Trumpets, Marching, and Drummers, oh my!

Happy Monday, everyone! I hope you all had a lovely day today! I'm going to steal Kailly's idea from Saturday and write about how MH and I met. :)

It was 2006, the Summer after I graduated high school and I actually had a boyfriend. I was getting ready to leave for College, and, independent soul that I am, I wanted to be completely unattached to anyone and really just go experience College to the fullest! So, I broke up with my then boyfriend. It was not fun, but I knew that it would all be for the best... At least, for me. Well, I was going to College on a vocal scholarship, and I had friends who graduated before me who I would be "catching" up with, and I was so excited! Thanks to these friends, it caught wind that I play French Horn, so I received a call from the new Marching Band Drum Major for the next year, and ended up being offered scholarship money in order to participate. Not being able to turn down scholarship money, I said absolutely! But this meant that I would have to head down early for Marching Band Camp. Go ahead... Snicker now. Get it out. Feel better? Alright... Moving on. Leaving early made it easier to deal with my breakup, so I was more than happy to do so! I was going to be sharing a dorm suite with one of my best friends at the time, and she was leaving at the same time for camp, so we met in town the day that all of the Marching students were set to move in and get ready for band camp.

My family didn't linger too long, and I was excited to have all of that freedom and independence that came with being a College Freshman! Ha! College Freshman really don't realise that they're really, basically homeless... Not really, truly living here or there. In any case, I was excited and jumped right in to all of the music and learning how to march, which was something I had never done before; and it is quite honestly meant for the coordinated! I was enjoying the first few days and I was so happy to see some old friends and to be making some new ones. I even met this cute Trumpet player that I had a crush on. I remember that I was curious to see what the percussionists would be like, because any band nerd will tell you that percussionists are notoriously cocky and... Well... Loud. And there was this one especially loud and cocky one here, at my college of choice. Great. Just great. Whatever, I thought, as long as he doesn't bother me we'll be alright.

I had more and more time to socialise with the cute trumpet player, as we had sectionals together (practice times specifically for the brass instruments), and I also got to make pretty good friends with a tuba player. To my chagrin, however, I was not able to avoid the extra loud percussionist. And when we had marching practice I actually ended up in his line. I don't remember how many of us there were, but I remember that I did not want to be the center point of our line, because the center person must indicate to the rest of the line when and where to stop, go and turn. Remember, I had never done this before! Well... I was called to the center and who do you think was right next to me? Yup... The loud percussionist. He had clearly been doing this for a long time, and I knew I was gonna mess up, and I knew he was going to laugh at me. That's exactly what happened. I messed up, he laughed; then I messed up, "grrred" a little, and he laughed some more. I was not amused. :/

I kept my distance from this loud percussionist, but I had to admit, he was kinda cute. Dang. Soon, classes started and I still had a crush on the cute trumpet player. He was one year older than me and was in charge of my little Freshman socialising group. I think it was called a FIG group, but I do not remember what in the world that stood for. I had classes with the loud percussionist and my friend the tuba player. I soon came to find out that my friend the tuba player was rooming with the percussionist. I ended up hanging out with both of them to study, and started to see that the percussionist maybe wasn't all that bad after all. A few days into classes, some other friends of mine, helped to set up a date between me and the cute trumpet player. I was SO nervous. He was older than me and I had only really had two boyfriends before... I hadn't really been on dates with anyone I didn't know pretty well first. We weren't really going anywhere, but still... I was really nervous! It was a fun little date, but that night, I went to watch a move with the tuba player and the percussionist in their dorm, with my suite mate. The next day, we all ended up hanging out the whole day. I had to admit to myself that I was sort of starting to fall for the percussionist. He really was sweeter than I thought and he played his guitar for me! *SWOON* Long story short, the next day, I was in bed when the trumpet player came by and my suite mate answered, but I pretended to be asleep. I knew he was probably going to ask me out again, but I kinda was hoping that the percussionist would first. So, she turned him away and he said he would see me later. My suite mate rushed into the room and asked me what I was going to do. I told her I really liked the percussionist, and so she set about sending word along to his roommate, the tuba player. The percussionist was off campus at practice and got word from the tuba player. He called me and asked if I would like to run to dinner with him really quick while he was on a break and I said yes. So he took me to Subway, where we just sat and talked. Neither of us ate very much, but I still couldn't tell you what in the world we talked about. All I know is that we went the entire meal without him asking me to be his girlfriend. So... I just thought that maybe I had read into things too much. But as we were walking back down the hallway to my dorm, corn started to spill from the percussionist's mouth... "So... I was thinking about maybe taking our relationship to the next level." *snort laugh* "I'd like that", I replied. And that was that. Nothing romantic... I love this man, but he is a comedian and could suck the romance out of a rose.

Three years later, MH proposed to me at a Dave Matthews Band concert in Albuquerque at Journal Pavilion. 18 months later, we were married on December 19th, and 16 months later we found out we were expecting baby C, and he was born 7 days before our second anniversary! Now we have been together almost 7 years and life is beautiful. I can definitely see at least 7 more years with him. ;)