but not before a good ol’ testing.  first let me start by clearing something up.  mr. wilson is in fact mr. williams.  wilson started as a joke early in our relationship when i accidentally introduced eric by the wrong name and then took it upon myself to make it his blog alias (and probably will continue to do so!)  i realized i had definitely confused some of my far away family when we started receiving mail for the “wilsons”.  so there you go. williams. williams. williams:)  now onto that test that i mentioned…

so the saturday night before the wedding, the three of us were snuggled up in the living room catching up on parks and recreation when our power suddenly went out.  weird but not alarming.  that stuff happens.  until we looked outside and each of our neighbors Christmas lights were twinkling as usual.  after assuring mr. wilson that i had indeed paid the power bill:), he went out to the garage to check the breaker box.  ”babe, get your phone. something is on fire.” he called.  ”shut up” i responded.  it took only a second to realize that he was serious.  the garage smelled horrible with a burning electrical smell.  there was no visible fire but for all we knew wires could have been a blaze inside the walls.  not sure if that is really possible.  we are not the handiest people around.  so a few minutes after a fumbling call to 911 two fire trucks arrived.  let me apologize again to all our neighbors for the rude awakening late that night.  after explaining to the firemen what was going on they determined that our main breaker had blown.  they kept telling us that this was a good thing.  that it behaved the way it was intended.  if we had gone to bed and the power hadn’t gone out to alarm us…well, i don’t want to think about it.  long story a little less long, we were without power and would be until we could get it inspected, have an electrician fix the problem, have it inspected again, and finally have the power company turn the power back on.  thank goodness for ayden’s wonderful grandparents, my surrogate parents, brad and elaine for letting us invade their home late that night and for the next 3 days.  i seriously would have lost my marbles without them!

the damage.  damn lucky to only have to replace the panel and breakers.

now onto the fun stuff.  so who says you can’t meet a good man in a bar?  that’s exactly where i met mr. wilson.  a few years ago, on one of the rare nights that i ventured out, i went to visit a dear friend of mine who was tending bar.  as i sat in the corner (being as anti-social as possible) nursing my beer i spied the most handsome guy across the room.  turned out it was his dad’s bar.  also turned out that he had a girlfriend. ugh.  we were introduced.  i was bummed.  and although he had no idea, i knew that it was meant to be.  not that day.  not three months from then.  but one day.

that “one day” came close to a year later.  both single, we met up with mutual friends on halloween.  and from that night, just like i knew…it was meant to be.

we had talked for the last year about getting married.  i tried to talk him into the court house.  while neither of us wanted a big to-do, i knew he wanted something a little more than that.  once we decided we wanted to do it before Christmas, it just kind of dawned on us that the perfect location was basically in out backyard.  we went to visit our friends at Song Hill Reserve and booked the date that day.  on a rainy tuesday afternoon, with no power in our home, i got to marry the man of my dreams.  in front of our parents, with ayden right beside us, we had passed our test.  beyond happy that my mutt family is now official.

just wanted to include a few pictures that my wonderful friend kina was kind enough to snap for us.  i am an incredibly uncooperative subject.  anyone who knows me, knows how uncomfortable i am in front of the camera.  so she really had her work cut out for her.

ayden is a huge fan of the group hug. this was definitely the best one yet.