Celebrating a special day with chocolate mousse!

This past Tuesday my husband & I celebrated our 14 year wedding anniversary! For me 14 years is easy to believe because we’ve been together longer than that…MUCH longer. My hubby & I have quite the tale to tell about how we met. You see, 21 years ago I was given some very good advice for me at the time by a very dear friend. I was 19, inching my way through community college….1 class at a time, while waitressing full-time. It appeared that a college degree was going to take eons to obtain. Add in a broken heart, and I was MORE than ready to run out and join the United States Navy!! Isn’t that what everyone does??

Put it this way…by the time my plane landed in Orlando, Florida in the middle of the night for boot camp just 3 months later (December 1989), the enormity of what I’d done started to hit me. And when I finally laid my head down to sleep that first night around 2am in a compartment full of 59 other female strangers, I wept silently for the life I had left behind….and all the unknown that laid in wait. You probably can guess what happened next…my 8 weeks and 2 days in boot camp was a life altering experience, and I graduated out feeling I could conquer the world. A bit brainwashed perhaps (ask my cousin!!), but that wore off eventually

Next stop (after 2 glorious weeks of leave back home….not glorious…it felt strange to be without those 59 other female strangers). It’s amazing how attached you get in 2 short months when going through that type of regimen. Anyway….next stop was Great Lakes, Illinois….Waukegan to exact….Naval Training Command. And this is where I met my future husband. It was February…and being stationed right off Lake Michigan…cold would be the understatement of the year. Let’s just say…arctic tundra would adequately describe it. So on February 21, 1990…I met my future husband in “galley indoc” when he tapped me on the shoulder and asked to borrow a pen! My thought as I turned around? Who goes to an orientation without a pen?? Oh the signs of things to come…..LOL!!

So we worked in the galley side by side for several weeks while waiting for our respective trainings to have a spot. We were actually assigned to different tasks, but somehow always stole away to hang out together. We found someone in charge to help out & I have memories of running here or there together. Or walking in for breakfast at 4am, so we could eat before helping to cook the day’s breakfast. It was dark, it was cold (frigid!!), and we’d slip and slide all over the place. My hubby is a native Floridian, so you can imagine how this type of weather impacted him!!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     We became inseparable….not boyfriend/girlfriend….but BEST friends! As we hung out day after day, we got to know each other. We talked, gallivanted around base, and laughed and laughed. And I was NOT there to find a boyfriend. I was there to forget about men. So he was safe, and it was fun…and then I fell…and I fell hard! I certainly fought those feelings. What else could I do? We were both destined to get separate orders to probably 2 separate parts of the world…so the outcome could not be good, could it? Stay tuned for part 2…..and while you ponder our dilemma, try this easy chocolate mousse!

 

A couple notes ~ Please remember to share the recipe with sharing options below (like Facebook or Twitter) if you like it.

Also please take a moment to drop by and vote for Creative Kitchen here . I’ve been nominated for Babble’s Top 100 Food Mom Blogs 2011. Thanks SO much!!

This recipe is linked up with Sundays at One, Monday Mania, Melt in Your Mouth Monday, Mouthwatering Mondays, My Meatless Mondays, Homemaker Monday & Mangia Mondays.