Here's to Four Years!

As I was pulling on my swim suit this morning to take the girls to the splash park, Elizabeth was running around the house singing the choo-choo song ("All Aboard!") and Rachel was voicing her obvious disgust over mandatory belly time.  It suddenly occurred to me that four years ago at that time, I had been pulling on my wedding dress to marry my best friend.  I was so beyond nervous, mainly due to the fact that everyone would be looking at me, not because I had any hesitation over saying "I do" to Scott.  I can't remember if I ate anything that morning.  My dad had come over and fixed waffles (since it was a Saturday!) and my sisters, Amanda, Courtney and Anessa were all at the house getting ready.  Lynn was in charge at the church and we started walking down the aisle at high noon.  I'm sure everyone thinks their wedding was perfect and, looking back at that day, I am no different.  The music was beautiful, Preacher Terry gave a stunning message and my husband looked at me like I was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.  We hosted an awesome party at the Marriott.  The toasts were incredible, the bartender was lenient on our bar tab and, thanks to Amy Shipman Hissa telling them to turn off the lights, everyone had a great time dancing.  We had our after-party at Wild Wings and almost everyone made it down to laugh and listen to bad karaoke.  Andrea even got to stay after hours thanks to Dana Jenkins giving up her "I'm over 21" wrist band.  Such a perfect day and I can truly say that we've been running ever since.

I'm not sure how Kathi and I got on the subject of Scott Shipman one day, but we did.  We were all in the same graduate program at Gardner-Webb and had gone through one year of classes together.  It was a small group - maybe 10 students - so we got to know each other pretty well.  She was sure that he was single and I thought he had mentioned one time about having a girl friend.  Either way, I thought that he was very nice and that he looked nice in his clothes (HA!).  I didn't really think about it any more.  Until Scott and I were talking during a break at a staff meeting one day and he mentioned that a lot of the GA's were going out to celebrate one of the guys graduating the program.  You know...if I wanted to go.  

Long story short, I went.  It was a lot of fun and when the bar closed at 2, Scott asked me if I could give him a ride home.  I felt horrible because it had rained the night before and I had left my passenger side window cracked, which soaked the seat in 'everybody's favorite little white Chevy.' He assured me that he didn't care and we talked all the way home.  I'll never forget him telling me that he was impressed with the person that I was and that he'd really like to spend more time with me.  I hoped he couldn't see me turn bright red in the dark or that he couldn't hear my voice shake when I told him that I thought that would be great.

We dated three years before we got married.  In the beginning, we were so poor that all we could do was get to know each other.  We would watch tv, cook dinner, workout - we didn't go out a lot.  Looking back, I think that was a huge blessing because we didn't have a lot of distractions.  Scott proposed on the pier at Myrtle Beach.  It had rained all day and the weather finally broke for my nervous husband to pop the question.  We were married a year later.

The last four years can probably best be summed up in numbers.  We've had two kids and two dogs.  Well, and two cats for that matter (although they are gone now).  We've lived in three houses and owned one (now rented out).  We've lived in two states and have had five jobs between us.

We were baptized together (thank you Brenda and Kenny for being there) and cheered for each other's teams on the side lines.  We've given countless kisses, said a million prayers and have laughed too many times to count.  It's been the best four years of my life.  Thank you, Scott...I love you.