During the early stages of dating, we were brainstorming a few fun date ideas. I turned to my mother for advice. She told me this, "go to the Bead Fairy and make each other something, but go under the pretenses that you have to wear whatever the other person makes." The Bead Fairy is a local bead store, where basically you can go in and make custom jewelry from their thousands of beads. It sounded fun enough, so we gave it a try. I wanted to make Ryan something that he would want to wear, and something that had a lot of meaning. I decided to make a necklace...a manly necklace. He served his mission in Italy, so I started there with red, green, and white beads (the colors of the Italian flag). Then I went to the mushy girlfriend beads. I spelled out "Nat" with letter blocks, and then added a heart that said "hug me." I finished it off with a bead that said "made with love." We weren't yet to the "I love you" stage of the relationship, so I didn't want to creep him out with a whole bunch of lovey dovey stuff.... Ryan had a little bit of a harder time deciding what to make for me. He is really into Celtic culture and saw some pretty cool Celtic beads. It's quite funny because I think my mom was hoping to get us to make hideous jewelry for each other, but instead we went and made necklaces that hold so much meaning for us. I'm happy to say that Ryan has worn his necklace everyday since I gave it to him. I made it long enough for him to put under his shirt, and every time I hug him, I can feel it. :D
The next memento that I found is a fake Gerber Daisy. Back in July, I was set to reunite with my son that had been adopted 7 months earlier. It was a big, stressful, sad, exciting day for me. (yes, good & bad). I invited Ryan to come and meet Easton, hoping that it'd be something to bring us together. He's never judged me for decisions and has always been there to support me. I couldn't think of anything more special than having the love of my life meet my son. Ryan showed up that day with a huge bouquet of my favorite flower, gerber daisies, in every color. It was so beautiful and put me in such a happy mood. He gave me a card that read "I will love you until the last of these petals wilts away." Did I mention that he's a writer too? I got the best of both worlds; a man that speaks Italian AND writes love letters! Anyway, I may have looked into it a little too much because I remember thinking to myself "wait, he's going to love me until the petals wilt? That's only 2 weeks." Well, to my surprise, 2 weeks later when all of the flowers died, there was one orange daisy that was still gorgeously alive. Turns out it was a silk flower. Ryan tucked in a fake flower to accompany his card. I cried when I realized what he did. He is so sweet!
My favorite find today was our dating journal. Back when I worked at Franklin Covey, I won a sales competition and some of my prizes were a really nice journal and pen. I wanted to do something special with them. I asked Ryan if we could use it for us. He had the idea of turning it into a journal that we could both write our renditions of our relationship. We took turns writing our memories of our first date, first kiss, etc. It's an amazing thing to have! The journal even has a little folder in the back, and that's where I've tucked all of the cards and love letters that he's given me.
Inside this journal I found something that always puts a smile on my face. About a month into dating (I don't know if this is too soon in most peoples' eyes) we finally hit the "I love you stage." Except, we were so shy in telling the other. One night after watching a movie, we were both sitting on my bed talking, when the discussion became pretty serious. I told him there was a question I wanted to ask him, but was too shy to ask. In reality, I was afraid of scaring him away and pressuring him into saying anything that he wasn't ready for. But he replied by telling me that he had something that he wanted to ask me too. I decided that we should just write down our questions and exchange papers. Haha, we're so immature!! We scribbled down our questions and handed them over. Mine said something along the lines of "do you love me?". I about died when I saw what he wrote...
Hopefully some of you readers are country music fans. These are lyrics from a song called "check yes or no" by George Strait. I checked YES and handed it back, only to see that he had given the affirmative on my note as well. We laughed and enjoyed a few kisses. *Note, neither of us had actually said the words out loud yet* It was late and time to say good night, so I walked him to his car as I did every night. As we hugged goodbye, he looked me in the eyes and whispered "I love you." We hugged in the moonlight and I knew I had found "the one."
And last, but definitely not least, I came across a scrapbook that Ryan made me. Back in July, it had been decided that I would be returning to Omaha to resume Nursing school. That meant that Ryan and I would be separated for the next 9 months. He decided to make me something to help get me through the time apart. He drove out to Omaha with me and helped me move in. On our last night together, after watching "The Notebook," he gave me this scrapbook. Inside contains a love letter and scrapbooked pages of all of our pictures from the summer. One page was even dedicated to all of the movie stubs, tickets to events that we'd gone to, and fortunes that we'd gotten at dinner. I didn't even know he'd been keeping them!! He journaled on all of the pages too. By the time I'd finished reading it all, I was a blubbery, crying mess.
I have these little mementos sitting around all over the apartment to help remind me of all of the fun times that Ryan and I have had together. And also to remind me (not like I need reminding) why I love this man so dang much!
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