Well, let's see. We are a relatively "new" family, here in central Wisconsin, with many branches all over the place. It was July 1999, and to be honest, I was bored one afternoon, and had a friend over and we were drinking wine coolers, and "surfin'" the web, when we came across Excite.com. My friend and I were checking out the games, when a pop-up ad for Excite Personals came up. We were just off balance enough to think it sounded like a good time. So we each came up with a personal ad.

My ad headline was, "Looking for Al Borland" I was looking for a cuddly teddy bear type guy. Imagine my surprise a couple of weeks later, when I opened my email on July 29, and there was a message from an ALLANB! I was thinking to myself… "WHAT???" so I opened the email, read it, and kind of liked what I read. He seemed like a nice guy, and he had supplied his ICQ number, and I also had ICQ loaded on my computer, so we started "talking" on there. I don't know about Al, but I would RACE home from work to see if he was on line. We chatted on line for HOURS every night for about a week. Then, we decided that it was time for the "next step". We exchanged phone numbers.

Al worked out of town most of the week, and worked HARD all day, but it never failed, just about the time I was ready to "give up" and go to bed, the phone would ring, and it would be Al calling from wherever he was. He didn't say anything at the time, but I later discovered an old phone bill from that month, and HIS phone bill was almost 400 dollars from that time! And that did not include the phone calls I made to HIM wherever he was! Neither of us got much sleep those first couple of weeks, but I never noticed. It was like "FINALLY! I have found the other half of me!" We talked about everything, and absolutely nothing all at the same time.

Then, in August, my side of the family had a weekend reunion coming up, and for the first time, I really didn't want to be there. It would mean being away from home, and away from my computer for almost three whole days! Then, it just so happened, that the reunion weekend was going to kick off with the whole family going to the races on Friday Night. I raced home from work on Friday, checked, and Al was on line. He sounded just as upset as I was, that I would be gone from the computer for the weekend.

Then I had a brainstorm! I told him that I would be at the races that night. HE TOOK THE "BAIT"! He suggested that we decide what we would be wearing, and meet for the first time there. I thought this was an AWESOME idea! I had been hinting for 2 weeks that I thought we should meet. But Al didn't want to "rush" into anything! SO, I got all ready, rushed Ben out the door, and we went to the races.

I had sent Al a picture of Ben and I, and I had seen a picture of him on his website, and it's a good thing that Ben hadn't changed much since the picture had been taken. In all the pictures I had seen of Al, he had a mustache. He had shaved that off. He recognized Ben, and then followed him, until he came up to me. Then Al approached, and we FINALLY got to see each other! To be honest with you, after all the hours and hours that we had spent talking to each other, and from all that I knew of Al, it really wouldn't have mattered if he had shown up with three heads. I already knew that no matter WHAT he looked like, we were meant to be together. If not as a "couple", then at LEAST as really good friends. We had SO much in common! As luck would have it though, I really thought he was quite "cute"!

We both sat there through out the races stealing glances at each other, and not really talking a whole bunch, due to the noise, but it just felt "right". After the races, Al said he would call the next day. I reminded him that I would be gone for the rest of the weekend. He said that ok, he'd call Sunday evening. Well, I went to the reunion, where I was supposed to camp for the weekend, but I just couldn't get him off my mind. I made the decision that I just couldn't sleep in a tent that night, and Ben and I went home. I logged on to the computer, and just as I suspected, about 3 minutes later, Al logged in too. I was BESIDE myself! It was SO awesome! I think we talked on line until close to 1 in the morning, and then Al called me, and we talked until at LEAST 4. I just felt like I had found my best friend.

We decided that I would "ditch" day two of the reunion, and he and I would just spend some time together. I got up on Sunday morning, called a friend to watch Ben, and Al and I went to a park and just talked and talked for hours. When it got cold there, we drove out to sit by the river, and when we got tired of that, we went and sat at the airport for a while. I never realized how late it was, until I realized that it was almost midnight! Molly, who was watching Ben for me, yelled at me when I went to pick him up, because we had been gone for over 12 hours, and she didn't know if she should call the police, call my parents, or what she should do. It was the first time in Ben's life that I had EVER gone more than one or two hours without thinking of him at all. He does not fail to remind Al and I of it on occasion still!

Well, that fateful day, August 15, 1999, was the beginning for Al and I. Yes, we had been talking on line for a couple of weeks, and I felt really close to him, but after that day, of just the two of us, with no distractions, talking about anything and everything that came to mind, I really felt that it was sealed in stone already.

Well, one thing led to another, and by October 1999, we were already starting to talk about the possibility of getting married. It just seemed to me that we HAD to. It would be laughing in the face of fate, if we didn't! There were some issues with Ben, like how would he react to all of this, but really, once he realized just how much happier I was in general, I think he settled in to the fact that Al was going to be around for a while. In November 2000, I moved out of my house, and Ben and I moved in here with Al. The way we looked at it was, we were both spending equal amounts of money on separate homes, but when he was not on the road for work, either we were all at my house, or we were all at Al's house. It just seemed stupid to not combine households!

I had met Al's family in North Dakota way back at Thanksgiving in 1999, and again at Christmas that year, and I was completely bowled over by them! They were SO welcoming, and they made me feel like a member of the family almost right from the start! So, now it's Christmas 2000, and Al and I announced at the Holberg family Christmas that we had decided to get married on June 16, 2001. Everyone was very excited for us, and it was really neat.

I had thought that we could have the wedding at a park in northern Wood County, with a judge to perform the ceremony for us. Then I was talking to my sister in law, Cheryl, and she volunteered their beautiful yard for the wedding. I had thought that I would get a couple of sheet cakes, and was hoping I could talk my cousin Laurie, who is a pastry chef, into doing some flowers or something on it. When I asked her, she said that no, she wouldn't do that, but she WOULD, along with her husband, bake and make a really awesome cake!

I thought I could find a dress off the rack for a wedding dress, and when I showed my sister in law Kim the dress that I liked, and asked her if she thought she could help me with alterations, and she said that she had kind of wanted to make a dress for me! So, off to the fabric store we went. We found fabric, and a pattern that was "OK". By the time Kim was done with it, the dress we had looked NOTHING like the dress on the pattern, but it was absolutely GORGEOUS! I could not have asked for a more perfect dress!

As the big day approached, I was not nervous about the whole wedding and marriage thing, but I WAS worried that it would not be "fun" enough for everyone. I was SO wrong! The day was absolutely beautiful, except for a tiny little wind and rainstorm, which blew down the tent we had for people to eat under. But over all, it was by far, the best day of my life. Al has the same feelings, and that's the story of our family.