T = TREY

My husband: Trey.
His full name, for those who are unaware, is Jean Thomas Skaggs, III. Jean is not pronounced like the jeans you wear. No, it is much for french. Like John with a twist. I am told when he was a young child in Louisianna (cajun country) his teachers called him "Jean Thomas" pronounced "Jahn Toe-Mas". When he gets in trouble I call him Jean, pronounced like blue jeans. He hates it.

Trey and I met back in 2003, I believe. It may have been 2002. Doesn't really matter because apparently dear husband does not remember meeting me. Yeah, so much for that "love at first sight" crap.

I will set the scene:

We met at The Journey, which is a college United Methodist Church retreat. It meets 2 times a year and students from all over the state go for the weekend. It is so fun. So we were both on staff at this particular time. I, a sophomore in college, and Trey, a senior at USM, were both in Jackson at our half-day staff meeting.

I see his name tag: "TREY SKAGGS" and walked proudly up to the cute guy in scrubs playing the guitar (nevermind the fact that I remember what he was wearing and he doesn't even remember meeting me. Pathetic, I know)

"Hi" - I said, probably too enthusiastically. "Are you Trey Skaggs?" (duh, it was on his name tag, stupid.) "Are you Adam's brother? I have heard so much about you."

"Really?" says the overly confident college student. "That's funny. I have never heard of you."

AWESOME.

That was the end of our knowing each other for about a year.

Fast forward a year. Trey and I have a mutual best friend, Russell. He is fabulous. I love him. Anyway, Trey is now a youth minister in Atlanta and I am a junior at State. He is, once again, on staff for the Journey. He stayed the night with Russell in Starkville on his way back from his Journey meeting in Jackson to break up the trip. Russell called to see if I wanted to go out to dinner with him and his friend 'trey skaggs'. Whatev. The kid doesn't even remember me. But I went. And we hit it off.

The rest is history. We dated long distance for almost 2 years. When I was a junior at State, he was in Atlanta, then my senior year he moved to Hattiesburg to get his masters. We did spend summers together in Maine. It was just fabulous.

After our first 'date', if you can call it that - Russell was there -, I called my dad and told him I was going to marry Trey Skaggs one day.

Just to make me look a little less desperate, I will share this part of the story: After our first dinner with russell that fateful night, Trey asked him about me and Russell's response was: "Heather Tomlinson? You don't stand a chance. " OK, not his exact words, but close enough. I like to bring that up from time to time.

Trey is a wonderful, wonderful man. I am so very blessed. First and foremost, he puts up with me. I think my daddy told him it was a full-time job. I would probably agree. But Trey does it with a smile. I love him more today than the day we married. Trey is just fabulous. I mean, he proposed to me at the exact place my daddy proposed to my mommy. That is sweet, friends.

So now you know the story of us. Trey and Heather