Corey and I are coming up on our 20th wedding anniversary this December. Hard to believe. Where has the time gone? We have been through SO much together. Our story begins at Ball State University in Muncie, IN; where we were both attending college. Corey was studying Finance and I was majoring in Geography: Travel & Tourism. It was the start of my senior year. A big group of us went to Headliners (a local hangout) and Corey and I hit it off. We talked for hours. Conversation was easy between us.

I graduated in the spring. Corey had one year of school left, but decided to move to Fort Wayne to work for my dad (who was a financial planner). On July 4th, Corey proposed. And we were set to be married the weekend of May 26, 1996. Well, we did things a tad bit out of order and had to push our wedding date up to December, because we were expecting our first child in May.

Ironically, Auston was born on May 26, 1996. We were so excited and yet so clueless as to how to raise this little blessing. But we learned quickly and added another one to our mix in 1998, Chase. Two boys. Whew! They kept me busy. They were the best of friends and the worst enemies too, at times. (Still are to this day).

During this time Corey held 4 jobs just so I could stay home with our boys. We had discussed this prior to marriage and I had expressed my great desire to be a stay-at-home mom. Corey was completely on board and worked his tail off to make that possible. I remember many nights he would only get 4 hours of sleep…getting home at midnight from one job to then get up at 4 to go into the office to learn the financial business, before he had to be at his next job at 8am. What an amazing man. Such love and dedication to his family.

Corey’s ultimate goal was to work full-time in my dad’s business. He loved the world of finance and grew so much during this time. Little did we know at this time, that he would later buy the financial planning side of the business from my dad and it would become his own company.

When Chase was two, we decided to try for a 3rd little one. But this time it wasn’t so easy. I ended up having a tubal pregnancy after trying to get pregnant for almost 2 years. We were so sad and disappointed. Especially when we met with the doctor afterwards and were given some very discouraging news…..