Welcome!

Welcome to our blog!  We are a recently engaged couple from the Northwest Indiana/Chicago area.  We have been together for 6 and 1/2 years, since high school.  We are so excited to be planning our wedding, but more excited to planning our future together in Chicago (for the time being).  In true Hare fashion, I am simply focused on registering, apartment hunting, and buying fun art for the walls of our apartment that is yet to exist.  The Tortoise is being very practical, as usual, and is reminding me of what a huge adjustment living together will be for us.  Here is a little background:

While we have been dating for a long time, and essentially grew up together, we have never lived together.  We are good at distance.  We have done distance.  Distance has made our relationship stronger.  But how will we handle constant togetherness?  That is yet to be seen, and blogged about! 

I (The Hare) am currently living in Northwest Indiana after graduating college in May and receiving my first teaching job last August in our home town.  I LOVE my job.  I LOVE my 4th graders.  I LOVE what I do.  You will hear many references to teaching, I am sure.  The Tortoise is living in Lakeview in Chicago.  He works in a Western suburb, and has already adjusted to an hour long commute, each way, each day.  He and I have spent the last year seeing each other only on weekends, as our jobs have taken us two different places.  Before that, though, we spent 4 wonderful years at IU (Go Hoosiers!) together.  We loved college, and both of us miss it quite often.

We are SO looking forward to the days of "weekends-only" being over.  I cannot wait until I get to see him everyday, and we don't feel like we need to soak up every single minute we have together (although, that sounds kind of sweet).  Still, it is going to be a BIG adjustment to combine all of our stuff, agree on all of our new stuff, and set up a whole apartment.  While we enjoy being together, as the blog title suggests, we are polar opposites in many ways.  Still, one of our biggest strengths is the willingness to compromise and communicate.  To add a little more of a twist, I will also, more than likely, be commuting each day to Northwest Indiana for my teaching job.  I just love it too much to give it up. 

Our lives are going to be changing for sure, and I know it will be very interesting.   I am starting this blog so our families can catch up with what we are doing (since we are both pitiful at returning phone calls in a timely manner), and also so we can remember all the little funny and amazing things that happen to us as we are planning the wedding and spending our first year as a married couple.  Our differing personalities are bound to make it interesting... but I wouldn't have it any other way.

STAY TUNED!