Pausing to Say I Love You

Last month, when I went to the speaking/writing conference in Michigan, I went to a workshop led by a lovely lady named Shannon Popkin. We emailed back and forth a bit after the conference, and yesterday she left me a note on Facebook saying, "So I hear your love story is pretty awesome..."

I didn't need a second invitation to send her here to read about how our love story began. A while later, she wrote back to say she had cried while she read our story, and she didn't get her work done all afternoon. (Whoopsie.)

She said she particularly loved this post, which I wrote almost five years ago, saying what I loved about Ryan. I went back to read it too, and I cried all over again, remembering what a gift it was to experience his love in those early days.

As we make our way through these five-years-later milestones, I want to pause to say out loud that all those things I wrote five years ago are still very true. And I've had the chance to know them in even truer, fuller ways in these last five years together.

* Ryan still has a heart for the Lord, and he still has as deep a desire to serve in church as he does to sit at home and study and pray. I appreciate the way he loves and serves God!

* He's still the spiritual leader in our marriage, and I love it. He prays over me, studies Scripture with me, worships with me at church, and I definitely feel that he loves me as Christ loves the church. I respect and admire his leadership!

* I don't think I need to really say that he is definitely STILL FUNNY. Makes me laugh every day! And isn't life so much better with laughter in it?

* If only I could have known, five years ago, how much he would push me out of my comfort zone, over and over again, I probably would have been a lot more freaked out! LOL! Just kidding! So many times in these last five years, he's helped me do more than I thought I could, but as always, this picture says it best.

* Obviously we still drink coffee together and take a billion pictures of everything we ever do. He loves what makes me tick, even if he doesn't always understand it! But coffee...coffee, we understand. And this has been a big part of our relationship!

* He still surprises me with little gifts and ice cream and flowers and other treasures to let me know how much he loves me. And my gift loving heart adores these gestures!

* He's still a planner, and my goodness: his planning has paid off time and time again for us. From getting great deals on purchases to enjoying surprise dates to even making big life changes like being able to work from home, the planning is always a gift!

* Five years later, and he's still affectionate. YAY! Still loves to hold my hand, kiss me, and cuddle with me. The affection-lover in me loves that!

* He's still vocal about his love, and I love that. I love it when he tells someone else something he loves about me, or when I just see that look in his eye. Goose bumps!

* He still sees me. He sees worth, potential, and value. He sees beauty, even when I can't. Possibly one of the things I appreciate most about all he offers to me!

* And of course...he's even more handsome today than he was five years ago! And he was amazing five years ago!

Ryan Shaffer, I love you! I loved you five years ago, and I love you even more today. I've heard it said that whatever you do to capture the attention of the person you love is what you need to keep doing once you have that attention. And you have consistently done just that. Every day you are exactly who I fell in love with! Thank you for being my constant!

And thank you for being proof to others that it's possible to be all these things, every day. I love the way you lead by example!

Linking up with Tamar!

The Date Inspired by the Letter O

I had originally planned an outside date for our alphabetical date inspired by the letter O, and we were going to have said date during our visit to the lake this summer. But then we didn't get to go to the lake, so I had to table it until I could figure out a Plan B.

My Mom actually suggested this one to us, and I'm so glad she did! It was creative, different, and not only was it outside, it was an open house for an oil farm. Not like motor oil. SUNFLOWER oil!

We went this past Saturday, after Ryan got off work to the Healthy Hoosier Oil Farm, over by Converse. (If you're not from here, that's not too far from Kokomo.)

The people who run the farm have been farming for years and years, but they needed a way to reinvent the use of their land and crops, so they started (three years ago) planting fields of sunflowers and processing their own oil there at the farm. (They also produce canola oil.) They held an open house that featured tours through the sunflower fields, samples of food cooked in their own oils, crafts for kids, and tours of the processing area.

It was a very cool date!

Samples! Onion rings, among other things. :)

Farm animals. Horses and (as my mother put it for the sake of the date) oinks. I hope she didn't include me in that part.

 Oral exam, perhaps?

Someone had a little fun on the farm equipment...

We sat in on the demonstration of the oil processing. Fascinating to learn how they actually make oil, from start to finish. (Including the crop rotation, bee pollination, and pressing.)

We also went on the riding tour of the fields...and we walked around some in the fields, too. They said peak beauty had come about one week before, but I still thought the fields were awfully pretty!

(Here are the beehives at the farm. The bees work the fields!)

Thanks, Mom, for suggesting such a fun date. If you're from this area, I recommend this next year! (And they said the fields are open for photography if you want to come have a photo shoot!)

(To see the full list of all our alphabetical dates thus far, look here!)

Class Reunion, Part Two

Reunion stories and photos are below, but we also told a bunch more stories on today's podcast! Enjoy!

Listen here!

The main part of the reunion was Saturday night at a little local restaurant in downtown Kokomo called Cook McDoogal's. Ryan has been there before, but I hadn't, and neither of us even knew they had a party room on the entire second floor of the building. It was perfect for the reunion!

Oh! Here we are before we left home. I needed to get a picture of the curls before they died. LOL.

In the podcast, there's the whole story of the time debacle, so I won't rehash it here, but let's just say we went early enough to just talk with people before dinner. And it was really fun. I even had fun talking to friends from Ryan's class!

This is Ryan's cousin, John, who was also in his class. John and Heather live out in Iowa, and we hardly ever get to see them. (They were at the football game with us too, but they were chasing their kiddos around and I wasn't sure they wanted that preserved for posterity with a Bekahrazzi photo!)

This was the only candid shot I took, because it turns out these people are ONTO candid shots. All of them turned to look at me as soon as I started to sneak it. LOL! Ryan, Jerry and Kendall (from the football game stories) and the plus one of another classmate. This guy was a great storyteller!

Ryan and Misty, who was one of his classmates. We just found out that very night that Misty and our friend Shawn are really good friends, so we took this to send to Shawn! (I remember Misty from high school but I am pretty sure the reunion was her first time to meet me. LOL!)

 Photo props for the win! I was excited about those! These next two pictures are of Ryan and his friend Cobi, but they're Cobi's pictures, so photo credit goes to her! :)

 Another borrowed photo: here we are with our friend Melissa. She was kind enough to take one with us and I was kind enough to steal it! :) But she gets credit!

Proof that we were there. :)

Ryan and Jerry - 

And then, as promised in the podcast, here's the recreation of the four guys who were great friends in high school, reunited together for the first time (all four) twenty years later:

LOVE IT!!! :) 

So there you go! Reunion success! :)

Class Reunion, Part One

This weekend was Ryan's 20th high school class reunion (or 40th...he got confused on last week's podcast). Seems I remember him picking on me for a similar milestone last year, but I will refrain from doing the same to him this year. :)

His reunion was actually a two-day event, and originally, he only planned to go to the second night. (Let me back up. Originally he didn't plan to go at all, but I tried to convince him it would be really fun to see friends he never gets to see.)

Once we knew Miss Phoebe would have care-givers for the weekend, we were free to go to both nights, and we did. And I think he really was glad he went!

Ryan was as outgoing and welcoming in high school as he is now, so it's no surprise he had a lot of friends and still has them, even if we don't get to see most of them very often.

One of his friends, Jerry, lives in Texas, and those two hadn't seen each other for quite a few years. In fact, we had never even met Jerry's wife, except through the wonder of Facebook. Jerry asked if we wanted to meet up with the two of them for dinner before Friday night's festivities, and of course we said yes!

(There are no photos of this dinner because it was my first time to see Jerry in 21 years and my first time ever to meet his wife, and I was trying to unleash the Bekahrazzi slowly. Let's not overwhelm the nice people!)

Friday night's fun? Attending a football game at our high school. This marked my first ever football game at my own school. What!?!?!?!

 It was absolutely PERFECT football weather. Seriously could not have chosen a better night. And while there weren't a ton of his classmates at the game, those of us who were there had fun together! (Yes, I do remember I was not part of this class, but I knew all the people who were there, so it felt like I was part of it.)

I did muster up enough courage to ask Jerry and Kendall for a group selfie:

At halftime, I walked to our car to get more bug spray, because the night before that, I got a mosquito bite ON MY NOSE. I can't afford for that to get any bigger, so I wanted to be sure to stay bug free at the game. On my way back, the sunset was so pretty over the field:

The second half of the game was way more exciting than the first, and in the last few seconds, we won!

After the game, Jerry and Ryan went up into the press box to see one of their other really good friends (who announced the game), Peter.

It may have been a bit on the small side for a reunion (part two, which I'll show you tomorrow, was bigger) but it was a really fun night!