Nine Years (and four weeks)

I can hardly believe it's been nine years since Jerry and I got married.  We had a funny start to our relationship as many of you know.  I mean, who has to go to the other side of the world to meet their significant other, even though we'd been on the exact same college campus for 3 years and had never run into each other (well, maybe we had, but we never knew it).  Whenever anyone asks us how we met, Jerry LOVES to tell the story of how he saw me in Hartsfield Atlanta Airport (at least, that's what it was named back when we did study abroad), then started asking my sorority sisters that I was traveling with about me until he finally worked up the courage to come say something to me.  He called me by name and since I knew I had never talked to him in my life, and me being the cynic that I am, immediately responded "How in the hell do you know my name?"  Good way to start off a relationship, right? 

Thankfully he continued talking to me, we hung out in Berlin, then I saved a seat on the bus for him when we were riding from Berlin to Dresden.  That's right - I was almost a senior in college, and here I am saving a freaking seat on a bus for him.  Whatever, it obviously worked, right? 

Our first date was in Paris and the rest is, as they say, history.  I've always told him it was a mistake to have our first date in Paris because, really, how do you top that??  But he has...he's been the most amazing husband and father I could have ever asked for.  We've been through so much in the past 13 years we've been together.....

• 5 moves (dear Lord, really?!?)
• 2 little girls
• 1 little boy on the way
• a Crohn's diagnosis
• two bad Crohn's surgeries
• two long distance years
• a dog (who is currently on my bad list for developing a taste for eating gross stuff out of the garbage....I think he's got an attitude about the impending baby too). 
• Two jobs for him, four for me (I hope that doesn't sound as bad for me as it looks)

I'm sure there are other things that I am missing.  He still likes surprising me in little ways.  Like last night - he wasn't supposed to be home until about 10pm from my calculations since he was driving back from Florida, but he appeared in the kitchen around 6:30pm, well after I had resigned myself to a night of solo parenting and had just decided that the girls weren't really dirty enough for me to have to bend over the tub for a bath :)  It was a little thing, but still made me and the girls very happy last night. 

So Whizzy & Pop Pop, thanks for raising an incredible son for me to get to marry :)  He still does some things that drive me over the edge (is it REALLY so hard to call and let me know if you are going to be late, cause that goes over much better than saying you are leaving at a certain time, then when it's well past the time you should have already been home and I have dinner waiting, then you call to say you are just now leaving....not that that particular scenario happens EVER or anything!), but I know just how lucky I am to have snagged him :) 

And today marks, at max, four more weeks before we are a family of FIVE.  I started washing Jack-Jack's clothes last night, and it suddenly hit me how real this is all becoming. Not that it hasn't been real with all of the ridiculous pregnancy issues I've had this time around, but organizing and washing up the tiny 0-3 month clothes again for the third time around hit me like a ton of bricks last night!