The beginning

Since so many people have had questions of what is going on, where Mr. S is exactly, and what our plans are--I wanted to start from the beginning.

First a little background information. I was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. My father was from there, my mom was from the US. My mom wanted to return to the US after I was born, so to Virginia we went. My sister was born 15 months later. I grew up in a little town of Virginia my entire life. In August 2002, I went to college at Brigham Young University in Utah. After my first year of college my parents moved to South Carolina. I decided to stay in Utah from that point on and just visit at holidays. In October 2004, my parents separated.

December 2004, I returned to my father's house in South Carolina (mom's back in VA) for Christmas. This was my Dad's first Christmas alone with just us girls. It was definitely an interesting experience. Poor Dad, he had no idea what he was doing. Having just opened a flooring company, he decided to take me to his subcontractor's Christmas Party. Enter Mr. S.

We went to a place called Cafe Brazil. It was a little hole in the wall restaurant. We have a lot of people from Brazil in our town, and the subcontractors were from Brazil as well. Subsequently, I was bored to tears because no one spoke English, and this was the first time I had been exposed to Portuguese. So I ate. Let me tell you--it was good food. Seriously. I digress...So as my Dad is chatting it up and talking, he looks at me and starts to laugh. Of course I immediately want to know what is going on since EVERYONE at the entire table is looking at me.

"Mrs. S, this is Mr. S, and he apparently thinks that you are beautiful," says Dad. I immediately turn tomato red, everyone laughs some more. And goads Mr. S to try and say hello to me, for me to say oi to him. They are all getting a good laugh out of it. Including my Dad. "Dad, tell him that I am leaving soon, so all that I can do is kiss him." My dad's laughter stopped dead in its tracks. Imagine that. Ha! Followed by a refusal to say something like that. I laughed. Mr. S was so cute, he was just as embarrassed as I was. Grinning and turning pink. It WAS really cute, I will admit. The night was wrapping up, and he told my Dad that he promised to learn English so that next time I was in town, he would take me out. I smiled, but all the while I was thinking, yeah, whatever. I was in college and having fun! I was kissing boys and taking names! My mind was far, far away from South Carolina and Brazilian boys.

Fast forward December 2006: Graduation. My Dad offered me a job in his company selling for him. I took the job because it was good opportunity and I was too lazy to look for anything else. And in all truthfulness, I felt the pull of the East Coast. I missed being close to my family and I just felt prompted that it was where I needed to be.

Preparing to leave Utah, I had a conversation with Meagan (my best friend on the face of the planet) and we were talking about all my disasters of relationships. Most recently had been: the retuned missionary..not ready for the "real world"....before that were some doozies: the really nice boy I met at a dance, cute, polite. HA! Turned out to be in a halfway house having been recently released for possession of crack. (He told me after 3 weeks of taking me out, I was sorry to have to tell him I was not ready to help him heal from crack addiction) Before that it was the guy that was a friend of a friend of a friend. His problem: Separated, but still married. Two Kids. Nothing wrong with kids, problem with the married thing, but definitely not ready for a ready made family. There's more...but for your sanity's sake, I'll stop there. But I was prefacing this comment I made to Meagan: "Haha, with my record, I'm sure the next thing will be the Brazilian boy that doesn't speak English." We laughed, I never actually thought that would be the case.

January 2007: Subcontractor's baby shower. I walked into the house with my Dad and my co-worker. And there he is, across the room. Tell me why my stomach flipped into my chest?? And of course everyone in the room is watching us. They all know the story. I hadn't even known it had become a story! Apparently while I was at college, they continued to joke with my Dad about Mr. S. Mr. S started to refer to my Dad as his Father in law. Did he talk to me the entire night?? NO. Rude right? I thought so too!

My co-worker pushed and pushed until I agreed to go out with him. Right before our first date was set, Mr. S had a bad accident at work. He installs tile, and one of the hand saws he was using, the blade broke off. It hit his face, cut through his chin, through the middle of his lips and curved up under his nose. It required 80 stitches and knocked out seven teeth. It was awful. I felt so terrible for him, when I heard, I cried. I was so worried. Why? I don't know, I barely knew the guy. A few weeks later we were able to set another date. Valentine's Day And I went. And I fell in love. Head over heels. And the entire time, I was thinking, "What the hell am I doing?" Mr. S still didn't know English well. I didn't know his immigration status, but I was pretty sure it wasn't legal. The boy doesn't even have teeth right now. But I told myself, we are just going out on dates, it's not that big of deal.

After two weeks of dating, Mr. S told me he loved me. I laughed and told him he was crazy. He looked at me, and said, "No...I have never been more sure. I have never felt like this." And do you know what I said?? (let me just mention when I get uncomfortable, I deflect, and say stupid things to be funny and it wasn't.....of course now I laugh at me, but i could NOT believe, that after someone had said the most romantic thing of my ENTIRE life, I said this:) "Maybe it's just gas."

Thank goodness he has a sense of humor and he laughed at me. He said, "Don't worry, you will see."


**sorry this got so long, i didn't actual mean it to be that way, but it was fun to remember. I will post more tomorrow and I promise it will go by quicker, and I will get to our present situation. Thanks for bearing with me!**