Warning: Do you have a nice cup of tea and a warm blanket to cuddle with? Because this is going to be a long post; hence, why I have been avoiding it!
So here it goes...Taking you all the way back to the good ol' college days!
I just laugh going back all the way to fall 2004 when I met Naaman. Did I really fall in love with the long haired skater boy who I always saw in the dorms, but who didn't actually live there?! Well yes, yes I did.
Naaman lived in Callahan dorms the year prior to me, so when I lived there the next year he had a couple of buddies; Charlie and Shane who lived there as well. We hung out with the same group of friends and flirted here and there, but unfortunately I had a boyfriend back home and he had just gotten out of a bad relationship, so the timing wasn't right. Us girls from Hood River; Anna, Ashley, Mallory and Nancy became close friends with Charlie and Shane so we were around them alot, which included Naaman. Fast forward a couple months and we started this great friendship and finally a relationship.
All my memories from college have Naaman intertwined in them, he was with me since my days of a freshman, to the day I walked across Reser Stadium to receive my diploma! I am so blessed to have shared some of my best memories with him. Unfortunately for him, that meant moving me for dorm room to house, to condo, to apartment and so forth. Thinking back, I do feel sorry for both Naaman and my parents for all the moving I did..thats alot of packing, and first/last month + deposits (thanks dad!) My first year I lived in the dorms, the second year I lived with Stefanie & Jennifer (which from now on I will refer to them as Stefy and Mama) on Garryanna, then I moved in with MB into the cutest Condos. After that I moved into a house with Stefy, Mama, Mallory and Chelcee...I know what you are thinking, how the hell did we survive with 5 of us? Well I am not sure how we did, but it being a 3 story house and having more then 2 bathrooms probably had a lot to do with it! After that exciting year with those girls, I moved out to Philomath with Heather. I had finished college but was waiting for Naa to finish before we made the next step of our lives. And poor Naaman had to move me again, out to apartments in south town!
And yes, to answer your question of "Didn't Naaman start college before Alyssa, and she graduated before him?" I did, but Naaman took close to two years off to work and save money to finish. I am so proud of him for this, I can only imagine how hard it is to take that much time off and still go back and graduate college.
After Naaman graduated we made the hard decision of leaving Corvallis! We had grown to love Corvallis and started to consider it home! We moved to Beaverton and were lucky enough to be able to live with Ashley and Jarrod while I worked at Anthem College. That didn't last too long...for those of you who know Naaman, I bet you're surprised that I even got him to agree to move anywhere near Portland. But I had a job and we really didn't have any other options...there was no way we were moving to Hood River;)
Well fast forward a couple months, and I was on the phone with my mom late one Wednesday night in August asking if we could live with them if we came to HR for a bit. And the only reason I wasn't 100% sure she would say yes was because mom and dad already had Joe and MB as roomies (while they were remodeling their new house). That Friday night MB and Joe came with dads horse trailer (horse poop and all), and moved us yet again! Naaman got a job right away working harvest at the Thomsens Orchard, and I was just enjoying having a mini-vacation back home.
That mini-vacay turned into us moving two more times!!! After being roomies with the parents (thank you so much mom and dad for letting us do that), we moved in with MB and Joe. We owe them a million thanks and more. After being newlyweds, buying a house, completely remodeling it and making it into their love nest, the only thing they wanted to do was finally live as husband and wife in their own home, just the two of them...just the four of us, 6 if you count the puppies! Yep thats right we moved again, into their two bedroom house. Lets just say I'm sure it wasn't exactly how they envisioned it. We lived there close to a year, moving out April 2011.
April 2011 we FINALLY were able to get our stuff out of storage from when we left Corvallis, and moved into a house off of Tucker Road. So thats a very short recap of whats been going on the last 8 years, I will fill in bits and pieces through different posts.
But here is our journey through college together in a couple snap shots......
To start off I must introduce you all to the Naaman I first met....Crazy this isn't even the longest his hair was. He did do it for a great cause, Locks of Love for his cousin with cancer. But I don't know if I could handle him with long hair again!
