our first date -- 2 years ago

jerry and i "met" on match.com back in january of 2005. he was in the process of a divorce, so we wouldn't be dating until his divorce was final. i felt safe giving him the promise that i would go out w/ him when his divorce was final, thinking that it would be several months before it was finalized.

well, it was much quicker than i figured -- finalized on march 14, 2005. our first plans were to go out on easter weekend. i worked the night shift on both friday and saturday night, so he suggested sunday evening for going out (our first date was 3/27/2005. i put him in charge of deciding what we were going to do on our date.

my family all got together for easter dinner, but it was rather a subdued occassion because little raven was sick. she had been to the emergency room late the night before, but they sent her home and said she probably just had the flu and to give her lots of liquids. she still wasn't feeling well at our get-together and was perfectly content to crawl up in memaw's lap and snuggle.

with her not feeling well and me tired out -- it wasn't long before we were both sacked out on the couch. i should know better than to ever leave my camera lying around w/ my family present, but this wasn't too bad of a picture to have.


later that afternoon, raven went back to the emergency room. this time she was admitted and her parents were told she had rotovirus. that's like the flu from hell. if you've never experienced, thank your lucky stars!

i was to meet jerry at 6 that evening. i thought about canceling and going to the hospital to spend the evening w/ raven and her parents, but summer encouraged me to go on w/ my plans. there was nothing i could do at the hospital to make raven or them feel better.

jerry and i met at riverton, where i parked my car, and then went on to buffalo run casino in miami, oklahoma. i felt like i already knew him when we went out because we had chatted on the computer and talked on the phone so much.

we played video poker for a while and then decided to go to town to montana mike's to get something to eat. we had no more than sat down for our meal when jerry's phone rang. it was his son, jacob, wanting to know where we were. jerry explained that we were getting something to eat -- and then found out that jacob and amanda were at the casino looking for us. they had decided to "crash" out first date!

we finished our meal and then headed back out to the casino for a few hours more play and to meet jacob and amanda. we said our hellos and chatted a bit and then moved on to our own thing.

i told my kids about jacob and amanda "crashing" our first date, and i could tell summer was really irritated. i'm sure she was upset because jacob got to see me before she got to see jerry.

so, amazingly, summer and lucas decided to eat out at olive garden the next week -- just so happened to be the evening that jerry and i were going out to dinner there. lucas was manipulated into it and didn't realize it until they were leaving, but summer had chosen to go there in the hopes of "bumping into us"!

well, we didn't arrive until about 10 minutes after they left. i guess summer didn't realize that we were going to go walk around the mall a while before going out to dinner! if we had done this to our kids -- they would've accused us of spying on them! but i guess it's perfectly fine when your parents are dating to spy on them!

obviously the family has all met now and most of them have spent lots of time together. we feel really fortunate that my kids and jacob's family all get along great and enjoy spending time together -- as we so much enjoy spending time w/ all of them.

i guess you know where we'll be on the night of our "2nd anniversary" -- back to buffalo run casino and montana mike's for dinner. who knows -- maybe this time we'll win some big money!!!