I knew I loved you before I met you

Almost 14 years ago, when I was a freshman in college back in Nova Scotia, I got my first e-mail address. The internet was a new and exciting place.

I've always been a "people person". I was the 6 year old who would tap on the new kid's shoulder at school and ask them if they wanted to play together at recess and the 10 year old who would knock on the new neighbor's door and introduce myself. So, when I was faced with this glorious new world online, I was like a kid in a candy store. Fascinated by all things related to "college", I guess I found some kind of search engine (this was pre-Google), and I searched for "college student homepages" because it was also pre-Myspace and Facebook!

I came across a long list of names of students who had created homepages for a class at the University of Tennessee, and somewhere among the hundreds of names was "Bradley Lyle". He had posted a picture of himself festively dressed up in a Santa Claus hat and he shared that the was a "shoe salesman". (In my mind, I imagined Al Bundy.) His wasn't the only homepage I looked at that day, but being the tech-savvy guy he was, he had a fabulous little "e-mail me" icon taunting me from the bottom of the screen. I couldn't resist. We like to joke that he had me at "I sell shoes". ;)

This was NOT the beginning of a typical "love story". We e-mailed back and forth for several years, sharing things about our families, our friends, and where we were from. Then, we lost touch.

Three years later, I found myself visiting friends near Knoxville and I wondered what Brad was up to. Was he married now? Would he remember me? When I got home from my vacation, I once again found myself searching, this time on Google, and this time more specifically, for Bradley Lyle. I couldn't believe my luck when I found his old e-mail address on a message board that he had posted on. I e-mailed him, and within 24 hours he e-mailed me back.

Just a little over a year after re-connecting, we met in person for the first time. It may sound crazy to those of you who have never developed a close friendship online, but I knew I loved Brad before we even met face-to-face, and had he proposed to the moment we laid eyes on each other, I would have said "yes".

We were engaged 3 months later, and we were married another 9 months after that. Now, we are just weeks away from celebrating our 7th wedding anniversary.

Over the past 8 years, we've been through many wonderful and challenging things, beginning with the immigration process. We've planned a wedding, found me a teaching position, bought a house, Brad's been through grad school, we've traveled all over the southeast and up to Canada many times.

We've adopted 3 sweet dogs, who for the past few years have been our "babies", but now, we find ourselves in a place where we're about to bring another baby (OUR baby!) into our home in just 7 and a half short months. This is especially crazy and exciting because when we got married 7 years ago, having kids was firmly on our "NOT to do" list. How it made its way off that list is a whole other blog. :)

So here I find myself once more. I have this person (this weee little person) who I have never laid eyes on, but who I can tell you without any doubt in my mind that I love with all of my heart, and who I can not wait to meet face-to-face for the first time. I know when I do, just as when I met their Daddy, I will be theirs and they will be mine forever.