Our "Love Story"

I thought maybe it was about time I posted a photo of myself, and my beloved, my best friend, my soul mate my better half, my significant other, and my husband, Kevin Gene - whom I love with all my heart. This is actually a terrible photo of us, but it's all I had at the moment. One of these days I will post some incredible shots from our vintage wedding! At the time this was taken, Kevin was growing out his wintertime facial hair and looked rather scruffy. Now he is clean shaven and got a haircut yesterday! I look awful in the photo as well, and red is not my color. We have a rather unusual love story many years in the making. We met, oddly enough, at a local horse feed and western wear store. There had been a seminar on horse health care given by our mutual vet, and the store had stayed open after hours for seminar goers to shop. I remember being introduced to him through a mutual friend, and something inside told me I'd see more of him, though not in a romantic way, only in a friends kind of way. He was older than me, and not exactly what I was "looking for". We did become good friends, and talked now and then when our paths crossed. In the meantime, he was seeing someone else. Our friendship went on for about five years, centered around horses mostly. Kevin says that he was "interested" early on, but figured I was too young, and he "too old" to be compatible, so he didn't persue a romantic attachment.
About two years ago, in the early spring, after I had gone through a tough time in my life that caused me to "grow up" emmotionally (funny, as I thought I was "grown-up" emmotionally but hadn't really...) and suddenly, I was seeing my "buddy" and "pal" Kevin in a totally new light, and I was a little freaked out by that. I tried to deny it, and avoided him; but the more I avoided him, the more our circumstances threw us together. Finally, one day when we were thrown together fixing a horse fence emergency for a friend, he just brought it right up out in the open, and inquired if I was willing to persue an "attachment" with an "old guy". (Kevin is 13 years older than me.) I guess I could have played shocked, offended, and "hard -to-get", but at the momemt, seemed so wrong, immature, and downright dishonest. So I confessed that I had been struggling with my own feelings, and thus our relationship went from buddies and pals to a romantic attachment in one sudden move! So that was in the Spring, but we kept our attachment secret for a few months while we tried to decide what we were going to do, and while he was finishing up an out-of the area job. Then that summer we became "official" when Kevin told my parents that he had every intention of marrying me. That Christmas we became engaged and started talking about weddings and choosing a date. In January we decided to forget a long engagement, and marry in the Spring, exactly one year from the time we "got together." That was a hard choice for me to make, as I had always wanted to get married at Christmastime. Waiting a whole year for Christmas to come around again was just absurd..... we were both old enough (he, 40, me, 27) and wanted to get on with our life and not goof around for a year just for a wedding at Christmas. So we got married April 12, 2008, and have been married ever since; "Happily Ever After".................................