Our love story...

Tomorrow is Rick's birthday, he'll be 39. Personally, I don't think he's changed a bit since the day I met him! :o)

KLOVE, my very favorite radio station, is having this awesome contest right now. You send in your love story in 250 words or less and if they choose it as the winner, Matthew West will turn your story into a song and sing it to you! I love Matthew West! :o) So I entered. I think we have a great story, but honestly don't think they'll even pick it to read on air... just my luck :o) But that is okay with me because its still our story, and our kids and grandkids will love it :o)

In WAAAAY more than 250 words, I'm going to share our story... this way it will be written down for all eternity :o)

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It goes all the way back to my stepdad being HORRIBLE with computers! :o) I was a 20-year-old, single mom (my daughter was 7 months old) and I had moved home with my mom, stepdad and little brother. My stepdad somehow DELETED his modem... and expected me to fix it. So I called our internet companies tech support at like midnight one night to see if they could help. I got a tech named Chris who was TOTALLY helpful, and sorta hitting on me LOL He said I had a great phone voice (how sad is it that even when I was 13 I was being told that I could be a phone sex operator? WAIT! Now I know how to bring in extra cash! LOL *kidding*) and he'd like to keep chatting... so we started IMing through AIM. We'd chat, but mostly I'd send him jokes; funny ones, not funny ones, mostly dirty ones because they are the ones that make you laugh the hardest! Unbeknownst to me, he had told his friend about me and my jokes.

(according to Rick's memory) "You have to talk to this girl, she has the best jokes."

August 14, 1999 - Chris and I are chatting and he says he has to go to the bathroom, "Chat with my friend, Rick. He's visiting from Victorville." So he and I start chatting and after a while he logs off Chris's AIM account and into his own. He logs on as SilverSurfer. Now, I'm digging talking to this guy, so I try to impress him with my 'vast' (read: absolutely NO) knowledge of comics. "Silver Surfer? Like the comic book guy with a surfboard?" I know this only because YEARS earlier I had found a Silver Surfer trading card on the ground. I liked it, so I kept it. Eerie, right? I sent him my website link, so he could see my picture of me & Kiera at her christening. We chatted online for a bit and he busts out with, "Can I call you on the phone?" Like I said, I'm digging him... so of course I gave him my number. :o)

We talked on the phone for HOURS. It is now August 15th VERY early morning. I have to get up to be at work by 9A. I told him as much and he asked if he could call me at work the next day. Seeing as it was a Sunday and always a very slow day at the pharmacy (I worked for Cambria Village Pharmacy in Cambria), I said yes.

Sometime during the day, Rick called me at work and told me that he needed to run some errands and would call me to actually talk later. "...but call before 4P because that is when I close up." Fast forward a few hours. A customer called and was upset because there was no pharmacist. There was NEVER one on Sundays :o) She was threatening legal action, I was frantically running around the store looking for whatever it was she needed. A man came in and stood at the counter.

(out of breath) "I'll be right with you sir!" as I run to the backroom

*nods his head, says nothing*

"Okay. Now how can I help you sir?"

"Well, I figured that since I had seen your picture online that I should come in and show you me."

(according to Rick) My jaw just about hit the floor. LOL Bestill my heart, he had me at hello! :o)

He stuck around while I closed, and when I walked down to JJ's Pizza to meet my mom, he came with me. That night Rick met my daughter, mom, stepdad, little brother, older sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew! And, believe it or not, he came back the next day! :o) Shocking, I know!!

Turns out he had moved up to Morro Bay from Victorville. He came to see me every day!

About 2 weeks after we met, Rick & Chris picked me up for lunch. We grabbed sandwiches from Soto's Market and headed down to the beach. Sitting on the beach, after eating lunch, I was doodling on my paper bag with some charcoal. He asked what I was drawing.... it was cheesy LOL I had been doodling a house with a tree and standing next to it were me & Kiera. "Where am I in that picture?" Oh, right then and there I KNEW I was going to marry this man! :o)

I'll write more another time... that is enough for now :o) Plenty more though :o)