Susan and I met in the summer of 2001 at Camp Andrew Jackson in Mckee, KY. She was finishing up a year of volunteering with the Christian Appalachian Project and I was spending the summer working at camp. Susan spent a total of two weeks at camp, one in late June and one in late July, so we didn’t have a lot of time to get to know each other.

In early August, I headed back to Cincinnati and Susan went back to the Des Moines/Minneapolis area. We spent the next nine months communicating with letters, phone calls, and emails and would see each other about every six weeks, whenever I had a break from school.

In May of 2002 Susan moved to Cincinnati to work on her Masters in School Counseling at Xavier University. The next year was by far the most normal in our relationship. We were both going to school and working.

I graduated in May of 2003 and spent a few months looking for a job. In September I ended up working at Xavier as a Programmer/Analyst. My employment couldn’t have come at a more convenient time because in October we had a son, Andrew.

Susan and I got engaged the following December and quickly planned our wedding for the following May (May 29, 2004, to be exact). After we married we bought a house in Westwood, which we moved into in August. In October of 2004 we learned that Susan was pregnant again, expecting in June 2005. Susan finished her Masters in School Counseling in May 2005 and Mari was born the next month.

Things have slown down a bit since then. 20 months after Mari was born, Elliot came along. Since then we have been humming along — working, going to school, playing the the backyard and trying to get a bedtime routine locked down.

That should have you pretty much caught up. For more updates, check out our blog.