happy to meet you

Today, Ian and I are headed to Catawba Island, Ohio, where we met Memorial Day weekend 5 years ago.

If you want to know where that is, you can check out a map here (halfway through the post).

I don't have any pictures from the weekend we met (pre-smart phone days), but here are a few from one of our first dates in June 2007. such youngins

One of our first dates in Pittsburgh @ a Pittsburgh Pirates Game.

Pittsburgh sure is a beautiful city.

And, if you are curious about how Ian and I met, you can find that story here on our wedding website (that I should probably take down one of these days. But, I don't want to! I still can't believe the wedding I planned for a year and half happened nine months ago. crazy.).

Ian is telling me that because we are married now, we don't get to officially celebrate the anniversary of the weekend we met anymore. That's a load of crap, Ian. 

After some negotiation, Ian told me that we could celebrate by going out to dinner, but no presents. That is fine with me!

(That must mean I am getting something super nice on our one year wedding anniversary, right? :)

I'm thankful for meeting Ian everyday. But, Memorial Day weekend every year I am reminded:

how wonderful life's surprises can be. 

how life works in ways we don't always understand at first.

how everything happens for a reason.

The long weekend is also a great reminder that summer is here. However, we often forget that Memorial Day was created to commemorate fallen soldiers who lost their lives to keep us safe. For families of those soldiers, Memorial Day is not about summer, it's about celebrating the lives of their dearest loved ones.

Take a moment on Monday to be thankful for the people that bravely defended our country (and continue to keep us safe) so that we can live our lives freely. Also, take a moment to remember your loved ones who have passed, that kept you safe in their love. 


And if you want, you can think about how awesome it was that Ian and I met 5 years ago. :)

XO

call me crazy

or not!

After recent conversations with my father regarding my my "birth place confusion" mentioned here, I have decided that I must not be as crazy as I thought. I am completely and totally not responsible for lying to people about my birth place.

My parents are directly responsible. Let me explain...

I have been deeply confused about my birth place my entire life. I was told, or I heard my parents telling other people, that I was born in Savannah, Georgia. Made sense to me! A namesake.

At some point in my life, probably around the age of 14 or 16, I saw my birth certificate said I was born in Fort Stewert, GA. Then again in 2001, I was filling out a passport renewal application and had to put Fort Stewert, GA as my birth place...(even though I could have sworn I was born in Savannah, GA, right?)

I decided to continue telling people my birthplace was Savannah when asked (or when flirting with international studs).

To make this even more confusing, sometimes when my parents would talk about our years living in Georgia, they would talk about Hinesville, GA. I was an adolescent and decided not to ask questions. I just remained confused.

In 2009, as Ian and I were driving down to Florida from Pittsburgh, we passed signs for Savannah and Fort Stewert pointing in different directions. I also saw a sign for Hinesville along the way, and that got me thinking...


That's weird. Maybe I was born on a fort in Savannah? Wait, Hinesville?... that sounds familiar too. 


I was way too focused on getting to Florida (starting my vacation, and being annoyed by the $250 speeding ticket we got hours later) to figure out why all these locations circling around my birth place didn't make sense. (I didn't have a smartphone to check Google Maps. And nope, no paper map to look at either. We were navigating our way to Florida with written out directions from MapQuest and a Garmin.)

This year I had to renew my passport again, so my confusion was renewed as well. I listed my birth place as Fort Stewert, GA and I moved on..... until I wrote about my "birth place confusion" in my blog post in March.

After I wrote that post, my father called me to clear up this issue. He (laughed) and told me that he used to tell people that my birthplace was Savannah because it was close enough to Fort Stewert and it wouldn't require further explanation. No one would know where Fort Stewert was located. But, most people have heard of Savannah.

However, during this conversation with my dad, he also kept mentioning Hinesville and Fort Stewart, interchanging them, as if they were the same place. I left this conversation with a some clarity, but I was still a little confused.

So, I did what I always do when I need more clarity. I Googled it.

Fort Stewert, GA and Hinesville, GA are essentially the same place.

Next, I went to Google Maps to get the whole picture.

As you can see, Fort Stewert, the red pointer on the map, is in Hinesville.

Hinesville is a hop, skip and a jump from Savannah.

Thank you Dad and thank you Google for the clarity. I probably should have looked more carefully at a map of Georgia at some point in my life before now. But, I can rest easy that my three birth locations are close enough that maybe you could say that the big lie was just a white lie? 

However, Dad... I didn't need to know even though I wasn't actually born in Savannah, that I was conceived there. Still a namesake :(

XO