400TH BLOG POST!!! My story....

GOOD MORNING!! I am so excited... this is my 400th blog post today! I thought I would share my story of love and how I started my blog:

399 posts ago, I started this blog because I felt inspired. I was driving down my road on a cool sunny morning and noticing how beautiful the countryside was when I started to cry. With tears in my eyes and a very huge smile on my face I was overwhelmed with a feeling in my heart that was unfamiliar. I thought it was contentment and happiness more than I usually felt, but it was actually love.

I moved to Upstate NY for my daughter Madison to attend a charter school. We bought a house in the country with 4 acres, a barn and a pond. I wanted my children to have a country home to enjoy where we could get horses and live in a peaceful environment.

After we moved here I had a party for Madison for her birthday, we had a band and tons of teenagers! (Yes, I am crazy!) It was an awesome night, a night I will never forget. Enter... Thad! So Thad was the band "Dad" who transported all of the boys instruments and equipment. The first moment I ever saw him, he had poked his head in the my door and set down an amp and went back outside to get more things. At that first moment, when I saw Thad, I KNEW we had a "cosmic connection." I had no idea what it was, but somehow I knew we were going to be connected. I just knew.

Thad and I became friends and spent the next two years flirting! We developed an incredible friendship and every time we were together, we radiated energy that was obvious to everyone else but us.

Fast forward two years... I had asked Thad for help with a child I had taken in to my home because he had become homeless. It was no longer possible for him to stay with me so I asked Thad if he could stay with him since the child was friends with Thad's son. Thad agreed without hesitation and we spent the next few months co-parenting a kid in need that didn't technically belong to either of us. Thad was one of the most kind and giving people I had ever met. He, like me, gave freely without ever considering how it might impact himself, he is truly selfless.

One day Thad and I decided to get together with my roommate and her boyfriend to go out. We went out and did this and that but fast forward to the end of the evening when we stopped at a field on a hill in Ithaca. We laid in the hay field and looked up at the stars, my head resting on his shoulder and his arm around me and we still had no idea.... we were falling in love.

It was within the next couple of days that I was driving down my country road, with the tears in my eyes, smile on my face, full of love and life and inspiration and when I got home I started this blog. I wanted to share my inspiration with the world. I wanted EVERYONE to live with passion and fullness and to feel love and excitement. I wanted everyone to realize that you don't get a second chance, you only truly live once and it is the biggest waste of life to let it pass you by. To not take risks, to not lay in the field, to not ride the shopping cart, to not admit that you are in love with someone! (Duh, I still had no idea I was in love... my heart knew but it didn't tell my head!) So I started my blog, the very first post was about laying in the grass and watching the clouds.

It wasn't until about 2 weeks later that I realized I was in love. (duh! lol) I stood in my bedroom crying and telling my roommates that "I LOVED THAD!" I could barely contain myself, I cried and laughed and just said over and over that I couldn't believe it, I was in love with Thad. He was the reason everything looked brighter and life seemed more fun and my heart was swelling with emotion. He was the reason I couldn't pry the smile off of my face. He was the reason I felt so inspired each day! He was the motivation behind every blog post thus far... each post was something I did with Thad, or really would have loved to do with Thad!

A few days later, Thad called and asked me to lunch. At lunch he asked me if I also agreed that we had an amazing chemistry and that we just click when we are together. (Oh my god, I almost died! It was too hard to contain myself! Here I had JUST figured out that I loved the man, and here he is, like a dream come true, telling me he "like likes" me! WOW!) I asked if we could discuss it in the car because I was feeling so overwhelmed and the hostess was staring at me. So we sat in the car for quite some time and talked about the amazing connection we had and what great friends we were and that we were super attracted to one another. I WAS SO NERVOUS!!! So we agreed to go on a date that Saturday coming up. (We had gone out several times, but it was always as friends, so it never counted as a "real date.")

We spent the entire week texting, talking, facebooking, emailing non stop until the big date on Saturday. He picked me up and that was it...... we have never been apart since! Our date was so sweet, we went to dinner then to the grocery store that we raced shopping carts at. He challenged me to find the correct spelling of the word "roux" in one the cookbooks and stated that I would "win a kiss" if I had the correct spelling! Well I DID find it, I DID spell it correctly and I knew... our first kiss was only moments away. I was nervous but thrilled! Then we went to "our spot," that hill where we snuggled in the hay field a couple weeks prior. It was there that we shared our very first kiss.... the kiss that I "won" fair and square! OMG... I was so nervous, I could feel my heart pounding just a little bit more than I could feel his heart jumping through his chest! It was magical. We kissed and hugged and talked and talked more and finally he brought me home. I was completely and hopelessly in love and we decided that very night to change our facebook statuses to "in a relationship!" (Sign of the times! lol)

When Thad got home that night, he sent me a message and told me "Heather Jane Deaville, I LOVE YOU!" I didn't want him to wait til morning to hear it back so I texted him and told him I loved him too! 4 months later we were engaged to be married, 4 months after that we were married!

We are so blessed to share a true love that is exciting and beautiful, full of passion and romance, we have dedicated our lives to making one another happy and to raising our kids together. WOW... I love that man so much!! He truly in my inspiration!

Thank you for reading my story! I am so grateful to have fans, friends and family that read my blog. You ALL inspire ME each and every day! I am grateful for your feedback and support, your love and kindness, your continued encouragement and your friendships! I love you all!

Thad, thank you for being my soul mate, my best friend, my amazing husband, my co-parent, my partner, my conspirator, my hero and for always being the inspiration in my life! I love you!