Several things have been going on this past week. First, Mom and Dad were up last weekend for and early Thanksgiving and Mom’s Birthday, since I am currently on midnights. That was a good time as we went to Applebees. The great thing about it was that M&D got to meet Mary. Things went well enough that Mom invited her to our little Thankgiving celebration. The only new thing was that Mary met Rosie (M&D’s dog). Of course, Rose being Rose took right too Mary bringing her the infamous tennis ball. To see Mom and Dad’s impression of the weekend in detail you need to go here. Mary and I had a good time. So the first part of meet the family went pretty well.

After M&D left, there was planning for T-day here in Gaylord with Mary and here Kids. I’ve met and interacted with Mary’s oldest (Trisha) and her boyfriend (Ben), since Trisha being 21 is able to visit her mom more often then the younger ones and I’m happy to say that both are pretty cool and I get along well with them. Kaleb and Karlie (13 and 12) are pretty typical middle school/junior highers and are pretty good kids. I won’t divulge all of the things said, but I have their approval to be dating their mom. Brandon (19) was the only one I hadn’t met before Thursday. He seems pretty easy going and we got along pretty well. So I believe that the other family hurdle has been cleared. Now I’ve met all of her kids.

So with that out of the way, Mary and I have been have discussions, of the getting to know each other type. This has been going really well as we discussion our views on emotional, intellectual, and spiritual matters and find that we have a lot more in common than even we were aware of. Some of the neat things that we have discovered are what some people would call coincidences, but we chalk them up to being a “God thing” as that neither of us believe in coincidences. Mary and I first met last fall working an Emmaus weekend in Alpena. I was working on the auxiliary crew (janitorial type work) and she came over to help out in the dining room. I saw her and decided to try and talk to her while we ate lunch that day. She has told me since we started dating that she actually was checking me out as well, looking to see if I was wearing a ring. We talked a bit, but nothing seemed to come of it at the time.

It wasn’t until the recent Emmaus weekends when things began to take shape. I was the board representative on the men’s weekend and because one of her younger kids got sick they ended up staying in Boyne Falls with their father. So Mary came in and helped to work the weekend. Good thing too as we had a computer crash and needed to someone to type in the addresses of the attendees. Since she does that for a living she stepped in and since it was one of our church’s computers that crashed I was there checking on things. Well, the two of us began talking as she was typing (did I mention how talented I think she is?) and I was trying not to be too obvious, as was she as it turns out. She was helping out in the dining room again this time as well and I was taking pictures which got us talking, when she protested about getting her picture taken.

During the women’s weekend, we both began to notice that we were interested in each other. I came in to help out for the Saturday dinner (a big thing) during the weekend and we were trying to talk to each other without being obvious and doing our jobs. Well, when it came time to clean up from the dinner, the fun began as I was all over the place cleaning up with the occasional dance on a table, pulling down decorations, and making here laugh at my goofiness.

Most who know me know that I have trouble asking women out. Well here is one of those God things. A couple of months ago I was praying while driving into town for something and mentioned that since He knows my heart and that I have this trouble that I’ll need some help with getting anything started (This was before Mary and I started talking at Emmaus). As it turns out, Mary was on our local Emmaus message board and noticed that my email address and web page was there. She checked out my page and my blog then proceeded to email me, not knowing what kind of reaction she would get from sending an unsolicited email to me. Well, I was quite thrilled by the email and we began emailing back and forth. That grew to IMing and when my schedule didn’t work out for me to hang out with her and her friends (some of which I know through Emmaus) she asked if I wanted to hang out some time. I suggested my next day off which was a Monday. After we agreed to meet, we both admitted later that we both asked ourselves if we had just made a date. You can read the rest of this on the post called First Dates. We agreed that it was no coincidence that it happened that way. I’ll post more about waiting on God’s timing and praying on another post.