day, but since he reads the blog, I am not going to post it on here early. Valentine's Day is a work day so we won't officially begin celebrating until he gets home from work. Though I hope to get up early with him and make him breakfast to take into work. He wakes up at 4 a.m., though, so we'll see what I do. Once he gets home, we've decided to eat dinner at home together rather than go out. We will exchange presents then too. We may go out to eat the weekend before Valentine's Day when there won't be so many crowds. And when we can take Owen with us without bothering other couples who are out for some alone time. 


13. Are you asking for anything this Valentine's day? Who asks for presents on Valentine's Day? I just let Tim surprise me. 


14. Give us one piece of advice of keeping a relationship strong and full of love. Put one another first. I've only been married for two and a half years, but it seems like our marriage is always best when we first try to meet each other's needs over getting what we want. I also strongly believe in the traditional, biblical roles of a man and woman in marriage. 


15.  Show us a picture of what love means to you.

     This is what love means to me. Making a life with someone. Tying your lives so tightly together that it becomes hard to remember life before them. Or to ever think of life without them. At this point we had just begun to understand how to love each other. Before this, marriage was easy and our lives were simple. Then we began this new journey as parents and we realized that we had only just begun to know what love really means.