It’s come to my attention that I never told you the “story of us.” Let’s fix that…

During my freshman year of college, I was in the College of Textiles at NC State. As is tradition, a large group of us chartered a bus and headed down to Clemson to cheer on the Wolfpack in the Textile Bowl. After breakfast with Clemson’s textiles folks, we headed for Memorial Stadium (aka Death Valley). Well I must have just been way too eager, because I stepped off a curb wrong and turned my ankle in a super nasty sort of way.

As I was standing there, hands on my knees, unable to move, with tears streaming down my face, this dark, handsome, suave guy walks up and offers his help. He had worked around EMTs and fire stations all his life, and knew what to do. He took carried me to the nurse’s station, where they diagnosed me with a severe sprain and gave me a wrap and some ice. Too excited (about the game and this new knight-in-shining-armor I had just met) to actually go to the ER, I decided to stick it out. And then we looked at our tickets…row MM. The very top of DEATH VALLEY! Death. Valley.

That’s when Charles “backpacked” me (as he affectionately puts it) up the stairs and we enjoyed the rest of the game, even though State lost. I was still the naive freshman too enthralled with this fifth-year senior to care at all about the pain in my ankle. [Side note: it was also my 19th birthday.] So after the game, I was happily hopping down the stairs until I landed wrong…I welled up with tears and buried my face into Charles’ chest and just cried. He carried me the rest of the way.

We sat together on the 5 hour bus ride back to Raleigh and covered just about every subject possible. Charles found out on the way back that his roommates were having a party, so he invited me and a friend to go when we got back. The next day, I called Charles to take me to urgent care to get my ankle checked out, which was now about the size of a softball and purple. They did x-rays and determined I just had a severe sprain and I found myself using crutches for the next 2 weeks. By the time I was off crutches, Charles and I were officially dating. 5 years later he asked me to marry him, and by our 6th anniversary we were married.

Why am I telling you this? It’s related, I promise. Tomorrow I’ll be having surgery to reconstruct that ankle that I sprained almost 7 years ago. Turns out that I completely ruptured a ligament, and it finally got bad enough for me to have it checked out. The surgery should be pretty simple…then I will be out of work and hopped up on painkillers for a few days. I’ll get a cast after the swelling goes down, then after about a month, I’ll get a walking boot. Within 3-4 months, I will hopefully have no pain walking and a strong, stable ankle for the first time in a long time.

So, with that, I will be taking a brief hiatus from the blog while I am heeling. Not too long–maybe a week or so. I have a few posts planned in the meantime, so hopefully you won’t miss me too much! ;)

{Engagement & Wedding photography by Brett & Jessica}