How Caroline Grace came to be

Emily and I have been happily married for 5 years.  Our story has been labeled by our friends as a "picture perfect fairytale."  We met on AOL when AOL was still cool.  This was before match.com, e-harmony, etc.  became popular.  I was bored on a lonely night in the dorm room, so I conducted what I thought was a random AOL member profile search.  Looking back, I realize there was nothing random about it!!  My demands were very specific:  19-21 year old female who liked the Christian contemporary band, Jars of Clay, and was a Christian.  From those 207 names that popped up, I was immediately drawn to Emily's screen name...our first conversation lasted several hours.  Before we said our first "good night", I told her I would like to marry her one day!!  Sure enough, two years later, my wish came true!!

I graduated from the US Naval Academy (Annapolis) in 2006 and we got married three weeks later by my Papa and her Dad in Kingwood, Texas.  From the moment she became my better half, I knew I was blessed with a very special woman.  We have been married 5 years and have lived in 5 different states: South Carolina, Texas, California, Virginia, and now Maryland. I serve in the Surface Warfare Officer (SWO) community in the Navy and have spent most of our married life at sea.  She has kept me sane and helped me enjoy our brief moments together.  She found a way to not only endure the long days of me being out to sea, but she also excelled in my absence.  She has created her own cookbook, jewelry business, and made every house we've lived in a comfortable and fashionable home.  Since returning from sea last year, we realized we had a 2 year break from sea duty and planned to start a family after our 5 year anniversary....

...once we we got positive results from the EPT, we were ecstatic!!  We immediately started discussing baby names and agreed on the name Caroline Grace if we had a baby girl.  At 10 weeks, we went in for our first sonogram.  Everything checked out great!  Heart rate was 152...most people said, "it's going to be a girl."  We didn't care...we were just thrilled to have a healthy baby, boy or girl, it didn't matter.  Fast forward to the 18 weeks mark...we still had not decided on a boy name if we had a baby boy.  But it turned out that we didn't need one! 

October 4, 2011:  The sonogram at 18 weeks revealed we were going to have a baby girl!!!  I began imagining "Daddy's little girl" as we drove home from the doctor's office.  We discussed nursery plans, strollers, car seats, onesies, diapers (ugh!), family visits, and a whole lot more.  We were walking on cloud 9!  Life was beautiful!!  We called everyone to let them know the sonogram looked normal and that we were having a healthy little girl named Caroline Grace.