sweet + whimsy life: {memory lane}: friendship, marriage + babies!

Yesterday, people were asking us when our baby was due.

It's crazy because for the first time, our answer was "this week!"

THAT'S NUTS!

Eugene and I have been freaking out about the fact that in the next few weeks, we are gonna become parents. Never again will our lives be the same. never again will we just be a family of two - but our family will be made a bit more "complete" in a sense, as we welcome our son into the world and into our lives. We are so nervous (!!!) but so excited as well. I've been thinking a lot about God's goodness and faithfulness to us -- in both our respective lives, in our marriage and in our relationship in general. I randomly came across one of Eugene's old photos on Facebook, and after scrolling through a bit I was able to come across some of our oldest photos. I was also feeling nostalgic because we have been seeing our college friends more for Christmas parties in the last few weeks.

I'm so thankful that God grew our friendship so organically over the course of many years. It was sweet thinking back on all the memories so I thought I'd chronicle it here.

This was actually from the first day that we met. I've noted where Eugene and I were sitting during our first game of Taboo together. This is when the CCM sophomore class had invited the freshmen over to their apartment to play games. I remember this being the first time I met Eugene because I was actually put in his car with a few other girls. He was really shy and awkward (lol!)

A few weeks later though, we became friends and got more comfortable with each other! It was standard for the upperclassmen to buy the younger classmen food as a way to serve them -- and I remember at this particular event, Eugene had paid for my chicken nuggets.

During the summer after my freshmen year, I was really challenged to be more consistent in my bible-reading and daily devotions. Our college pastor had offered to host a "DWYS" which stood for Don't Waste Your Summer where we met every morning at 7am to read our bibles. We met at the Starbucks at UCI every morning that summer. Eugene had research during the summer early in the morning, so he was the other college student that consistently attended these sessions. He offered to drive me every morning (we were living in the same apartment complex and I didn't have a car so I had been taking the shuttle) so we were carpool buddies to this thing every morning. My friend CJ was concerned that this would cause us to become too close so she actually committed to drive me for the latter half of the summer (lol! thanks for your accountability CJ!)

Fast forward to the school year (my sophomore and his junior year)-- we both volunteered (separately) to join our church's Operations Crew aka Ops Crew. Because our church didn't have its own facility, we were meeting at a middle school in Tustin. Ops Crew served to transport all the praise equipment to the middle school every Sunday. We were one of the few collegians who had signed up - so we always called ourselves "partners". Of course, I must have loved Eugene or something because I bound him to myself by saying we are partners "FOR LIFE" in my caption. (lol)

Here we are in Steve Lee's truck with all of the praise equipment behind us. I think I was trying to take a picture of the three of us but my arm was too short so it only fit this much and that's why we're laughing (i'm assuming!)

For Ops Crew, we met early in the morning so we always had time to grab coffee + breakfast afterwards. I was really into taking pictures in college -- anywhere and anytime. I was also really excited to use the self timer wherever we went - so here we are taking photos of ourselves at Carl's Jr.

After a few months, Eugene and I were broken off from the rest of the group to be in charge of setting up the chairs. Because we were meeting in the multipurpose room, we usually had to set up all the chairs on Sunday morning before service. Because Eugene and I drove together from UCI area, we were specifically assigned this task (it only required 2 people!) This thing with chairs became our "thing'' so any time/event we took pictures together, we always tried to incorporate chairs to commemorate our partnership. We set up chairs at the church every Sunday for two years!

Our Ops Crew had many outings together -- most often it was at AYCE sushi places. Eugene and I ate a lot of sushi together during this time -- and that's still one of our favorite things to eat together now as a married couple! If you've ever eaten AYCE sushi with Eugene, you know he is a beast. Of course I had to subtly point that out in the caption without making it too obvious.

After our group split up (half of us transporting and setting up praise equipment and Eugene + I setting up chairs), we had a lot more time before worship service started. James was faithfully leading a prayer meeting before Sunday service every week so we both decided to join him. We served in this prayer team for about a year together and called ourselves the "MPG" which stood for Morning Prayer Group (lol!) It was a blessing serving together and it was during this time that I got to know more about Eugene and the things he had on his heart because we would share prayer requests every week as well.

We saw each other every Sunday because of Ops Crew and MPG -- but we also ran across each other a lot of Saturdays when we would both find each other in the library studying. Of course it was always with other people - but because I was in nursing school at the time, and Eugene was a bio major and doing research, we always crossed paths in libraries and various study centers.

As our friendship grew, it provided opportunities for different things! My family had been going to Mexico a few times a year for medical missions, and because Eugene had an interest in pursuing pharmacy, he asked if he could come and help out. Of course my parents agreed! Here is Eugene and my mom running the "pharmacy" at the clinic we hosted. (We were still just friends at this point!)

Fast forward a few years and here they are again on our wedding day! so sweet. :)

Throughout college, we continued as friends and continued to serve together in different capacities. I think my overwhelmingly outgoing personality was scary for Eugene so our interactions always seemed a bit awkward -- but slowly got more and more comfortable as you can tell from the difference of these two pictures.

I wonder if subconsciously I always intended to marry Eugene. One of Eugene's friends had posted up an embarrassing picture of Eugene's thug life selfie dayz -- and I thought it was hilarious. In my lack of discernment, you can see that over 2 years before we even started dating, I had intended that Eugene and I would marry and I made it known to the facebook world.

Thankfully, in God's perfect timing and His perfect way, he orchestrated a way for us to end up together and after a year of dating we got engaged!

Remember how I told you that our "thing" was chairs? We had included a chair in so many of our photos in college -- so of course we had to incorporate our roots into our engagement shoot somehow.