dearstevencraige:

This day in 2008, we were resting right in between that stage of being strangers, and finding the greatest friendship I have ever known. It was your eighteenth birthday. We spent that Saturday tracing the concrete outline of the sea. My hair was an odd mix of unnatural colors and split ends. The soundtrack to those short lived first and last moments was Kanye’s “Graduation” album. I remember you wearing that black t-shirt that brought relief to me in your absence. And your key chains that were forever clasped to your belt loop. And your jeans with the zippers that your mom hated you wearing on her couch. And curry. We ate the first of a few hundred curry dinners that night.

You told me you loved me for the very first time two days after that Saturday. I didn’t know then, but when you blew out your candles that year, you wished that I would tell you that I loved you back. 5 birthdays ago, you knew loved me for the first time. Alongside your birth, that is the greatest cause for celebration.

Now, you & I both know that neither of us anticipated this. If anyone were to tell us that we would be hitched 4 birthdays after that one. Eating our own rendition of that same curry. Those same key chains would be in a box in our guestroom somewhere, and those zipper jeans now cut into shorts. That you would be in the Air Force, doing what you swore you never would. Coming home to me every night. Having a future that is wide open and brilliant, together - we would have have never believed them.

But we’re here, and I’m glad. Despite the mountains we had to trump in our path to get here, I would do it ten times over.

Happy Birthday, Steven. 

I am incessantly thankful to have spent the last 5 of them with you. Here’s to the next 70.

happiest birthday to the most handsome fellow! @stevenpreusser (Taken with instagram)

come on, summer.