July twenty-ninth.

There are two significant events that have occurred on July 29th for Kyle and I.  They might sound silly, but they were very important to us at the time.  The date will never roll around with me thinking about them.

July 29, 2006.  Kyle picked me up in Gatlinburg, TN after I had been gone for two months working as a missionary in the Smokies.  That was a long, hard, blessed summer.  Reading this old post  reminds me of just how challenging it was, made more challenging by my excitement about getting married at the end of it!

Finally, July 29th came.  My man was on the doorstep of that mountain cabin and he was taking me home!  Two weeks after he picked me up, we were married in Springfield, IL.

Fast forward to July 29, 2010.  After being married and living in southern Illinois for four years, Kyle finished his very last day working for the Southern Illinois Miners.  In May of 2010, we moved all our belongings to Saint Louis, MO, where I was beginning graduate school.  Kyle stayed with his parents IL for two months to keep working until he started law school in August.  Again, we had been living apart all summer, and on July 29th we were together again!  That was another hard summer, and one I would very much like to never repeat.

This July 29th is not nearly as eventful.  I just finished my last summer of classes (291 days till graduation!), and Kyle is working until 5 (working, by the way, for a firm he loves).  All in all it has been a pretty great, normal day.  Sometimes the ordinary is extraordinary.