The Rollins Ruckus: and I thought I loved you then...

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This past Wednesday Jeb and I celebrated our 3rd Wedding Anniversary! We haven't really done any big celebrating on our anniversary in the past because I guess you could say we had more important things to worry about. On our first anniversary Reid was only 5 weeks old and I was nursing him so we went and had dinner at Paul's Place steakhouse down the road from our house and took him with us. Jeb bought me some charms for my Pandora bracelet and I got him some cowboy boots. On our second anniversary Jeb had to work so I rode along with him in his cop car and we fought crime all night long - yes, I know - so romantic. The next night we went to eat at Mickey Mantle steakhouse to celebrate and I can't remember why, but we took Reid with us...again. That was a big mistake! He was 13 months old and was EVERYWHERE! Jeb chased him around the restaurant all night long and eventually ended up taking him outside to play around the canal while I ate my anniversary dinner alone, drank my champagne, and took Jeb's part of our $130 meal home in a to-go box. So this year we made it a point to go on a date alone - just the two of us. We thought about spending the night somewhere, maybe a bed & breakfast, then decided since we had a 7 week old new baby that I was nursing and who doesn't take a bottle too well, that I it would be better just to go have dinner together. Jeb wanted to take me to my favorite place to eat - Papa Gjorgio's in Ada. More than the delicious italian food, I think it's the memories that it brings back. You see, Jeb and I used to eat there once a week when we lived together in Ada. It was always like we were out on a real date every time we ate there. We would laugh and talk and eat until we were stuffed. The same lady would always play familiar love songs on the piano and we would play "guess that song" and I would always win :) We always order the same thing - I get baked ravioli and Jeb gets chicken rebecca with an appetizer of cheese bread and tortellini soup and cheesecake to finish it off.

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We finally got the kids situated and hopped in Jeb's truck to head out - just 30 minutes past what time we said we were going to leave. And what did we talk about all the way to Ada? The kids, of course...just like the old cliche, "what did we talk about before we had kids?" Jeb asked me if I thought we were raising Reid okay or if I thought he was "out of hand." "No Jeb," I answered, "he is a very good two-year-old who occasionally has his "terrible two" moments." Then we went on to talk about how pretty LilliAnn is and how we couldn't believe that we had 2 kids in only 3 years of marriage. Then, at the restaurant there was no kid talk. It was just like one of our old college "dates." We laughed and talked about old memories and while we were eating dessert we both took a bite of cheesecake at the same time and looked in each other's eyes and smiled - Jeb looked at me and said, "we just had a romantic moment." Yes, these are our romantic moments these days. Unfortunately the piano player was no longer there so our new game was "who remembers the old Ada addresses?" Of course, I won again...his rent house with the guys was 422 N. Francis and our rent house together was 731 E. 22nd Street. After dinner we drove around Ada and looked at all of our favorite places then headed back to the kids.

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After a perfect evening together and one of the best times I've had in a really long time, as we're turing down the dirt road heading back to the lake to get our two babies I looked over at Jeb and thought to myself "and I thought I loved you then." I begin to think back over our 9 year journey as a couple and our 3 years of marriage and how all of this happened. In seventh grade Jeb and I were "boyfriend & girlfriend" for a few months. I have funny old notes that we used to write to each other and I remember him flirting with me every day in our computer class. When we broke up and I got an older, more serious boyfriend (who was not good for me) he was jealous and threw my ring out the 3rd story art class window that my new boyfriend had made for me in his wood shop class. I think it's ironic that Jeb threw a ring I had gotten from another guy "out the window." Maybe symbolism of what was to come - that he would be the one giving me a ring one day. Jeb and I were always very close friends but after the break-up with my boyfriend of four years and trying to get past the bad experience and heartache of my first love, Jeb and I found ourselves romantically attracted again the night of our junior prom - even though he was my friend Logan's prom date! That was the night he asked me to be his girlfriend and we've been together ever since. As we danced together in my white sequined prom gown, I just knew that I loved him. After experiencing our senior year of high school together, many trips to Eufaula Lake, going on a cruise and snow skiing with my family, we were what you would call a serious couple.

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He went to college at East Central University in Ada to play football and I went to OU to pursue my pre-med major, which later became nursing as I knew I wanted to start a family and be a young mother. During my senior year of college while I was in my last year of nursing school, Jeb woke me up at my parents' house in the upstairs bedroom on Christmas morning, got down on his knee and asked me to marry him. I was the happiest girl in the world. I didn't know how I would ever love him more that I did at this moment. I spent most of my college days in Ada with Jeb although I was going to school and living in Norman. I would get up really early to drive to Norman for class or would drive down to Ada late at night to hang out with Jeb. Mom and dad decided to move to Shawnee the summer before I started nurse practitioner school. I had been living at home my senior year of college because it was closer to Ada and I only had to drive to class in OKC at the health sciences center a few days a week. They practically gutted the new house the bought on 10 acres in Shawnee and after the stairs to my room were being supported by concrete blocks and I had to walk through dirt in part of the house to get to my room - I had a good excuse to move to Ada with Jeb. He was ready to get out of the rent house with all the guys, so we found a cute little brown brick rent house in Ada behind the Village and, against my mother's will, we moved in together - but hey, we were engaged. I was trying to justify it, as I wasn't sure myself if this was the best idea. Luckily, it was! That year before our wedding that Jeb and I spend together in Ada were some of the best times of my life. We depended on each other and it was just the two of us. Somewhere between the trips to Walmart together, backyard bar-b-ques after ECU football games, cooking hamburger helper, decorating our rent house, buying our first lawn mower, Busy Bee's sweet tea, buying our first aquarium, shopping from Bargain World, eating at Blue Moon, Doc's, and Abuelita's, dinner dates at Papa Gjorgio's, and taking Jaxon for evening walks at Wintersmith Park...we fell in love. The kind of love where you want to spend the rest of your life together - where you love the person so much, all of their good qualities and bad, that you can't wait to have children with them just so you can get an extra half of them...to have just a little bit more of them with each bundle of joy. The came our engagement party, engagement pictures, wedding showers - then finally - our wedding day. As we got in the limo at the end of the night and I leaned my head over on my husband's chest I thought back to that night at junior prom...and I thought I loved him then.

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As the doctor delivered Reid and Jeb saw him for the first time Jeb's first words were, "oh my gosh Kelli Ann," in a whispered voice- he was in awe. And as we held our first born son and studied his features for hours on the first night home I remember Jeb holding the baby in the crook of his arm and me laying on the other side of him enjoying our perfect family of three. And as I once again laid my head on Jeb's chest, I felt like all was right in the world. I was the happiest girl in the whole world. I laid there with both of my boys, looked at Jeb's face and thought back to when my daddy walked me down the isle of the Expo center after having to change wedding locations from my parents' house because of the record amount of rainfall and Jeb saying to me, "it doesn't matter where we get married as long as we have each other,"...and I thought I loved him then. I had this same thought multiple times as I've watched Jeb interact with our baby boy - how excited he was when Reid hit a baseball for the first time and the look in his eyes when he says, "Kelli Ann he's so smart," and then again as he held his little girl in his arms the entire night after she was born, and how particular he is about how someone's holding her or how often her diaper gets changed, and I thought it again as he looked at me and said, "she smiled at her daddy eight times today," or "she's the most gorgeous girl I've ever seen and I'm not just saying this because she's ours." I just don't understand how you can keep loving someone more and more when at certain moments of your life you never feel like you can love that person anymore than you do now. Some people believe in love at first sight. I believe that love is made. With every experience you go through together - with every kiss, every secret that just the two of you know, every milestone that your children achieve while you both are watching, with every time you look at your child and you see something that reminds you of your spouse, or with every night that you lay cuddled up to one another - your love grows. So I know that with each pre-school graduation, first home-run, first dance recital, first gray hair, each wedding anniversary, each trip together, and with every celebration, I'll look at Jeb again and think....and I thought I loved him then.

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High school pep assembly senior year

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"Biggest Flirt" yearbook pictures

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Junior Prom

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Senior Prom

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On the front porch of Jeb's rent house in Ada - Sophomore year of college

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Trip to Red River, New Mexico (one of Jeb's friends had carved our name in this tree one year earlier when they went here on a guy's trip - he spelled my name wrong!)