A year ago, Rob was getting ready to make the move to Minnesota and we had no idea what to expect. We knew it would be cold, and we knew there'd be snow, but I don't think we had any idea how much of a different world it would be from Virginia. He packed his things and went, and I immediately began romanticizing the thought of living in a strange city together, with a new climate and considerable lack of familiarities.

Now that I am here and away from my friends and my family, there are certainly days that feel lonely for us. But last weekend, I walked out onto a frozen Lake Harriet and stood there, looking around, trying to comprehend that what I was standing on was not earth, but water. I felt equal parts excitement and fear, and soon was just overwhelmed with complete gratitude for the opportunity to be here right now.

Until Minneapolis, there has never been a time in my life where I have found myself in a completely unfamiliar place doing completely unfamiliar things. Before I left, I thought I would be afraid, but now I'm here and I'm not.

So why don't we go somewhere only we know?--Those were the words that comforted me in the six months that Rob and I lived in different time zones, where he was alone doing his first winter and I dreamed of snowy roads and an unfamiliar city waiting for me. I wrote them down and sang them and prayed that this new life of ours would become exactly what we wanted it to be.

We've had some family come to visit us here, but sometimes it feels as though we haven't shared Minneapolis very much with the people back home. It really does feel like our place--the city where we lived as an engaged couple, and the first place we'll live as newlyweds. Our favorite coffee shops and restaurants and lakes are just that--ours. One day we will move on and go somewhere new, but we'll always have Minneapolis.

After shooting in that field at pretty much the perfect time of day, we ventured over to Hampden-Sydney to finish up our engagement session with Ashley of V.A. Photography. It's hard to believe that five years ago at the end of October, I would walk into a Halloween party with my roommates and meet Rob. Time has really flown by.

Hampden-Sydney is so many things to us--the place where Rob studied and made life-long friends, my running destination (I'd run the six miles down Back Hampden-Sydney Road and stop at Rob's dorm, where he'd give me a Gatorade and we'd talk before driving me back), our weekend hang-out and our long-distance relationship training wheels.

Midnight breakfasts, tailgating parties with more chicken wings and oysters than you could ever eat, and cheap beer popping out of every cooler. There were stomach-aches and hangovers and country music, and there were great times with friends and big Sunday brunches in the dining hall at a huge table where we'd all laugh and eat omelets and drink fresh-squeezed juice from that juicer that you had to throw oranges into like a basketball. We stayed up too late and ate too much pizza and it was relatively un-glamorous, but we fell in love and I wouldn't trade it for the world.

It smells like winter to me, that lotion, so once I put it on I crossed my arms over my face and breathed in deeply, remembering the really tall but wobbly air mattress we used to sleep on and the kitchen with barely anything in it that he shared with two other guys. Chilly afternoons with friends and dinners out in DC, loud bars at Halloween and high heels at holiday parties, sad Sunday afternoons filled with naps and extra kisses and four hour drives into the night.

They were days full of friends and full of fun, but they were days that sometimes felt as though they'd never end; like we'd always be separated by our jobs and the cities we lived in.

But now we have this place together, and though it sometimes also feels transitional, there are flowers in vases and all of my books are on a shelf and we share a car and say things like, "What do you want to do for dinner?" because after a day of work, we are together. And I wake up on Sunday mornings with nowhere to go and I put water on the stove for coffee and think, this is our life. And it is so good.

After shooting some of our engagement photos at Longwood University, we headed down the road to Hampden-Sydney College. On the way over, we made a stop so Ashley could get a few shots of us in some tall grass she had her eye on, and I'm so glad we did. The light was so glowy and perfect and some of these photos just look kind of magical to me!

Rob and I got in the car on Saturday morning and set out to visit a new city. It's so weird to look at a map and discover the new places that are now just a long-ish drive away from your home. I'm so used to getting in the car and going to Charlottesville for the day or DC for the weekend, and it was fun to realize that, for a few hours more than it takes to get from Roanoke to Washington, we could be in Chicago.






On Saturday night we had a romantic dinner at a really cool sushi restaurant before seeing Phoenix play at The Aragon, and then we woke up on Sunday morning and sat outside with coffee at Intelligentsia. It felt like any other trip until we got to Millennium Park, where I unexpectedly got emotional at the sight of that huge bean.

Rob and I are a thousand miles from everything we know, and never in my wildest dreams did I think that we'd be so far from home. Minneapolis was never on my list of places to live, and Chicago wasn't even on my list of places to visit, and yet, standing there in Millennium Park with my hand in Rob's, looking at myself in the reflection of the sculpture, things suddenly felt like they were exactly the way they should be.





We stopped for a delicious lunch at Primehouse before heading back home. We got burgers with truffle fries and I had a Bloody Mary. Rob got an "Over Drive," which was a carrot-orange-ginger juice with vodka. It came in a cute little carafe and it was so good.

I'm obviously not that adventurous if I think that spending a weekend in one of the United States' largest cities is some kind of defining moment, but something happened while we were roaming the streets of Chicago. The weather was perfect and the sky was bright blue and I shed a bit of anxiety. I felt a bit more like myself (or maybe just the person I'd like to be), and I felt even more thankful for this man--the tall one who isn't afraid to drive in traffic--and for this life we're doing together.