I’ve had a few questions about my life lately and I thought that it was an excellent idea to answer them here.

Jim and I started dating when I was 15 and he was 21. When I say the word dating, I use the term losely because we weren’t allowed to date. (You can imagine how well me daing a 21 year old went over with my parents.) We pretty much just saw each other any chance we got. It didn’t take long until we knew that we wanted to marry each other. I don’t think that it’s very often that a 15 year old falls in love with the person she wants to marry, but I have always been more mature for my age. And I think that I just knew what I wanted.

We had a rough go of it really. It was such a fight with my parents. We broke up once because we saw the inevatable coming, but we just couldn’t stay apart. We were forbidden to see each other, which we didn’t obey. Finally, the summer before my senior year, we were finally allowed to be together. I think they realized that Jim was there to stay. Later on that year I was forbidden to see him again. It only lasted a week. I can be rather dramatic and they gave in.

By the time I turned 18 we were just ready to get married. It was important to both of us that we were virgins when we married and, after almost three years of being together, it was getting to the point in our relationship that it was getting VERY hard to resist. Plus, we knew what we wanted and we had fought for it so hard, so why wait?

We got married October 16, 1999. 1 month and 1 day after my 18th birthday. I think it was with my parents blessing. I know that now my mom thinks the world of Jim. I’m not sure about my dad, I know that I’m not living the life he would have chosen for me. But having the kids has softened him up a bit to my life, they are so cute…

EDIT: I also wanted to say that while it has been good for me to marry so young, I wouldn’t necessarily advise it for everyone. There are hard things about starting a marriage when you still have a lot of growing up to do. Jim has been extremely patient with me and I know that if our marriage hadn’t been built on a firm foundation of knowing each other and knowing what we wanted in each other and, in my opinion God’s blessing, we wouldn’t have lasted this long. And while I say I knew what I wanted, I can’t say how lucky I am that I made the right choice. I couldn’t see then what experience has shown me now and… I’m just so lucky that I chose right.

I got pregnant with Eden about two years into our marriage, just a few months after we bought our house. It was one of those things where we weren’t trying but we weren’t prevenitng it either. Jim was in extreme shock when I first took the pregnancy test. He refused to believe me until it was confirmed by a doctor. He soon warmed up to the idea and out popped baby Eden Joy, just two weeks after Jim had been laid off from his job.

He still marvels at how well I handled it. We just had to hit the ground running with our business. It was do or die.

11 months after Eden was born, I got pregnant with Honor. This time our roles were reversed. I was in extreme shock and Jim was super excited. All I have to say is it only takes one time of not being vigillant with our birth control method…. ONE TIME!!! I was pretty miserable during my pregnancy with Honor. I was sick and puking for the majority of it and then it was like the hottest summer EVER. God smiled on me when he was born two weeks early.

There you have it, the last 8 years of my life in a nutshell.