It's the final countdown - 24 hours to go!

It all started with a visit to the doctor. You see, Alex and I separated and divorced our former spouses around the same time. After his experience and now finding himself single raising two young children, he decided to pursue a permanent option to prevent more children in his future. Queue up Dr. Miller 🧐 Alex somehow was scheduled with me rather than his PCP to discuss a vasectomy. I could tell from the get go that he was interested in more than a consult. We definitely hit it off and I was intrigued by him as well. Then came the exam and WOWEE 🤩. I couldn’t let him leave without a guarantee of seeing him, all 😉 of him, again. Despite medical ethics I asked Alex if I could write his number down and, obviously, he agreed to the request. It’s all history from there 😘

I can’t believe you would believe part 1. Geez. It was much more innocent 😇 than that people! As you may know, Alex is a school administrator. You may also know that I have a very sassy daughter. Lilli was getting into trouble at school for talking back to teachers to the point that it escalated up the chain and led me to a meeting with the Student Services Director, Mr. Nalivaiko. When I walked into his office I was pretty wooed by the handsome man greeting me. Surprisingly I actually kept my cool. After the meeting finished I couldn’t help myself since I had noticed he was NOT wearing a ring. With my typical reckless abandon I asked Alex for his number and to my surprise he gave it to me! The rest is history.

Just kidding, it was far more lame than those other two stories. We met on a dating app - Hinge. Alex regaled me with sweet poems and loving honesty. We hit it off quickly and had our first date at a ramen place in Corvallis. Thinking back, we both agree it was love at first site, but we didn’t realize it at the time. You should ask him about palm reading, he’s pretty sure that clinched the deal 😁

Gina can be a little dense sometimes and is not always the best decision maker. Around the same time she met Alex she also had met another person. Ultimately her and Alex parted ways and they both went on to different relationships for almost a year. Thankfully and serendipitously it did not work out for either of them.

It had been about one month since Gina had ended things with the other guy (aka Voldemort) and she was feeling better low and traumatized. This evening she was sitting out on the front porch enjoying the warm summer evening with Ashley. It was about 10pm and they were talking about boys and recent life events involving them. Gina was describing to Ashley how she had been thinking about Alex for months and what a wonderful, amazing, caring man he is. Essentially talking about what an absolute idiot she was for not continuing to date him the year prior. Just moments after that conversation Gina's phone went off from a text message and she looked at Ashley with absolute shock and excitement, it was tone that she had set specifically for Alex the year prior. A tone she had not heard for almost a year but instantly knew who it was! A divine intervention was surely at hand. Gina responded in a classic way, keeping it cool. The text from Alex was super lame and professionally focused, asking about her work in suicide awareness and if she could help him on a project for his school. She saw right through this ruse and immediately started asking more personal questions, leading up to "Are you single?". The answer to that question was actually more complex than we plan to write about. Importantly, this exchange all occurred around 1030p on 8/15/21, just before Gina's birthday. Ultimately they decided to have a phone call that evening and Alex was the first to give her birthday wishes as they talked until almost 1am. A few days later they met up at Ralston Park to talk some more in person and ended that with a goodbye kiss. The next day Gina and the kids flew to Colorado for over a week. Of course they continued to talk daily while she was there. Gina returned on labor day weekend and already had made plans for herself to have a night alone on the coast at Drift Inn in Yachats. She invited Alex to join her and they had a wonderful two days together. If you ask Alex he knows the exact moment that he knew that he was certainly in love with Gina. It happened while they were rock-hounding at Toketee Klootchman beach and is memorialized in a picture framed in their room. The rest is history....