Five Years!

Five years ago, exactly today, I received a phone call from Ken. He was a guy I had met through an online dating site, and we had escalated to phone calls from just emails.

I enjoyed talking to Ken even despite having recently left the girls' father and all of that nightmare. Ken and I had had numerous phone conversations, and he was asking to see me. I was totally honest about myself: the drinking, smoking cigars, shooting & cussing, and yet he still kept asking me out. Unfortunately, I was past broke & everyone I knew to ask to watch the girls was away on Summer Break.

On the evening of Friday, July 13, 2007, Ken called me just after the girls had eaten supper. (There wasn't enough food for me to eat at this point.) Ken asked what we were doing tonight and I told him - the girls were finishing their supper and then we were going to watch a DVD. Ken said he had a different idea - load the girls up and meet him at John's Incredible Pizza.

John's Incredible is a slightly better Chuck E Cheese. The food is OK, and everything is way overpriced with tons of games and silly rewards for the tokens. Ken just wanted to meet me, and he was happy having the girls tag along.  

My first impression at seeing Ken was that he was even more handsome in person than the pictures he had posted of himself. Inside, I was doing a happy dance while going to say hello in the parking lot. The girls introduced themselves and were fairly shy about it.  Taylor and Mandy had not yet dealt with the fear of men they had developed from their father.  Jordan, however, sized up Ken, chatted with him for about 3 minutes, and then grabbed his hand and declared that he was "OK." I quickly snapped a picture of his license plate and sent it via text to a friend of mine, "Just in case."  Ken didn't notice me doing that, and he loves hearing that I did it when I told him later.

Ken listened to the girls' stories and to me. He and I chatted away the entire night.  He bought tokens for the girls and helped me watch them while they played in the arcade. I was impressed that he only bought them $5 each and he didn't go overboard.  That was a major plus for him to me.  Ken and I were having a great time talking and getting to know each other better.  He told me later that he was really relieved that I was as pretty and just like I had been on the phone - Ken was afraid that I was going to be snooty or something in person.

When the "restaurant" told us they were closing, neither of us were done, but the girls were exhausted, and I needed to get them home and in bed.  I took a huge chance and invited Ken back to my house.

Everything after that is, well, history. The next day, he called me to have supper at his house and meet his boys.  All 6 of the kids had a great time together, and it was very natural for us all to be together.  Ken and I found that we really preferred each other. I couldn't stop thinking about him and he couldn't stop thinking about me, and the rest is well, history.

So, in honor of that first date, since we found ourselves with Friday, July 13th again, we recreated the first date a bit, and we took the girls with us to celebrate at John's Incredible Pizza.  We do not go there on our own - it is usually a birthday party that gets the girls through those doors.  You should have heard the girls' excitement that they were being included in the anniversary celebration. 

Now, very sadly, I have no pictures of us from 5 years ago.  My camera was not the best and my computer had frozen, so I didn't take any.  Here are a couple of pictures from the first few months of dating:

You can see that the girls loved being around Ken, and I always figured that so long as he stayed a part of their lives - no matter what happened between us - that they would be OK.  I never dreamed I would be so lucky as to be his wife, but that is what happened, and I have never regretted a day!

Here is our Family Date from tonight:

Rather than recreating the ending that we had 5 years ago, Ken and I ended this celebration in the style that we have grown accustomed to: back patio, a drink, and cigars with easy conversation.  It's not much different from "then" - the conversation and talking was always easy, but this was a great way to enjoy the cooler temperature, a very slight breeze, and to relax from the noise and running around from the pizza place.

Neither of us can believe that it has been 5 years.  Ken and I talk about that a lot - it seems that we have known each other forever, so there's no way it's only been 5 years, and then we think about our lives before we met, and we can't believe that 5 years has gone so quickly. 


We have been so very happy - even when things were tough and we weren't seeing eye to eye. There is nothing that I would change about what we have.  Even Ken's cancer has made us appreciate ourselves, each other and our lives so much more.  


A toast was made to the next 50 years, so we're getting started on that.