It’s hard to believe that 10 years ago today I became Mrs. Leslie Paladino.  These have been the best years of my life and I so look forward to the next 50+ with my sweet, loving Michael.  God could not have blessed me with a more perfect man and I am so thankful for His wisdom and grace that brought us together.       

Since our blog doesn’t go back that far I’ll reminisce a little about our relationship.  We met sophomore year at the U of A in an Accounting II group.  We were just friends and parted ways with an occasional hello in the hallway.  Senior year we were thrown together again in a class called Death and Dying (yes, that’s seriously what it was about).  His was the only familiar face in the class of 200 so we gratefully sat together for the semester and became friends.  Our last semester we slowly started flirting and hanging out more.  It was our friend, Michelle, who finally brought us together when she asked “so, do you think there could be some interest there?”  The answer from both of us was yes and a few weeks later we were officially dating.  Michael actually thought we were dating for 2 weeks before our first official date but I kindly corrected him on that misconception.  Just for the record, when you start out as friends you have to make a distinction between hanging out and dating.  I’m not sure when it happened for him but I fell in love soon after when we took a class trip to Belize.  I remember telling one of my friends after the trip that Michael was definitely the man I wanted to marry. 

A year and half later we went out to eat at our favorite restaurant and ended the night with dessert at James at the Mill.  After dessert we walked down to the fish pond and there was a bouquet of roses and an envelope with my name waiting.  Michael got very lucky because I was sick that night and completely clueless to what was going on until I literally read my name on the envelope.  Seriously Leslie?!  The roses didn’t even tip me off.  The note said to turn around and there was my Michael down on one knee.  After he proposed we both couldn’t remember if I actually said yes what with all the crying, laughing and hugging.  But I think he got the idea.  We had a Christmas wedding 6 months later at Central United Methodist in Fayetteville.  Such sweet memories and so many more sweet memories to make.  All my love to you Michael John Paladino.
  

(Please forgive the quality of these pictures.  They’re old scans of our proof book because I was too lazy to get out the album and make better scans.)

Yep, that’s us leading a conga line at the reception.  :)