How does this happen?

Almost 9 years ago I met and married a wonderful man named John Clayton. We had known each other almost 1 and a half years before we got married. He had gone to school and was working at a wonderful job at Motorola as an electrical engineer. He was living in a home he owned in Scottsdale with roommates, who of course were kicked out once he decided it was finally time for a more permanent "female" roommate. In the time that we knew each other before getting married, we talked a lot, did many things together, and became really good friends.

Now I know that you don't know everything about a person before you get married, but through talking with John I learned many things about him. Things like he is not into sports (I was much more than he was at the time), he loves working with his hands...building things of metal, wood, whatever scraps or old non working machines he could find, he was very smart and he could fix anything. Yes, he was a nerd and had a backyard full of junk to prove it, but he was also a hopeless romantic who loved singing, hiking, camping, mountain biking, and many other great activities. I had seen him interact with children and knew he would make a great father. And, another very important thing to me, I knew he was not an animal lover. He had said that sometime he might like having a dog again and since I am not an animal person at all we talked about that and decided that someday once we had children who were old enough to care for it, we would get a dog. It would be an outdoor only dog and the only pet we would have other than maybe the occasional goldfish or hamster that kids always want. OK, great. I thought that was settled. So, after only a few short years, here is the question I am asking myself. How have we ended up living on a farm with many stinky animals and the realization hitting me that I am married to a man who has become a "redneck cowboy"? This is a term he was referred to by his good friend Jim...also a redneck cowboy...just a few days ago after John had been roping with him as well as doing a few other animal farmer/cowboy type activities which left his clothes dirty and bloody, and one horse and two sheep less in the backyard and a stinky smelling lamb stew cooking in our crock pot. (No, luckily he did not eat the poor horse!) I actually woke up in the middle of the night with sick kids and thought that someone had diarrhea...nope, just John's lunch cooking in the crock pot-Yummy!

Here are the shots of John's first attempts at roping!

So, obviously I did not know all there was to know about this wonderful man before I married him. Actually, I think that was a very good thing! But, on this Valentine's Day I am still thankful that he is mine and I am his. I love my nerdy, singing, romantic, great daddy, redneck cowboy! (Although I don't think I will ever get used to these animals and all that comes with them--yuck!)