Happy 6 Years!!!

Today Nate and I celebrate our 6th wedding anniversary!!

Nate proposed to me the day he graduated Marine Corps boot camp. March 4th, 2005. It was a big surprise! He had his mom fly down with the ring to his graduation (I was with her the whole time and had no idea she had it!) and once the ceremony was done and we ran down the bleachers to hug him for the first time in six months.. (yes boot camp is 13 weeks, but Nate broke both his legs so he had to stay in the hospital there for a few week to heal and then finish up boot camp so this made it SIX months long!) he dropped to one knee and asked me to marry him!!! Of course I said yes!!!

Nate was stationed at Camp Lejeune and I lived here with my parents. We started planning our wedding pretty fast, Nate was going to deploy in June and I wanted to get down to N.C and be with him before he left. We set our wedding date for September 17th 2005.... everything was ready. Invitations gone out, RSVP's sent back, food picked, dress ready to go, limos, bride maids, grooms men, cake, flowers... you name it... we were ready for our day!!! Until.... this little storm named Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and BAM! My husband, two weeks before our wedding day was sent to New Orleans to help with Hurricane Katrina relief.... TWO WEEKS. My mom, my mother in law and I spent hours on the phone calling the 175 guests that were coming to our wedding, trying to get them to understand that this is the Marine Corps... no we don't know when he will be home, no we don't have another date yet, YES Kassy and Nate are VERY upset..... it was a mess. I was so tired of telling the story and trying to explain to people that my heart was broken, my wedding was shattered.... now don't get me wrong. I fully understand that what happened to ME because of Katrina is NOTHING compared to what those poor people in New Orleans went through, and please don't think I didn't thank God that it was just my wedding and not my home or my family, but I was very heart broken. You know how excited you were for your wedding day?... that's how I felt and it came crashing down around me. I can think of very few times when I have cried that hard....

So I went back to work, and tried to keep going for a few weeks while Nate helped the people effected by the storm. On October 1st, my 20th Birthday Nate called with some WONDERFUL news! He was on his way home from New Orleans and we had eleven days to get married and move to North Carolina... ELEVEN days!!! We set the date for Oct 4th... a Tuesday... and my mom and my mother in law set to work and before I knew it, they had put my wedding back together! The church we wanted was booked that day, so we went with Ordiorne State Park.. the cake lady said there was no way she could get our cake done in time, but another bakery could so we had a cake, the flower lady laughed at us.... so we ran to Hannaford bought every bouquet they had with pink and yellow flowers in it, took them all apart and made our own!... my dress was ready, my Dad booked a limo.... the reception place was booked so the place we were going to have our rehearsal dinner took us for the reception!! Some how it all came together!! Tuesday morning October 4th 2005 at 11am, in front of 60 out our original 175 guests... I walked down the isle to marry Nate! It's still a blur in my mind because it was so thrown together, we didn't get to dance because our reception was just a little lunch, we didn't have a rehearsal so I walked down the isle on the wrong side of my Dad!!, we had an iPod playing the wedding march... it was for sure not my dream wedding... but Nate is my dream and in the end my dream came true.

Happy 6th Wedding Anniversary my love... we have survived six months of boot camp, a postponed wedding, a six month deployment on a MEU, a seven month deployment to Iraq (with four months together in between them), we survived living in Jacksonville North Carolina, the ups and downs of Military life, we bought our first house... and he we are... no matter what comes our way I know we got it :)