Getting to know us

I thought it would be nice to also have a personal blog, to tell about our kids, daily lives and us! First off we live in Malibu, CA. Really can't complain about that. BUT we are from the midwest and we go back to visit often.
When I was thinking of a name for this blog Second Look at Love seemed perfect!
Mike and I met in 1992, my first day of my freshman year of college. Wow that was a long time ago!
I had just gotten to Carthage College that afternoon, my parents drove me to school, we bought my books, found my room, and met my first roommate. She was ok, but I met another really cool girl, Jamie, in the bookstore line. Jamie was living in the same dorm as I was. From that first few minutes we were trying to figure out how to become roommates (we did end up roommates about 2 weeks later, but we had to move dorms) ok, back to meeting Mike! Jamie and I were in the main building looking for our mailboxes .... Mike saw us and walked over (I guess he has met Jamie earlier in the day) and he invited us to a party! My very first day at college and a Sophomore invited us to a party! That was pretty cool .... The details of the rest of the day are fuzzy (that was almost 19 years ago!) But I do know we went to the party and Mike was there. There was an instant connection between us, and we ended up dating on and off for about a year and a half. Mike played football, was in a fraternity and was ever so cute! I was head over heels for him ... of course being 17, 18 and him being 19, 20 things were fun flirty and somewhat confusing! I always knew that we had that certain "something", but neither of us really knew what that was, or how to define it. Kinda like wherever we were in a room we were aware of the other? make sense? At the end of my sophomore year, Jamie was transferring to Fort Lewis College in Durango, Co. I went back to Carthage for my Junior year, I was seeing someone else at the time and it ended up not working out. I wanted a change, so I transferred to Fort Lewis in my Junior year as well. (Mike was dating someone else at the time) I packed up all my things and left within about a week. I never even said good-bye to Mike!
FAST Forward to 2010 - I am on facebook checking out my news feed and I see "Chris Timm is now friends with Mike De Guire" .... my heart literally jumped! WOW I clicked his name and hit Add Friend before I even knew what was happening.... it was 11:45 am on a Tuesday! About a minute later I got the notice that Mike had accepted my friend request! Oh my ... my heart was pounding, I had no idea what to do next. I posted something on his wall about being a long time since we talked, ummm yeah .... 16 years is a really long time! We chatted on FB for a bit and talked on the phone the next day. To sum it up it was like pure love! Granted he was living in WI and I was in CA, but I knew we would be together. After countless hours on the phone, many many plane trips back and forth. We now live together on CA.
We are totally in love. We fit.
There are 9 of us .... yep 9! Mike has five kids, Autumn (16), Jacquelyn (13), Samantha (10), Michael (9) and Summer (7 3/4) .... then I have my two girls Isabelle (15) and Vivianrose (8) ..... so 7 kids + the 2 of us makes 9.
So this is our Second Look at Love, and it gets better everyday! I hope you will enjoy getting a look into our lives.