But just look at us holding on

20

I arrived home for a weekend visit in March of 1993, lugging baskets of laundry and an empty gas tank.  After hugging my parents and retelling great stories about college and senior level design classes, I dropped a bombshell....

"Oh, by the way, [Mr. Neo] and I were thinking that getting married at Thanksgiving this year would be our best option.  He'll be nearing the end of SWOS and being assigned to a ship after the New Year, so knowing where and when to plan for a wedding after that would be hard..."

Yeah, that didn't go over so well with my parents.  They were concerned that we were too young (22) and that I had at least one more semester after the proposed wedding date.  Additionally, I was asking to plan a wedding in about six months - in New Orleans.  This is a city that prides itself on parties and usually requires a year or more advanced notice for weddings.

But, somehow, I sold the parental units on the idea and my mother - who really should be sainted for this - headed the planning, calling, errand running, and dress beading while I returned to my studies at Louisiana Tech.  My father offered the buy-out option several times.  A flat sum of money to disappear and elope.  Oh, he was just joking - I think.

And, 20 years ago on this date, we celebrated the Sacrament of Marriage.  I can say without a doubt that we were young, really stupid and very naive.  I can also say that we understand so much more about this Sacrament now than we even imagined those many years ago.  There are days we're still really stupid and very naive, though :)

I loved his dress uniform!

My grandmother was convinced we'd picked our church just because she'd been married there.  I never revealed the truth...that I'd opened the phone book that weekend in March and started calling Catholic churches in the city.  I started with St. Ann's and finally found an opening when I reached St. John the Baptist!  I'm going with "it was God's plan all along."

During our first six months of marriage, I had to learn five new phone numbers and lived in three different states.  We were married five years, I think, before we ever spent an anniversary in the same zip code.  I have other military friends who laugh with me about that, understanding the crazy that is military life.  Shortly before our fifth anniversary, Mr. Neoclassic left the military to design ships for the military.  He loved the work, but not the being away from home part.  Not long after that, we welcomed Classic Rock.

Thanks to our church, we have a record of our family's growth over the last fifteen years!  About every four or five years, they create a pictorial directory for the parish.  So here's the timeline....

 1999, Classic Rock in his jammies.

2003, Zydeco's present and we learn to continually laugh - or we'd just cry!

2007, Jazz is present and we lose the man-on-man defense approach!

2012, Irish Jig rocks our whole world, but we still laugh continually and together!

Thanks J for twenty awesome, always interesting, sometimes really hard, always wacky, enlightening years.  Oh, and for the four hilarious peeps.  Let's hold out for another twenty, okay???

Today's blog post title from Shania Twain's You're Still The One.

Explanation of SWOS here