Sean saw my photograph online in February of 2001 and sent me a note. He explained he needed a mascot for his olympic knitting team, and wondered if I knew any good looking blondes living in the Northwest who'd be interested.

Well, he made me laugh, and unlike most of the emails I get from strangers, he meant to. I had a good feeling about him, and it got better after I saw his picture! There was something about his smile that just made me feel good inside. So I decided to respond. We spent the day sending notes back and forth, finding that in addition to having a lot in common, we were both remarkably silly. We had an instant rapport with each other, it was almost eerie.

The next day, I got an email from him (with more pictures!) telling me he was shipping out for the desert, but that he would probably be able to email me once he got settled in there. So I waited.

And waited. And waited. And waited some more.

2 months later, I had pretty much given up hope that I'd ever hear from him again. I thought about Sean a lot, but in reality we'd only "talked" for a day and I figured he was lost and gone forever! It was a pretty rough time in my life otherwise, and things kind of reached a nadir on 12 April. I kept telling my friends that things were going to change on friday 13 April. Traditionally, friday the 13ths are lucky days in my life, and the course of my life had changed dramatically on the last one 6 months before. So I was expecting something to happen. And at 9:40 am, it did!

I checked my email, and lo and behold, I had a letter from Sean. He told me he had just gotten back from Kuwait and had been thinking about me, but unable to send email. And he figured I had totally forgotten about him by then, but he thought he'd check in on me anyhow.

Then I didn't hear from him. A week went by, and I finally sent an email asking if it was my breath? He wrote back and said he'd been busy, etc... and he'd be in touch. It sounded suspiciously like a brush off, especially when he then wasn't in touch.

Another week went by, and I almost just left it at that, thinking that I'd obviously said something wrong, and I didn't want to have to chase him around. I was pretty disheartened by his apparent loss of interest, and started planning a weekend getaway to Los Angeles for the beginning of May just to give me something to look forward to, and to have a break from all that life had thrown at me in the past 6 months. I kept trying to put Sean out of my head, but I couldn't. I finally decided I'd send one more email, and that'd be his last chance.

So I fired off a one-liner, and figured that would be the end. But it was just the beginning! He wrote back immediately and asked if he could call me that night. I said sure, and that was that. He called and basically told me that he'd been so sure he'd made a fool out of himself on the phone with me that he'd been too embarassed to pursue me. Once I'd sent that second email, he was convinced that maybe I was still interested after all. Anyhow, by the time we got off the phone, he'd decided to meet me on my weekend trip to Los Angeles on 3 May. He booked a room in the same hotel as me, and got a flight in from North Carolina that landed about the same time as mine from Seattle.

It was an amazing wonderful weekend that totally changed our lives (obviously). Within 48 hours, I was absolutely certain that I was falling in love hard and that wanted to spend the rest of my life with this man. Of course, I didn't tell him that, but it turned out he experienced the same feelings. The night before we left, we went for an incredibly romantic dinner at The Ivy, and I'll forever remember how happy I was, sitting across the table with Sean smiling at me, just knowing in my heart that I was going to be his wife one day.

We couldn't figure out how it was going to work out with him committed to going to England and me committed to my life in Seattle, but we decided if it was meant to be, the pieces would fall into place, and they pretty much have. The next year and a half will be difficult with all the separation we'll have to endure, but we both know that we have the rest of our lives to be together. This time apart is just making appreciate what we have so much more. We're both certain that because of it, we'll never take each other for granted when we do get to be together full-time. We both know how blessed we are to have found each other.