I did not believe in "love at first sight" in addition to being rather "jaded" by a previous relationship which left me deeply wounded. This attitude and belief ruled my heart for 12 years until I met a very special lady one day. It was a very routine early June workday in Pocatello, Idaho at the office for me, so I decided to go to the company breakroom and acquire a badly needed refreshment (Coca Cola the drink of champions?). So here I am joking with some friends as usual and I turned around to see who I might be embarassing myself in front of and I "see" this beautiful lady with dark skin and dark eyes looking at me. The moment our eyes locked and I saw her smile it was as if I had been hypnotized, dumbstruck or any other euphemism to describe my condition! I was unable to concentrate on nothing else the rest of the day but this "mystery lady" and I knew at that very moment that I had to do whatever I could to find out who she was and ascertain if she was interested in me at all? So I set out on my quest for the love of my life! I was able to discover what area she worked in and I also found out she was from Mexico, she was getting trained on an assembly process here in the States to use for manufacturing parts at a plant in Mexico which also belongs to our corporation. I also was informed that she did not speak any English! This was interesting since I did not speak any Spanish at the time? However the only common language we needed was the love we discovered for each other, she fell in love with me when she first saw me I later found out? So I took her out on a date with a couple who were friends of mine and happened to be bilingual! We are now engaged and I am learning Spanish and she is learning English we are getting married in Magdalena, Sonora, Mexico in December with a honeymoon in Hawaii. We now converse almost daily via the computer(she lives in Mexico currently) using an instant messenger program with a little help from an interpreter program! A little love mixed with some Spanglish and it can happen to you!

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Secret Love

Do you know what it is like to spend over half a year living in a cold frozen tundra? Our ceilings in our upstairs bedrooms "creek" from ice build-up on the roof. Our windows have frost on them (that's on the inside of the house), we use a scraper to remove the ice in winter. Our backs ache from shoveling snow and we are cold all of the time. We work almost two weeks a month just to pay our heat bills every month, and my husband has arthritis from being so cold. What keeps us going? Cherishing our wonderful memories and our "secret love"-HAWAII!! We listen to Hawaiian music, have Hawaiian art on our walls, we collect old Hawaiian movie posters and dolls, and have even practiced some of the language. We had our honeymoon over in Oahu, and our secret love is calling us back. Our beautiful honeymoon was cut short due to a severe family crisis. We need to recapture the moment of the greatest night of our lives. The precious people, the darling keiki, the sunrise on Diamond Head, Waikiki, the surf, full moon on the Pacific, ships in the harbour, fine food, luaus, the North Shore, rainbows, and the exciting helicopter ride are just a little bit of the bigger picture. Oh dear, our little "Secret Love" is out of the bag. But that's okay. Even our answering machine says "ALOHA", and everyone that knows us, knows that our true love is awaiting us in Hawaii......calling, calling, calling....the dream, the romance, the secret love.. !

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Heaven on Earth: Hawaii

I will never forget the night that Brian came into my life. I was just 24 at the time and a nurse working the evening shift in the Orthopedic unit when we received a call from the Emergency unit saying that they were sending up a young man who had been in a motorcycle accident ... though conscious he was in pretty bad shape and was listed as critical. I can remember the fear in his eyes when I introduced myself. I said "Hi Brian, I'm Pat, do you know where you are?" He looked at me,smiled,and took my hand and his first words to me were,"I never knew that angels had green eyes." With those words he lapsed into unconsciousness and I stayed with him holding his hand until they took him up to surgery.

Brian was a law student who was visiting Hawaii for the first time and had rented a motorcycle that fateful day ... I was a young Canadian nurse who had come to Hawaii for a vacation and loved it so much,decided to stay.

Brian came through the surgery that night and during his long recovery we fell in love. Brian always said that he fell in love with me the first night when he looked into my eyes, and he insisted he would never have made it that night without his angel next to him. He said that Hawaii was paradise and fate had sent him there to meet his angel. We were married two weeks after Brian was released from the hospital.

That was 44 years ago now and although we did move back to Canada, we returned to our paradise every year. Now as my plane is about to land in Hawaii there are tears in my eyes. Tears of joy and tears of sadness. The seat beside me is empty ... Brian died last week of cancer ... we were hoping to spend one last time in our paradise but even with his angel by his side he could not cheat death this time. I was holding his hand when he died and although he was too weak to speak, I know we were both thinking of the night when we first met.

My darling Brian, I am bringing your ashes back to the place where we met and fell in love, our Heaven on Earth:Hawaii.

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Letters of love

Kevin and I met through a letter when I was 15 years old.He was a 18 year old Marine in Okinawa. I had a friend who wrote Operation Dear Abby and was writing him and some of his friends. She asked if I wanted to write any of them and I chose him from his picture.... I just knew..He says he knew too from my first letter that he was going to marry me.

We were pen pals for 5 years before we met and got married. Nothing elaborate, just a justice of the peace, and no money for a honeymoon.But that did not matter..We had eachother.

We just had our 15 year anniversary recently. He is in Iraq and could not be home, but that did not stop him from surprising me. In the middle of a war area,he still thought of me.He called the states and had flowers sent to me at home, all the way from Iraq, via satellite phone. He also called me,although very brief, and asked me to Marry him again. He promised we would do it when he came home....And we will. We would love to have that honeymoon we never had in Hawaii.

Although we met through letters years ago,they keep us together today.In a war zone and through months apart, our words of love is what keeps us going until we can be together again.I am so grateful to have a love that grows stronger, even through the hardship and heartache of separation. Just hearing his voice, or seeing his handwriting on paper is all I need to get me through until we can be together again.

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2 kids in love