Eight years ago, I met a man who, on our third date, came to my work and brought me coffee and a mixed tape (actually a mixed cd with a mixed tape drawn on it). Aaron, you won my heart and it was on that day I knew I never wanted to live a life without you in it.

Five years ago, you, and our families played along with my crazy idea to travel all the way to Richmond Virginia (somewhere not a single one of us had ever been to) so we could get married in the gardens at the Edgar Allan Poe museum. We held hands and promised to love and respect one another until the end of our days.

Today, we celebrate another year married, another year with my best friend.

You have humored me and encouraged a life of love and spontaneity; a life of laughter and adventures. I can’t thank you enough for being a man who understood the importance of driving hours out of our way to follow a billboard to a store called the Mousehouse Cheesehaus for no other reason than, we simply wanted to see what it was all about. You are the man who took off his shoes and socks to follow me through a river because I wanted to see how deep it was and you didn’t want to be ‘out adventured’. The man who didn’t hesitate when I told him he needed to drive around the block again solely so we could drive by a house with a front window filled with bulldogs. For always remembering to hide the cookies because, well, they like cookies.

The past eight years have been filled with so many wonderful moments which seem to get better year after year. Mr. T. I love you more than anything. Thank you for being you, encouraging me to be me, and for the most amazing eight years of my life. I can’t wait to celebrate so many more!