Our Backstory Part 1

    Am late to the how we met/married party largely because I keep talking myself out of trying to write it down ~ so long ago now I worry this is either going to be pages and pages or two paragraphs.

    Some backstory to Our Backstory: Someone or something was clearly leading me to PENN. Despite moving to the Mid-Atlantic (MD & VA) when I was five I have always considered myself a New Englander; I love the food, the geography, the spirit ~ everything! So 80% of the colleges I was planning on applying to were up there, a couple in VA where I was living and PENN. Which is Ivy League and in the city and everything I thought I didn't want ~ and one of the top nursing programs in the country.  I then as I do now often underestimate myself but some small part of me was curious and did not want to ten years later be curious if I could have gotten in if I had but tried. 

    Given the cost it was recommended to me that I apply Early Decision ~ and I did and it was the only school I ultimately applied to because they accepted me.  So I went to PENN where in the Spring of my freshman year I met Charlie.

    Having come from a wonderful parish with a great Youth Group one of the things I did at PENN was find the Newman Center (Catholic Student Center) and joined in; I became an Extra-ordinary Minister of the Eucharist, joined the Adoration Schedule, etc and in the Spring found out that I had been nominated to the Student Council as head of the Liturgy Committee.  I pointed out that as a freshman I thought I was too young to then President, he told me to run anyway since I might not win ~ turns out I was running unopposed and won.  So that March after a joint council meeting (outgoing and incoming) up walks this nice guy (Charlie) who simultaneously tells me it will be fine because there was a structure in place and I must have looked in shock and then threw me for a loop by asking when I wanted to schedule our first meeting. (Charlie claims we had met before but I have no memory of this and am the one writing this so there.)

   So I took a deep breath, scheduled a committee meeting and discovered exactly how over my head I was when at the meeting I learned that the committee was rising Sophomore me and 4 PhD students. Eep!

to be continued