Wow it's been over 8 months now.....

Wow it's been over 8 months since Tom  got here! Somedays it feels like he just got here and other days it feels like he's been here my whole life!!!

We are now used to  each others ways and little quirks, but the first few months were quite hard for us actually as I have lived in this house for 4 years and I used to things my way. Now I have to accommodate another person into my home and turn it into our home!! I did redo our extra bedroom and make it toms office so he spends a lot of him time in there with him studying he does and stuff. It's nice for him to have his own space and a place to get away do what he wants, as our home is only about 840 square feet big.

Our life is about to change in a huge way though as Tom is getting a job outside of Toledo where we live... This is going to be a huge change for me because I'm very close to my family and have only lived away from them for about a year one time in my life!

But on a bright note we got a letter from immigration stating we submit enough proof of our relationship and there field office is extremely backed up e don't have to do our couples interview (unless notified in the next 6 of a change). I'm was too happy when we got that letter because that interview was very intimidating to me, I don't like to take test or do job interviews for some reasons they make me sooooooo nervous!

When I think about having to pack up all our stuff and move it make e excited to be able to get rid of some of this junk we have! We don't have much stuff/junk but enough that I would be able to sell and start over at a new place. This kind of makes me happy because I'm a "get rid of" kind of person hehe...

Our goal is to move away for year or so and then to come back to Toledo for a while! I don't see the point in both of us having to be away from our parents! I feel the same way about India too though, because if we lived in India I don't see the point in living far away from Toms parents either. Wy should we both have to be away from our parents?

I just pray that everything works out according to Gods plan!!!!!

“no matter what I do, no matter what I say, I am bankrupt without your love!”

Learning how to word things

Hmmm this is something that Tom and I both have to work on! We both need to learn not to get upset with each other when we need to speak to each other and learn to make the words come out right. I have a hard time sometimes when Tom tells me something and I totally take it a different way than he met it to be.

He said to me the other day that he was going to Arkansas and I took it like he was telling me he was going and that was that! That crushed me, I want to be part of decisions he makes not told he’s going to do something, but he was actually telling me he wanted to go and he wanted to talk about what dates he could do. I took it one way and he thought he was saying it one way and it ended in both of us being upset with each other. If he would have come to me and said something like “Hey babe I really miss my sister and would like to go see her before I start working, what do you think?” I would not have had such a problem with it but he made me feel like I’m not included in this. On the flip side if I would of not gotten so upset in the beginning maybe he could of reworded what he said to me and we would have been fine.

I never would want my husband to not go see his family, I would like to be invited to go with him that’s all, but in the end I would never keep him from his family. Likewise he would never keep me from my family either, I wouldn’t want him to tell me I can’t go home and see my family if we move away.

There is a big difference in being single and being married! When you are single you come and go as you please, you don’t have to consult anyone on the decisions you make, you just decide and do what you want. When you are married you have to consider the other person, because after all when you say your vows to each other you say 2 become 1. You are not the only person who your decisions affect anymore; you have your other half to think about also. 

When one of my friends calls me and asked me if Tom and I would like to hang out with them, or go bowling or whatever I always say to them “let me ask Tom and I will get back to you”. Now because my friends understand that my husband and I are “one” they say things to me like “hey go talk to Tom and see if you guys want to go out to dinner with us tomorrow”. My friends and family understand that Tom and I are a package deal, where he goes I go and where I go he goes.

We have now been married and together for over 4 months and we are starting to really learn each other’s way and actions that we were not able to see when we were apart. Tom can just look at me and tell I’m in a bad mood, I have something to tell him, I had a great day or just about anything. I can tell you if he had a good day as soon as I walk in the house and say Hi to him. If I get hi babe and not HI BABY I MISSED YOU, I know he had a bad or sad day.  When we were apart he was very good at keeping his moods from me, but eventually I learned what to listen for to see if he was in a good or bad mood. Me on the other hand I can’t keep it inside, I can’t even get Hi out without tiers flowing down my face if I’m upset.

Memorial Day weekend was this past weekend and we had such a great weekend together! I have to say this was the best weekend so far we have had together after getting married. We had enough alone time that it was great, but we also had some time with our friends and family too. I love this man so much I can’t imagine life without him, he is my heart and soul, he is my ying to my yang. 

I will leave you with the quote Tom said to me last night “no matter what I do, no matter what I say, I am bankrupt without your love!”

we have a “list” at our house ...

It’s amazing how much stuff we have done together in such a little time! We went on vacation to Arkansas, had a wedding, we went on 2 honeymoons and celebrated my birthday…. Wow to me it feels like we have only been together in person for a few weeks or so, but it has been over 3 months since he go here!!!! 

For us living together is so different than Skyping or talking on the phone together. Don’t get me wrong we have our good and bad days just like anyone else, but it’s so nice knowing he will be home when I get home from work. I think the thing for me that puts a smile on my face is when I leave for work in the morning and we cooked late at night the night before and just left the kitchen a mess, and when I get home the whole kitchen is cleaned up! To him that is not a big thing, but to me it is a big thing, because he doesn’t realize that after I work all day I don’t want to clean the kitchen up before I have to make dinner.

I have read so many things that say if you can get through the 1^st year of marriage you can get through anything together and I believe this is true in so many ways. When you get married you are merging 2 lives into 1 life, and you have to constantly remind yourself that you are not the only person in this relationship! There is a whole other person you have to consider, and that hit me hard! I lived the past 5 years in our house alone for the most part and I have things the way I like them, then all of the sudden Tom moves in and things are not exactly how I wanted them! To tell you the truth I think my way is the best way, it was just how I did things, how I organized things and how I like things, but now that I’m married I have to consider my husband.

The best advice I can give to newly married couples is to move! Move into a new house with a fresh start, because I know if I moved into Toms house I would never 100% feel like it was our house, it would always be his house I’m living in. So I can see how Tom doesn’t feel like our house is totally his, because I have lived there for 4 years and things are how I like it. If we moved into a new house it would be more like our house than my house, even if Tom had nothing to do with the paint or anything it would still be our house.

So we have a “list” at our house and on this list we put everything we want to do in the future. The list ranges from ‘going out to dinner and not looking at the prices on the menu’ to ‘a huge European vacation’, with a variety of things between those two things. Other things on our list are like a new washing machine, fix the garage and buy a camper trailer for example. It seems like every day our “list” gets bigger and it’s now a running joke at our house to say ‘oh just add it to the list’.  

But really I’m just so happy Tom is here with me that I don’t care if we never get anything on our list done, I’m just happy that finally he’s here with me and we are together!

 

Soon I’m going to be Tom’s wife

Our long distance journey is finally going to come to an end on January 31^st at 11:40am in Detroit Michigan! I’m so excited to finally be with him in the same time zone I can’t even sleep at night now.

When I look back at the past 2 in a half years I just think what an awesome plan God had for us because we have been through so much. We have laughed, cried, been happy, been sad, fell in love, had misunderstandings but through it all we stuck by each other’s side.

Soon I’m going to be Tom’s wife; I can’t even believe this time has come! I never thought it would come to this actually; it was so hard for me to see the light at the end of the tunnel some days. Now looking back I can say that all the time and waiting was totally worth it and I wouldn’t do anything different because every mistake we made with immigration taught us a lesson.

My goal is to be able to help other people through this process in any way that Tom and I can. Some people are not as fortune as we are in being able to hire a lawyer plus pay all the fees that Immigration wants. If him and I could alleviate some of those fees by someone not having to hire a lawyer than I would know that this process and time it took would be all worth it.

We started our process in the middle of 2011 as we gathered all of our paperwork needed to submit to the USCIS. Then on January 20^th I took everything into our lawyers office, they looked over it, then needed some other things and finally sent everything out in early February. The USCIS accepted our paperwork on Feb 7^th 2012 and our journey began.  This is not the end of our journey at all, but this has definitely put a big dent in our process and I am happy so far.

We are planning on being married on paper on Feb 2^nd by our pastor at our church, but before we get married Tom wants to take me out on a proper date to the movies, out to eat and bowling or something. This is how I know this man loves me because the little things like this are important to him. I never even thought that we have actually never been on a “date” together just him and I before. We have Skyped before and ate at the same time but never in a restaurant just him and me talking alone!

We met in India in person for the first time on March 16^th 2011 and now on March 16^th 2013 we will have our wedding day in front of friends and family. Even though we will be married actually on February 2^nd I want our wedding date to be March 16^th because we are just getting married beforehand so we can get this process started a bit earlier.

I really want to thank all of our friends and family who have helped us get through this, there was many nights of crying with my friends and not understanding why this is taking so long. Now looking back it does seem like a distant memory and I think why was I crying? Why was I so upset? And Tom would say to me “why are you crying? This is nothing to cry about you big baby” (hehe)  Now I see what he was talking about because God bought us through this with flying colors and now soon we will be together…