In honor of our Wedding Shower today I wanted to share the story of how Garrett & I began.
Garrett & I both grew up in the small township of Redford, Michigan. We went to Fisher Elementary together & Garrett was a grade below me. We knew of one another in elementary school, I knew him as the kid who lived a few blocks away from my Grandmas & he knew me as the girl who knocked him over at the school’s annual skate night who screamed “sorry” at him as I sped away. Garrett apparently hated me because of this incident & it didn’t change in Middle School. At Pierce Middle School we both played in the band together, I was in the French horn section with his best friend & Garrett was in the saxophone section. I found both him & his best friend to be annoying, so we rarely interacted.
The band is what kept us together for many years after. Once I started my Freshman year at Thurston High School, I joined the Marching Band & Garrett joined as an Eighth Grader. We still rarely interacted, but that changed once we both were at Thurston High School. Garrett was friends with some of my friends in the band, so we started hanging out in groups together. We dealt with one another in Marching Band & Honors Band. Eventually, my Sophomore year Garrett & I started to talk more using AIM & just talking about school or music (mostly Led Zeppelin).
During my Sophomore year in High school, our Marching Band went to Disney to march in the holiday parade. Garrett & I were in a giant group together who interchanged seats all the way down to Disney. The one night we slept on the bus, Garrett & I ended up being seat buddies. We both fell asleep, I ended up falling asleep on him & he fell asleep on me. However, I did not enjoy his dead weight on me & ended up tossing his head off of me, causing him to wack his head hard on the bus window (but surprisingly he did not wake up). At this point I had started to develop a crush on Garrett, we talked daily, & we spent an entire trip together in Disney. In January I finally had the courage to tell him how I felt, but little did I know he had a massive crush on another friend of ours & told me about it. He apologized & said he felt bad, but I said things were fine. Both Garrett & I went on being friends for the next few years through his first girlfriend & my first boyfriend.
Fast forward to my Senior year, the last month or so Garrett & I started hanging out a lot in classes together & outside of school or school functions. One day I was helping him with his AP Lit assignment when he sort of invited himself to come over to my house so I could help him more. I was fine with it & told him it wouldn’t be a problem. About two weeks before graduation we started hanging out outside of school, talking, & he continued coming over to my house. I was oblivious to the whole thing & just thought we were hanging out as friends, considering I was literally folding my laundry while he was there with me. After a few days, Garrett & I were messaging on Facebook when he told me that he has feelings for me, but he also had feelings for our other friend he had been crushing on for a long time. I told him that it was fine, whatever he wanted to do was up to him since I was leaving for Grand Valley State University (on the opposite side of the state) in three months while he would be in Redford for his Senior year. Garrett ended up talking to our other friend about how he had a crush on me & how he still had a crush on her while they were hanging out one day. Our friend put him in his place & told him he talked about me for most of the time they were hanging out, plus he blushed when he mentioned me (she was also just not into him).
A few days later (after my graduation), Garrett told me he wanted to see me in person to talk more. I was leaving for the weekend to go to our family camper, so I told him it would have to wait until Tuesday, June 14th since my little brothers’ birthday was the 13th & I had plans. However, Garrett could not wait so he called me on June 13th after he was out of school & asked if he could come over. I said yes, but I had to leave by a certain time to pick up my little brother from school. By the time I was off the phone with him Garrett was pretty much at my house, I had been taking the trash out when I saw him. He ran up the driveway & as I attempted to say hi, he kissed me. After that, we became inseparable the entire summer. That summer I taught Garrett what Hobo pizzas were, we spent a lot of time playing pool, playing mini golf, going to the movies & out to eat, plus lots of time getting to know one another & our families.
Once the end of August came, it was time for me to go to GVSU. We had an emotional departure, but we did the long distance thing all throughout Garrett’s senior year & my Freshman year at GVSU. We made it work with me coming home for Homecoming & Prom, holidays & weekends, plus Garrett came to visit GVSU whenever he could. After Garrett graduated, I returned back home for the summer for a job & he started working too. We saw each other whenever we could & spent as much time together since Garrett was leaving for Boston to attend Berklee College of Music in the fall. Once the summer was over, I returned to GVSU & Garrett left for Boston. It was a really hard time for us, we both were so busy & had so much going on. We only saw one another once at Thanksgiving when I went to Boston to celebrate with him. It was great to adventure around Boston & sparked us to find cool new places to adventure to. The we spent our winter break together, but we had to depart again. At some point part way through the Winter Semester I broke up with Garrett. The long distance was killing me & it was a very difficult time. It was the hardest thing I have ever done & it was very hard on the both of us.
We remained friends & I even came to visit him in Boston on my spring break still, like I had previously planned. After some time it became hard for us to do that, so we stopped talking for a short time. However, that did not last long & we both agreed we could not stop being in one another lives. We both dated another person at some point throughout our time as just friends, but then Garrett came to GVSU in the fall (my Junior year). He had told me he was coming to GVSU, since it was one of the schools I helped him apply to when he realized Berklee was too expensive & so was Boston. Little did I realize he also came to GVSU to win me back. I was dating someone at the time, but it eventually ended. Garrett & I repaired our friendship while he was at GVSU & we eventually were able to work through the struggles we had previously to repair our relationship. We continues our fun adventures, including a Road Trip to New Jersey to see our favorite band Streetlight Manifesto play their "last show" & took a day trip to New York.
Although we had some rocky moments due to distance after repairing our relationship (since he transferred to Wayne State after a semester at GVSU & I lived at GVSU full time), we were able to work through all of our struggles & have been continuing to build a stronger bond since. The summer after my Junior year we finally able to discover our love for camping & exploring the outdoors close to home when we went camping together for the first time to Traverse City & Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, as well as attending Garrett's sisters wedding on Mackinac Island.
We spent my entire Senior year at GVSU together & visited one another as much as possible. We even took a Spring Break trip to San Diego together while I looked at a law school there. Things between us were good enough that when I received my acceptance letter to UDM Law in Detroit we decided to find a place to live together. We spent months searching for a place & eventually landed on our first apartment. However, before we moved in together we decided to take our first road trip & first trip to Michigan's U.P. together, visiting Tahquamenon Falls, Whitefish Point, Picture Rocks, Cliff Diving Black Rocks in Marquette, Copper Harbor, & the Porcupine Mountains. Then in August of 2015 we moved all my stuff from the Grand Rapids area back to Metro-Detroit & move all of Garrett in together so Garrett could continue going to Wayne State & I could go to UDM Law. In September our family grew, when we added our first dog Dexter to the mix & we have been a happy family since.
I plan to release another blog about our adventures becoming dog parents & how its helped us pursue traveling & adventuring all over, as well as the fun things we have done together since/how we became engaged.
