There was a moment where Craig and I reminded me of every couple I’ve ever admired (i.e. my brother and his wife, my sister and her husband, my parents, etc.).

The night before, we were putting out Halloween decorations on his front porch. We needed a hammer to nail little picture nails in the rafters and Craig could not find his hammers anywhere in the garage.

The next morning, he ended up finding one of his hammers in a Home Depot bucket out back and one in the shelf in the kitchen. He felt so silly.

This afternoon, Craig was doing some work in one of the bathrooms while I sat at the kitchen table on my laptop. It was a beautiful day outside and we had the back door open so that Izzie could come and go and we could get a cool breeze going through the house.

He had just finished watching a re-caulking tile video and said, “Yeah I need a stronger knife. I think I have the same knife that this guy is using in the video.”

He went into the garage and rummaged around in there for a little bit, but came out unsuccessful. “Well I can’t find the knife.”

“Maybe it’s in the bucket,” I said, joking.

“Haha, yeah, it’s probably in the bucket,” he said, again being facetious and going out to look in the bucket.

A few moments later, outside I heard him yell. “Ah!!”

He appeared in the back doorway with the box cutter knife in his hand.

I started laughing so hard. “Oh my god, it was in the bucket?! I wasn’t even being serious!”

“Ugh, ‘Maybe it’s in the bucket!’” he repeated in a faux, annoyed voice that made it sound like he had reluctantly been defeated. “‘Maybe it’s in the bucket!’… ‘Maybe it’s in the bucket!’ … ”

I couldn’t stop laughing.

He walked past me in a blur of activity, probably on his way back to attack the old tile grout again now that he found the box cutter. “I love you,” he said over his shoulder.

“I love you, too,” I called after him, resuming my work on my laptop.

Right then I realized there were so many of these small, cute interactions that occurred between us during the day, that I wish I could just roll them all up into a ball and share it with the universe. “See, this is what I’ve been waiting for,” I wanted to say. “And I didn’t have to compromise to get it.”

I didn’t have to make any compromises. That was the important part. And that’s when I knew I had finally taken a chance on the right one.