Tidbits About the Riddicks - Our Dating Years

Happy Tuesday!!!! And Happy November!! Aww it feels so good to be back!! I missed being on here the past week - thanks for all of your messages and sweet comments... Taking the past week off reminded me how much I love this little space and all the processing and life that comes from writing these posts. Thanks for being here each morning with me!!!

We got back from our beach trip late Sunday night and spent yesterday settling back into Nashville life... It was such a great week with family - we laughed, laid in the sun, and spent most of the time watching Jane take in every aspect of beach life...she loved it and so did we!! 

While we were there, we celebrated our fourth anniversary, which was so fun and special, and I thought this week would be fun to do a four-part Tidbits About the Riddicks all about dating, engagement, wedding, and married life so far... I've had so many questions about all of those and thought this would be a fun week to walk down memory lane for a bit... 

So, here is a little bit about our dating years!! (Photo circa a wedding we went to summer of 2017)

Really though, our dating years started a few years before we were actually dating... I've written a little about us meeting at a summer camp here and here, but Pine Cove Christian Camps was a huge part of our story. 

We both worked there every summer in college and then both did their "Forge Program," which was a nine-month leadership and discipleship program. We ended that year with a two week trip to Israel, which is where the picture above was taken... It's also when we visited Mount Arbel, which is now our sweet Jane's middle name. 

I didn't know it at the time, but Pierce had been praying about the right time to ask me on a date for the better half of that year... So when May rolled around and he called to ask me on a date, I was surprised to say the least, but excited to go on a date with someone who had truly become one of my best friends throughout the past year or two... 

Our first date was July 6th, 2016 and no one will be surprised to hear that A, I asked Pierce to take a picture with me 🤦🏼‍♀️😂 and B, Pierce had such a fun night planned out with swing dancing downtown Dallas and some tea and carrot cake after at a sweet little cafe. 

We laughed and had the best time together, which I wasn't surprised by...but I think we were both wondering how we were going to make it work... 

I was starting a teaching job in Plano that fall, and he was finishing up his degree at Belmont in Nashville...

But I remember snapping this photo as he was taking me to the airport and not too long later writing...

"This was our first (of soon to be many) goodbyes...after a six-day trip to Dallas, signing my contract for a new job, searching for an apartment, and going on a first date with one of my best friends. Didn't know that this goodbye at the airport would be our life for the next year...but wow, what a sweet journey it's been. It's taught me a lot, but definitely that life is sweet and goodbyes are hard..." 

And...I pretty much couldn't sum it up better now... We loved that year of long-distance, but goodbyes were (and still are) are hard for me... 

We soaked up our time together though...including the few days when my family came down to help me move in... (Pierce is from Dallas, so he was there for the summer until he left for Nashville late August.) I felt like I was living some summer Hallmark movie, and I was soaking in the simple things and trying to capture as many little moments as I could before the school year started... 

Throughout the next year, Pierce came to Dallas several times, I made my way to Nashville a weekend or two, we visited Waco, met in Little Rock, and lived our Thursday nights on FaceTime making dinner "together" and spent a night or two a week having tea at the same time processing and catching up on our life in two different cities... 

He even surprised me with a surprise birthday party that he threw at his house in Dallas and showed up without me even knowing... I wrote a little more about that here. 

But as the school year was wrapping up and contracts were coming out...I knew we had a big decision on our hands of where we were going to end up and what was going to happen... Pierce ended up getting a great job in the music industry in Nashville and after weeks of prayer, so many conversations with our parents and mentors, I applied and was offered a second grade teaching position in Nashville, so my year in Plano came to a bittersweet end (I LOVED my school, team, and community there!!), but we were excited about new beginnings, and Pierce helped me make the trek with all of my things to Nashville, TN. 

They sat in storage all summer until the Lord answered so many prayers with a perfect little house and the sweetest roommate from Texas. We joke that this is when Pierce won my dad's heart... He was so impressed that Pierce would help me pack up a U-Haul, drive across the country with my car in tow and move all of my things basically four times to help me be in the same city as him... It's a fun little memory to look back on for sure... 

But goodness...we loved being in the same city... Pierce went above and beyond on so many "in-person" date nights... 

We had holiday dates and snow storms and started making a few traditions that we didn't know would become traditions that we still do to this day... 

We got to go to weddings together, have dinner on "school-nights," and take road trips to see family and friends... We just truly loved living in the same city. From the little moments of walking the grocery store aisles together to the big moments of celebrating new jobs and Grad School Admissions and all the moments in-between...

Looking back, these were some of the sweetest days and sweetest memories... 

Who knew that these two babies saying goodbye at the airport summer 2016 would now be raising a six-month old and celebrating four years of marriage six years later... It's been quite the journey, one with ups and downs, and one that we've learned so much and loved every season the Lord has taken us through... 

I'll be back here tomorrow with a few pictures from May 26th, 2018, the official start of one of those new seasons... 🥰💍

Thanks for following along in this journey of ours!! And for walking down memory lane this week!! I'll try to answer all the questions I've gotten, but let me know if there's more you have in this little mini-series!! 

See you back here tomorrow!! 

❤️Tab (and Pierce!)