Last month when I did the “What posts do you want to see on the blog in June” survey, most of you selected the “More About Us (Travis & Melanie)” topic. And after gathering some suggestions on what kind of things you wanted to learn in this area, this post was born and I decided to post it on June 13th, since we “officially” got together for the long haul on October 13th, 2007. Which means that as of today, we’ve been together for four years and eight months, and as of last week, we’ve been best friends for eight years.

Memorial Day 2004 – On Memorial Day weekend we always went to the same campground, Shangri-la Campround, in Milton, Pennsylvania. In 2004, I decided to take one of my best friends, Samantha, along with. At the time we were both 15, and pretty boy crazy like any fifteen year old girl would be. On one of our walks around the campground, I spotted a group of boys fishing at the gazebo, so I started yelling things to them. (Don’t ask me what, because I honestly don’t remember) Thru this yelling we actually made friends with the group of boys who were all 13. Their names were Anson, Josh, Colby and Adam and they all went to the same school together in a nearby town. Samantha and I ended up hanging out with these boys all weekend and before we left the campground we exchanged AOL Instant Messenger screen names. Remember those days? I didn’t know it then, but that little gesture of exchanging screen names changed my life forever.

Tuesday, June 1, 2004 – We always had off of school on Monday for Memorial Day, so on Tuesday, June 1st we went back to school after the holiday weekend. This Tuesday was about to change my life. When I got home from school on this day, I did what I always did. I got home, went on the computer and signed into AOL. But today was different. A little while after being signed on, someone I’ve never talked to or met before IM’ed me. I want to say that it was the screen name DrummerBoy182 or something along those lines (and mine at that time might have been xothisromance, but I really don’t remember what either of ours were, we both had a habit of changing our screen names 29382938 times). His name was Travis and he was 13. Turns out that those four boys I met at the campground told Travis about me on the bus ride home, and he got my screen name off of them.

We hit it off right away and talked for hours every single day, we just instantly became best friends. We even talked on the phone quite a few times. Eventually though, we both realized that we liked each other, a lot. We both knew there was something there, even though we were only 15 & 13.

(December 11, 2005 – Random conversation found with Travis from my old TMobile Sidekick)

(December 11, 2005 – Zoomed In – Excuse Travis’ language.)

Time to Meet: January 7, 2006 – After talking to each other every single day, online, we decided to meet. The plan was that I was going to head to my sisters house, and then she and I were going to drive the 1+ hour drive to Travis’ Mom’s house to pick him up for the day. You think I’d be nervous as hell to meet him, but I wasn’t. I was really excited and anxious, which is completely unlike me. Usually I was terrified to do something like this. We picked him up and met his Mom and then drove off to go to my sister’s house to hangout. I instantly felt like I knew him for my entire life, I just felt so comfortable around him. We only got to hang out for about two hours before had to take him home. And my sister did take a picture of us together, but we never were able to find it again after that day. No, we did not kiss that day. :P

I managed to find this little snippet off of one of Travis’ old Xanga’s (remember those days? ha) from the day we met. I haven’t seen this since 2006 so it was quite interesting. (I did some editing and some grammar checks, he was only 14.)

(sometime in 2006)

2006 & Becoming a licensed driver – As soon as I got a car and my license I was driving the hour long drive up to see Travis whenever I got the chance. We were both still in high school at the time, as well. So imagine the drama. Travis was a “stud” in his high school, so a lot of the girls from his school were not very happy that I was around and stealing the spotlight ;) This did cause a lot of problems in our relationship though which caused a lot of break-ups and then getting back together, to break-up a week later. Whenever we broke up, I would go out and party and even took part in drug usage. We all make bad decisions when we are 17.

Summer of 2007 – We broke up “for good”, but maintained a great friendship until another girl came along. That summer, Travis got a new girlfriend and she made him promise her, that he would no longer talk to me. He did and I was heartbroken. Their relationship only last a week, but we didn’t start talking again until October 2007. During the summer months and the fall, I got more into drugs – pills & marijuana. This was a pretty dark time in my life.

October 13, 2007 – Travis entered my life again. He randomly IM’ed me and apologized for everything. (He never had a cell phone, so we couldn’t text). The conversation turned into us both wanting to be together. (Ages: 18 and 16) So, I just flat out said to him, If you want to be with me, then be with me. We’ve been together ever since. However, at the time Travis didn’t really know about how heavy the drug use had become.

December 2007 – Travis made me choose, the drugs or him. I chose him. And I’ve been clean since January 2008.

(my bedroom at my parent’s house, early 2008)

(my bedroom at my parent’s house, early 2008)

(the second time Travis came camping with me)

2008 – 2009 – During this time I lived out of a suitcase, literally. I was going to college and working at Dairy Queen, but I never slept in the same bed for more than two nights. I was either at Travis’ Dads, or at his Mom’s or we were both at my parent’s house. That time of my life was just kind of a blur, it was school, work, Travis, driving, packing, unpacking… etc.

(This was our set-up in Travis’ Mom’s basement, glamorous…)

(Christmas 2008)

(Christmas 2008)

(new years eve 2008/2009)

(family vacation to myrtle beach, south carolina – july 2009)

August 3, 2009 – Travis was about to start school in Lancaster and my parent’s house was a lot closer to his school then his parent’s houses so we decided that he was going to move in. My brother was pretty excited about this, because it was like having a brother he never had, haha.

(February 2010 – We got gerbils!)

(My 21st Birthday – March 2010)

(Dorney Park, Summer 2010)

(Fall 2010)

(Date Night, Winter 2010)

(December 25, 2010)

December 26, 2010 – We needed our own space, so we moved out into our first apartment and then Mailbox Journey was started in August 2011, so now you guys can follow along on our journey in real-time. :)

Posted on May 18, 2013 - 37 comments
 Filed Under: My Life

Do you remember when I posted that list of all of the projects I wanted to accomplish in the month of June? Well I finally got the ball rolling and knocked one of those projects out. This is only phase one of my painted flower pots though, I’d like to add either some succulents or some herbs to the pots, but I have yet to get to Lowe’s and purchase some. I didn’t follow a tutorial for this, it’s just something I found on Pinterest awhile back and thought they were cute. I’m not a “follow the directions” kind of girl, I just like to figure out how to do it on my own. Makes it more fun, except for my sunburst mirror, I probably should of followed the directions for that one. Oops.

Okay, anyways the original source of my inspiration image was from here.
Here are how mine turned out, followed by my own tutorial on how I painted them. :)

I went to Michael’s Craft store and picked out three of the smallest pots they had. (I believe these were 3 inches.) I also picked up a bunch of paint, keeping in mind what colors I wanted on the inside of the pots vs. the outside (base & border). One of the pots refused to let the paint stick to it properly, that’s why the end result only includes two pots, instead of three. I’m probably going to sand the paint off of that third pot and start again. (& In case you’re wondering, it was suppose to be purple on the inside, and then white & pink on the outside.)

Meanwhile, Coco was being her weird self.

Fun Fact: She is always showing us her belly and I learned the other day that when your cat does that it means that she trusts you and doesn’t feel like she’s in harms way.

Here is all of the paint I picked out while at Michael’s. Some brights and some neutrals. Martha Stewart kind of rubs me the wrong way, (probably because my Paw-Paw use to yell at the TV when she was on, ha!) but her paint line is amazing. Hands down the best craft paint I’ve worked with to date.

I started this project by painting the inside of the pots with the brightest colors I had. It gives the pots a nice pop once they are filled to almost the brim with soil. I also painted the top lip with the bright colors.

As I waited for them to dry, I had some cuddle time with Coco, which she hates.

Once the pots were dry I painted the outside of the pots with my neutral colors and waited for them to dry again. The last step I did then, was paint the bottom inch or so of the pots with a different color than the base coat. (I somehow forgot to take pictures of these steps. I blame Family Guy)

I let the pots dry overnight and then this morning at 7AM I filled them with soil and took their pictures. Yes, I was multi-tasking this morning.

My favorite pot is the dark grey + light grey pot with the bright blue in the middle. Probably because greys and blues are my favorite colors.

I can’t wait to actually plant something in these though. They are just so happy looking. :)

Have you painted any pots? Did you have trouble with the paint sticking to one of them, like I did? Or have you planted anything lately? It’s gardening season! I need a garden of my own though, so I don’t weed my dad‘s for “fun”, ha!

Posted on May 18, 2013 - 21 comments
 Filed Under: Gardening, Projects

Travis and I had an awesome weekend.
Friday night was spent at my parent’s house working on the cars and what not.

I was going to go swimming, but it started to rain. So I drank some Southern Comfort & Coke instead.

Coco did her usual thing – curling up in a ball for a cat nap.

On Friday our new Ctrl – Alt – Del pillows arrived. From here.

Some more Coco, she’s just too photogenic.

On Saturday morning, we went to the beer distributor to pick up some items for tailgating and then headed to the car wash. Where I had to crawl into the hatch and hold my sweatshirt up to the roof, because water was pouring in. Here my drain hose under my headliner came loose, but we fixed it.

We went to Taco Bell for lunch then, yum!

Saturday around 2:30 we headed to Monster Jam in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with Travis’ sister, Kristy and her boyfriend, Jordan. Here is a ton of pictures from that adventure:

We got home from Monster Jam around 1am and immediately crashed. We woke up then around 11AM and cleaned up the apartment, before heading out to the Hibachi Grill Buffet with Travis’ Dad and his girlfriend. This was my dessert plate.

After lunch we headed to the movies to see Prometheus, which was really good – but so weird.

We got home around 6PM then and just relaxed by watching some My Big Redneck Vacation. Love that show, it reminds me of my family, ha!

Weekend Wrap-Up Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.

How was your weekend? Tell me about it in the comments section!

Posted on May 18, 2013 - 7 comments
 Filed Under: Weekend Wrap-Up