Tuesday's Topics: Nine Pictures

Picking nine pictures of Tony and I is kinda a crazy task... what do I base my choices on?  How do I sum up the 12+ years of our life together in nine pictures?  Well, I'm going to try to pick pictures most of you haven't seen 200 times already all while painting a complete picture of our story.  So here we go.

I couldn't find the original of this picture, but this is good enough.  I'll start with a picture of our core friends when we started to get to know each other - Christine, Peyton, Me, Tony, & Ashley spent sooo much time together back in the day!  It would be impossible to talk about the history of Tony & I without representing them as well.  This was a long, long time ago.  I'm just gonna generally say early 2000s.

And then over time friends came and went... we all grew up and at sometimes apart... but Ashley was our roll dog!  ;)  Us three did everything together and looking back, I wouldn't have it any other way.  I can see why sometimes it's hard for Ashley to ever pick sides between Tony & I on stupid stuff because he's just as much her brother as I am her sister just about!  (But we know I'm her favorite, Tony! Hehe...)  This was Summer 2006.

And then there was the period of time that we were long distance.  At some points in those two years we were just friends who talked all the time and still had feelings for each other and other times we were exclusive.  This is February 2007, just around Valentine's Day.  He drove all the way from Memphis to Moline just to be with me for a few days.  It means even more to me now than it did then.

Christmas 2008 with his family.  Tony and I weren't even engaged at this point, yet they never hesitated to include me as a part of the family.  Here I am smooching Tony's cousin, Bobby.  I wish it was this easy for all of us to get together as a family, but seeing as we are all going in 20 different directions, it's a little more difficult.  On the left of the picture is Tony's brother Sean and on the far right is Tony's sweet cousin, Alexis (or Lexi or Alex - depending on where you know her from!) who is more like his sister!

I believe this was March 2009.  Here we are at our first Chicago Bulls game.  It's actually one of my favorite pictures of us!  These were some of our carefree days!!! :)

May 2011 - a time in my life I will hopefully never forget.  Here we are on the way from the church to the reception on our party bus!  BLISS just begins to describe this moment.

Now it's July 2011 and we are visiting Memphis for a long weekend.  We're actually sitting at the Memphis Zoo sweating our BUMS off!  The significance this picture carries with it?  This is the last picture of Tony and I as just the two of us.  This is just a few days before we found out the most life changing news to date: that we would be having a BABY!

This was October 2012 - a picture from the weekend my niece was baptized.  I think this is the only picture including my sisters, their significant others, and our kids!  You should recognize Tony, Presley, and I - my two brother-in-laws (or almost BIL) are on either side of Tony.  I'm sitting next to my sister Ashely, my big sister is in the dress a few seats down, and her daughter Anne Marie is the tiny one!  I look forward to many more family photos over the years of the 3 of us and our families!  (PS, the others in this photo are Amanda's siblings-in-law!) 

Fast forward to Christmas 2012.  Here we are in Memphis again celebrating with our family!  I chose this picture because I love it - we have so few of the six of us together.  I also like this to contrast with the picture above where I'm standing in almost the same spot with a few of the same people but instead of holding Presley, I'm holding Bobby.  It makes me so happy to look at this picture and sometimes so sad that we're so far apart.  I love them so much - I am so blessed with some of the most amazing family members on both sides of our families.

None of these pictures would have been possible without Tony.  He's my best friend.  He's my boyfriend.  He's my husband.  He's so much to me... much more than any title could hold.  He is a part of me that I don't even fully know how to explain.  But it's incredible to me that our love can blossom over the years and make such a beautiful life possible for us.  This journey we are on is one of the most hilarious, painful, and amazing I have ever embarked on and I look forward to looking back at these pictures YEARS from now while shaking my head and laughing at my former self rattle on while thinking, "Man! I really had no idea what was up ahead, did I?!"