Happy Anniversary to Us!

Today is our 10th anniversary; our story has been 15 years in the making ... more than half our lives.

I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to share a little bit of our history, and I've been thinking about this posting for weeks. But what I've discovered is there is just way too much to share in one sitting (or in my case, standing). So for the next few weeks, I'd like to reminisce on our lives together. Not just me and Michael, but all of our friends and family as well who have helped shape the past 15 years.

Michael and I met in 1992, the summer before our Freshman year of high school. For some reason, I remember exactly what I was thinking the first time I saw him. It's permanently embedded in my memory, in a pretty blue color and very straight lines. Oh wait, I know why.


August 24, 1992. (Click the image to read, I'm very embarrassed but you are worth it, my faithful blog readers). I, in all of my 14-year old dramatic female angst, used to write journal entries on fancy binder paper from time to time, and yep - I still have a few. You just can't, like, make this stuff up. It's too rad. On an unrelated note, "Melissa" came to our wedding ... with her newborn baby. Oh, also for anyone who doesn't know - Michael went by Ryan (his middle name) when we met.

Michael (Ryan) and I grew up and dated in a time long before cel phones, email, or instant messaging (omg!). We lived far enough apart in those days to be "long distance", so we could rarely talk by phone because we couldn't afford the phone bill (you know, after we were old enough to have a job and such). So we wrote letters, all the time, and mailed them to each other. We spent hours drawing cute little pictures and telling each other how we were so mature, and how we would one day get married and live happily ever after. So because I love you all so much, and because I got his permission, here's a little tidbit from my future husband-to-be, dated August, 31 1993.


The memories we've created on paper are priceless to us. And I think I will share a few more with you over the next few weeks, along with some photos we've spent the past week scanning and cropping. Unfortunately, the first ten years of our relationship happened Before we had a Digital Camera (or what I call "B.D.C."). But much of the last five years has been documented on our gallery.

I don't know if this makes us narcissistic, to share so much that perhaps people don't really care about, but it seems we've just always been an open book, and it gives us great honor and pleasure to share our lives, and our home, with the people we love. So I hope you don't mind if I continue to document our past as well as our present and future. In any case, it's great for us to reminisce for the benefit of posterity. And it's easier than writing on binder paper.

*** You may want to take a break, go to the bathroom, get something to drink, this is a lot of stuff ***

To begin, we've posted 3 videos on YouTube that we made for our wedding. Keep in mind we shot these in 1997 - which meant filming actual photographs with a camera the size of a small coffee table, and manually recording them to the beat of our favorite songs of the time. In other words, it took days, and occasionally the pictures would fall down while we were filming but we were too tired and stressed out to care.

Part One is all of our baby and childhood photos, up until our first date at Freshman Homecoming, 1992. Parts Two and Three chronicle our dating years and high school life, up until our wedding photos. Caution: these videos are long and may be perceived as totally boring to anyone besides ourselves. Somehow we got away with showing all 15 minutes worth at our rehearsal dinner and at the wedding. I guess our obsession with sharing photos and personal information came long before michaelandsharon.com.

I've also posted pictures from our wedding and the preceding events on our gallery. If you promise to come back soon, I've got hundreds more photos of our friends and families to share, along with many more memories. It will just take some time, it's my anniversary, you know? We're headed out of town tomorrow for the weekend.

Anyway, it's been an awesome walk down memory lane at the Matthew house this week. We've realized how blessed we are to have all of you in our lives, many of you for the past 15 years or longer.

So Happy Anniversary, to all of us!


PS: It would mean the world to me if you would leave a comment to let us know you stopped by. You can even just say "present" or "was here" :) .