100 Fun Facts - 1-25

1. Rich and I met in November of 1996. I was invited to sing at his church and he was running the sound system that night.

2. A dear friend of mine, who happened to be my 7th grade Sunday School teacher back in 1986 is the one who invited me to her church and the one who introduced me to Rich.

3. We both knew that very night that we would marry each other one day.

4. Since I had just graduated from college that same year with a degree in Music Education - and the movie Mr. Holland's Opus had just come out - I thought it would be perfect to have the last name Holland.

5. Rich proposed to me in January of 1997 - just 2 1/2 months after we met.

6. My mom and I went shopping for a wedding dress on the day that Rich proposed, and we found the dress and bought it.

7. I was teaching middle school chorus at the time of my engagement.(in Virginia Beach) My mom planned my wedding. She would ask me how I wanted things to be, and I would always reply, "I don't know, how is it supposed to be?" I was never the little girl who always dreamed about the wedding. My mom did a great job planning it - everything was perfect.

8. The one thing that I planned about my wedding that actually was important to me - the music! We had a string quartet, trumpet, organ, and piano. It was perfect!

9. I also wrote a song and sang it to Rich at our wedding as a surprise.

10. He was very surprised.

11. I didn't cry when I sang it.

12. Rich spoke at our wedding - he did a gospel presentation.

13. We married in July of 1997 - 6 months after the engagement - we went to Orlando for our honeymoon.

14. Rich was still an engineer officer in the army when we got married. He was also working on his MDiv at Southeastern. (commuting each week)

15. The first time we ever celebrated one of my birthdays together, we had already been married a couple of months.

16. I got a job teaching elementary music in Newport News and I started about a month after we married.

17. I learned very quickly that I did not like teaching elementary music. I preferred teaching chorus.

18. Rich and I bought a house 5 months after we got married.

19. We got a 1900 square foot house in a great neighborhood for $89,000. It was assessed for about $30,000 more than that. It was built in 1964 and still had the original wallpaper. We had alot of work to do on the house, but it was worth it. It was a beautiful house.

20. Rich renovated the house, and we we sold it 5 years later, we sold it for around $137,000. Pretty great profit margin for 5 years!

21. Rich gutted the kitchen of that house from the floors to the ceiling, did electric work, ran new water lines, put in a dishwasher, garbage disposal, new cabinets, new flooring completely updating the kitchen. It was beautiful when it was done. I was only able to enjoy it for less than a year before we moved. But it was good while it lasted! When we were selling our beautifully renovated house, Rich comforted me by saying, "don't worry, honey, you are taking the carpenter with you!"

22. Rich commuted to Wake Forest two days each week the first several years of our marriage to work on his MDiv.

23. I plugged away at the elementary music job, but didn't love it. The school system wouldn't transfer me within the system until I had been there for 3 years, so I quit. I was rehired by the same school system at as a high school choral director. I think it would have been easier if they had just transferred me.

24. Rich began doubting the whole MDiv process and stopped going to school for about a year. In that year away from Seminary, he got a job working for Cox Communications and was also hired to be the interim pastor at a local church.

25. The local church where he was interim wanted him to be their pastor. He accepted the call to be their pastor and went back to finish his MDiv at Southeastern. (commuting back and forth)

***look for 26-50 in another post***