The Married Life

Chris and me have known each other since about age 8, since we grew up down the street from each other. We drove each other nuts until we were almost out of junior high. Then we just tolerated each other for awhile. By high school I had a huge ol' crush on him, but of course he was a ladies man and I was just one of those thorns in his side that drove all the really cute girls away! LOL  I remember the night of my very first date, just after I turned 16, I got a phone call from him asking if I wanted to double with him and his friend Kelly. Of course! I was so excited to finally be going on a date with him, and quickly got ready, only to open the door when bell rang to find Kelly... Chris had failed to tell me on the phone that he had a girlfriend, and that it was his friend that needed the date. Oh well! His friend was cute too and I was glad to just be spending time with Chris. Of course, since it was my first date my mom had the camera out and everything and it was so embarrassing! I had also showed my sister a picture of Kelly in our yearbook and said he was cute, so of course she follows us down the front steps and blurts it all out "Kristi thinks you're really cute!". What a great start to my first date. But it ended up being really fun.

We graduated high school a few years later in 2004 and didn't see much of each other. Chris joined the National Guard and went quite a few places. Two of them being Nicaragua to help build schools/bridges/etc. and Louisiana when Hurricane Katrina hit. He was put on graveyard duty, meaning he got to find all the bodies. Since most of them were in water, they were swollen and every time he pulled on them they would explode. Some people would literally be dying when he came across them, and he would have to watch them die. He still has nightmares about all of it.
We started dating in March of 2007. I was so stinkin' excited!!! It sure took him long enough! We had time together for 2 months before he deployed to Iraq in May, and I was so proud to be a soldier's girlfriend. I used every excuse I could to bring it up to anyone who would listen! At the time I was living with my parents, and my cousins needed a roomie up in Logan, so I moved in with them and got a job at Pepperidge Farms. Chris and me got to email pretty much every day, which is amazing as most soldiers in the sandbox do not have time to do that. Chris' company was a security force so he spent a lot of time outside the safety zones, so really I don't know how he had the time to email so much. I'm very grateful for it though.

He came home over Christmas for leave, and proposed to me in front of his whole family. We'd been talking about it, he even told me he bought me a ring in Iraq, so I was expecting it. But it was good to finally have it official! He went back to Iraq for a few more months and came home in April of 2008. From there until we got married we broke up quite a few times. I'd break up with him because it always seemed like he was stringing other girls along and I didn't trust him, and he'd break up with me because I was extremely controlling and my depression was just too much for him to handle. But we always ended up back together.

We did have a lot of fun and we work well together when we aren't at each others throats, which was more often than not. After a couple months of seperation in 2009, we got back together in October and in mid November set a wedding date for Dec 7th. Wow, crazy, I know! The things I put my poor parents through. This was the time I was living in my car. Well, actually it would have been Chris' truck because he would not let me sleep alone in the middle of a parking lot. So he slept out there every night with me for a couple months in the cold weather. When I told my mom we had a wedding date set, she let me move back in since it was only for a few weeks. We decided to have the wedding in december and wait to have our reception in january, so as not to stress out my mom too much with plans. So on December 7, 2009, Chris and me got hitched in our church. We just had our immediate family and a few close friends there.

We went on our honeymoon to Midway, and ended up wrecking his truck on the way up. Which is typical. Chris has wrecked every vehicle he's owned except one. That's just his luck. We had three days to ourselves and then it was back to real life. We found an apartment with another couple, since we couldn't afford to live anywhere on our own. We knew the guy from high school but had never really talked to him or anything, and he had a girlfriend. Living with another couple was definitely not on our list of fun things to do, but it's all we could do. So our married life began.