Noakes' Nest: About Us

We started dating the last month of Senior year of High School. Our first date was a double date where we ate ice cream sundaes and watched Bring It On. Yep awesome movie taste right? Our first real date was to see Spiderman (the one with Toby Maguire). At the end of the date Phil asked me to prom.

Both of us were surprised to be entering college with a significant other. Neither of us really wanted a distance relationship but we knew there was something special about our relationship so we decided to give it a go. I went to Elon University in North Carolina and Philip went to the University of Virginia (UVA).

We spent our first two years of college traveling on our breaks to visit one another. While it was a tough start to a relationship it also strengthened our love. You have to really love someone if you are going to be in a distance relationship. I transferred to UVA after sophomore year of college. At the time I said it was because of the education program I got into. Now I admit that it was really because of Phil :)

Go Wahoo's!

Philip graduated from UVA in the spring of 2006 with a BS in Systems Engineering. He then moved to Richmond, Virginia to begin working for CapTech Ventures. I stayed an extra year at UVA and graduated in the spring of 2007 with a BA in Psychology and a Master of Teaching in Early Childhood and Developmental Risk Education. Upon graduation I moved to Richmond and began teaching third grade in Hanover county.

Philip proposed December 8, 2006. It was simple and perfect. We got married the following year on December 29, 2007. Memorial Day 2008 we got our dog Zach. He is a Bichon Frise.

Philip is still working for CapTech Ventures and is very happy there. After three years in the classroom I decided that I was burnt out and took a job as an educator at the Children's Museum of Richmond. I worked there until the birth of their daughter Caroline on March 31, 2012.

It has been a long and difficult road to having a family. We suffered a miscarriage in February 2010. On April 11, 2011 I delivered our daughter Emily stillborn. Almost 1 year to the day later our daughter Caroline was born. Caroline was born with a congenital heart defect and underwent open heart surgery in July 2012. She is our amazing little blessing.

This blog started as a way to communicate with friends and family about how we were doing. It then turned into not only a communication tool but also a way for me to grieve. It is almost like an open diary of my grieving process as well as how I/we have dealt with now having another child, let a lone a child with a heart defect. It is amazing for us to look back and see how our story has unfolded. To me it is a story of love, family, and faith. It is the story of an extremely blessed family.