Celebrating 6 Years

This past Sunday and Monday were spent celebrating our anniversary. It was a jam packed two days. We did so much and had so much fun that I was utterly pissed he had to go back to work Tuesday morning! I wish all summer could be like those two days were. Before I get into all our fun stuff, I figured I would finish what I started last week.

march two thousand eleven

Where I left off in our story was the moment I knew Berkeley was my soulmate. What I didn't touch on was how our relationship went from that moment to "in a relationship" and now married. We spent nearly a year from the day in the hallway just being friends. We were best friends that knew too much about each other, but still just friends.

The details of that yearlong period could fill a novel so I won't go there, but when he had to leave Flagstaff to start the 2009 Fire Season working in Tucson, I started struggling with a lot of mixed emotions. I was also leaving for five weeks in California. In the days leading up to departing, I started getting anxious and nervous. I almost canceled my travel plans several times. I didn't know it at the time, but Berkeley was dealing with some of the same things too.

For the first two weeks of summer 2009, we sent texts back and forth when we had a spare moment, or when my cell phone decided to get reception. My parents still had dialup AOL at the time so email and IMs were of little use but we still tried. Then my financial aid for the next school year fell through. I briefly mentioned to him the situation and probably needing to take a semester off. 16 hours later in the middle of the night, while on a two week assignment, Berkeley replied "We could always get married. That will make us both eligible for extra assistance." And that is where the romance began; a text message marriage proposal.

june two thousand fourteen

By the time summer 2010 rolled around, we figured we should probably pick an anniversary. Ultimately, we picked the date of a four hour Skype conversation that happened the first week I was back in Flagstaff, June 16th. When we went out to celebrate, a waiter had asked how many years Berkeley responded "two years". I thought he maybe made a mistake, we joke about Man Numbers vs. Woman Numbers all the time, but later he explained it to me.

As it turns out those 15 months where we were just friends meant just as much to him as they did to me. He joked that he couldn't tell the waiter that he felt he had loved me for 22 years already (my whole life), but that he could say two. I couldn't have agreed more. So this week we celebrated six years together.