Peter & Kris: I Will

Peter is like a brother to me. I mean you would think I used to change his dia­pers and make home­made tents in the liv­ing room with him — that’s how much I love him. Unfor­tu­nately, we don’t go back that far. We met Peter at Moody Bible Insti­tute in Chicago. He was Vitaliy’s best friend and the best man at our wed­ding. So when Peter told me that he had met some­one spe­cial and that we needed to meet her, I was very skep­ti­cal to say the least. Inside I truly believed there was nobody good enough for Peter.

When you are around Peter, you nat­u­rally yearn to be a bet­ter per­son. I don’t know if it’s his casual con­ver­sa­tion about the­ol­ogy or his way to find laugh­ter in any cir­cum­stance. You can­not walk away from time spent with him with­out a “lit­tle kick in your step” because life is good and a feel­ing like you know God just a lit­tle bit bet­ter than you did before. But there is noth­ing that chal­lenges you more than the way Peter loves. His love is uncon­di­tional and non-judgmental. He is the kind of friend who you really could trust your life with. Peter, if we had ever gone to sum­mer camp together, I so would have let you catch me in the Trust Fall. So nat­u­rally, with a friend like this, I was not ready for him to do any kind of falling that could risk his life–especially falling in love. That is one of the most dan­ger­ous falls of all!

I sat on my couch anx­iously wait­ing to see what my future held. Peter was def­i­nitely going to be a part of my future and if this girl was “the one” she was going to be a part of my future too. Oh! how I feared who would walk through the door! Ok, I’m lying. I was afraid of her pos­si­bly being dread­fully dif­fi­cult to be around, but in real­ity I was afraid that she wouldn’t love Peter as much as he deserved to be loved. It wasn’t far into their visit that I was absolutely 100% con­vinced she was THE ONE. All it took was to see the way she looked at him and hear the way she talked about him. This girl loved Peter and that’s ALL I needed to know. Well, it also didn’t hurt that she was absolutely WONDERFUL to be around. It wasn’t long after that trip that Peter asked Kris to be his wife. And since Peter and Vitaliy have THE best girls on the planet, here are pho­tos from a sur­prise trip Kris and I planned for Vitaliy to visit Peter in Dal­las for his birth­day. But of course, we also planned it for an engage­ment ses­sion. And they did not disappoint.

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Oh! And did I men­tion she’s beautiful?

I had so many other favorites, but this one has sky­rock­eted into my Top Five List from this ses­sion. Yes, I have rat­ings and lists for our pic­tures. I can find a com­pe­ti­tion in just about anything.

We had a change of wardrobe and things only got better!

There is one of those looks that I men­tioned con­vinced me how much she loves him.

I could tell an entire story about this image, but this is a blog which is meant for short snip­pets, right? So I’ll leave it short — I LOVE this image.

Yes, she’s that beautiful!

To be con­tin­ued…