An Autumn Romance.

 Autumn is officially my favorite season. Why, you ask?  Because two of the most incredible experiences of my life occurred during this beautiful season.

1. I fell head over heals in love with Joshua as the leaves changed in the Autumn of 2007

2. I married him as the leaves changed in the Autumn of 2008.

Those are two pretty spectacular 'seasons of life', and they both happened to occur during the same annual season.  Fall.  On September 21, 2007 Josh and I went on our very first date.  He planned the entire thing.  We began our date by creating ceramic gems at a local art shop called The Mud Room, then had dinner at Texas Roadhouse, and finally we drove out to Lake Michigan at midnight for a walk on the beach. Pretty impressive first date, don't you think?

 A little over a week ago, we celebrated the four year anniversary of that very first date by re-creating the Mud Room portion of it :) On our first trip there four years ago, Josh painted me a lovely ceramic vase and I painted him a lovely ceramic snail.  (I think I was a little afraid of being creative so I just went the silly route which has worked pretty well or me the last few years.)  One week after that first date I came home to find the fired and finished vase in my house with flowers in it.  It was the beginning of being swept off my feet in the romance of a lifetime and I didn't even know it yet!

An Instax Mini of our time in the Mud Room this year

This year, we decided to paint a piece together. We each painted one half of a mug for the other.  The side I painted for Josh says "Hero" and the side he painted for me says "Daisy" in the local language of our future home.

The inside of the mug says "Love" on my side and "Always" on his.

In 2007, I of course had no idea he was going to be the person I would spend the rest of my life with. I specifically remember thinking, though, "This must be God writing my love story.. because I don't know how He's going to top this if it isn't."  We didn't take many pictures of our first couple of months together, but these next few that we did take are quite special to me.

We did a lot of dancing.  One of our most memorable dancing dates was this one, where the average age of the dancers had to be close to 75.  Our dear friend, Betty, invited us to go and we had such a nice time dancing with each other and watching a bunch of elderly ladies and gentleman dance the night away!

Probably inappropriate behavior considering the crowd.

We also went to the local Fall Art Festival together in 2007....

...and we went this year as well :)

Kayaking together was another adventure that first Fall.  We packed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and doritos and got ourselves stuck on some rocks and ate in the middle of the river.  This was the night that I knew we were writing an un-beatable love story.

This year we had a picnic down by the very same river :)

So here are a few little snapshots of the very beginning of our love story.  I'm sure you can see why I get so nostalgic every time the weather starts to cool off.  I put on scarves and Josh puts on his winter beanies. We cook chili and spend time outside. It's the season of romance for us and I have a hunch that it always will be.