day 3: first love

My first love goes back to the time of my earliest memories. I must've been three or four when the obsession started? If you know my family, you know we have Cubs blood. It's not a fun team to cheer for (heck, the Curse will forever maim them!) but the blood runs deep and starts early. Ever heard of Mark Grace? No? He was the Cubbies first baseman and I was seriously infatuated. I would walk around telling everyone that one day he'd be mine.

Once I got older and realized he was slightly out of my age range, I set my sights on Jeff Gordon. My love for him took on a slightly different form than my one with Mark: I had a life-size cardboard cutout of Jeff in my bedroom. I also had a life-size poster above my bed. A teddy bear. A hair tie. Etc. It was bad, and I'm not going to say much more because... well... it's Jeff Gordon.

My last "celebrity" phase was Garth Brooks. I cried when he announced his retirement. Real, fat, wet tears were streaming down my face. Needless to say, it was a sadddd day in the (then) Smith house. The good news is I may get to see him do a benefit concert in Nashville in December!!

As far as "REAL" crushes, I'd have to go with (Dr.) Josh Rexing. He worked in the kennels at the veterinarian clinic where our cat and dog went. I wanted to be a vet so I'd shadow the doctors periodically. During one of those shadows, I met him and fell in loooove. I even wrote Dr. Griese (the vet) a thank you note saying "Thank you for letting me shadow you. I love Josh but don't tell him." or something like that. Mom has the actual note, maybe I can get her to scan it to me and I'll put it on here :) You can imagine my suprise when years later, I worked in those same kennels and guess who showed up as the new vet........ my face was BEET RED anytime I saw him!

With real love, I met Aaron the summer before I turned 18. I didn't have much time to fall in love before he came along ;) I'm thankful for that in more ways than one! Real love definitely isn't all the butterflies and hearts that I pictured it to be (it's so much more work!) but it's so worth it. And now, with children, I can safely say that's an entirely different kind of love too. I can't wait until I'm 85 and can look back and say what I feel now is nothing compared to what I'm feeling then (queue Brad Paisley song "Then"...)