On August 8th, Neil and I celebrated 18 years of marriage! We spent some time reflecting on how life together started and how life has changed so dramatically since then. Ours is a unique love story in the fact that we actually first met when Neil was 9 and I was 11 years old. Our families lived in Harrodsburg at the time. We met each other at our friends (they were brother and sister) house. We all played together…kickball, hide and seek and baseball. Neil was always so mean to me but somehow I always secretly liked him. He finally agreed to be my “boyfriend” under the agreement that I did not tell anyone. My family had to move away to Carrollton and coincidentally his family rented our house that we were leaving. Nine years later I ran into Neil’s sister at UK…I gathered up the courage to call him…the day we re-met we stayed up the entire night talking about everything and anything. A year later we were married and started our family with a new beagle puppy named Shooby. We graduated, me from dental school and he from dental lab school, within days from one another. The next 12 years brought major life changes each and every year…we moved a few times, we had three children; Layne, Emily, Evan. Life brought us back to Lexington where we have developed and grown our dental clinic and lab together and built that house we had talked about aspiring for during that first all night conversation. Layne is now in high school, Emily in middle school and our baby Evan is already the age that Neil and I were when we first met. This past spring our puppy, Shooby, finally found a soft spot in the fresh grass near our house as his final resting place…17 1/2 years old. My grandparents will be celebrating their 65th wedding anniversary in a few weeks. I look forward to the journey to our 65th anniversary with Neil.
