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Thirteen

Kevin & Amanda, March 22, 2002Kevin & Amanda, March 22, 2002. The 1-year anniversary of our first date.

Last Sunday kevinandamanda.com turned THIRTEEN years old! Thirteen! This site is officially a teenager! I’ve told parts of this story before, but in case you’ve ever wondered, here’s the full story on how I started blogging. :)

Kevin bought me the domain name kevinandamanda.com while we were still dating for the one year anniversary of our first date. I had already had a little webpage as a hobby for several years at the time, back before “blog” was a word. But I had been sharing photos, travel, and anything that interested my teenage self on my little homemade webpage for years.

See, when I was in high school, way before I met Kevin, I was in a government club. We went to state capitals, Washington DC, and even New York City for week-long meet ups. The other kids in the club were from all over the United States, and we would only see each other at these events. But we would meet up several times a year, spend a week in close quarters, and thus form strong bonds. We wanted a way to keep in touch after the trip was over.

I took TONS of pictures on disposable cameras (I’ve always loved taking photos!), and when I got home I wanted a way to share them with everyone. Now, we had email back then, but that was literally just about it. The internet existed, but we didn’t have sites like Facebook or Flickr yet. Heck, we didn’t even have MySpace or LiveJournal back then! You couldn’t just click “Upload” to post a picture on the internet. You had to write code. But basic, simple webpages DID exist, and I thought, “I’m going to figure out how to make one of those so I can keep in touch and share these photos!”

I created an account on Geocities (basically the Blogger or Blogspot of its time) and set up two pages. One would be my main page, and one was my “test” page. I would find webpages I liked, look at their code, and copy the code onto my test site. Of course I had no idea what the code meant or did. It was basically like looking at a foreign language. But I would make small changes, to see what they did, until it either did something I wanted or it completely broke the page. Through trial and error, I learned how to upload images and add text, and my little webpage began. Throughout high school I shared all our fun trips and adventures with the government club, and basically just anything else I thought was cool. I kept it up through college just sharing photos of anything my friends and I were up to. It was basically a Facebook or Instagram page. If we’d had something like that back then, I’m 99% positive kevinandamanda.com wouldn’t exist. But when I met Kevin, he definitely knew I had a little webpage and I loved messing around with it.

Fast forward a year. It was the one year anniversary of our first date. I had never been in a relationship that long before. That afternoon, Kevin casually asked me if I’d ever thought about getting my own domain name for my webpage. Of course I had. It was basically at the top of my wishlist. But back then personal domain names were kind of expensive, and my site was really only a hobby. What I had was fine, but admittedly limited, and Kevin knew I was bummed sometimes about the restrictions of a free site. So he asked me what domain name I would choose, and without hesitation I said “kevinandamanda.com”. With a twinkle in his eye, he casually said, “Let’s check to see if it’s taken yet.” So we go to the computer, me standing over his shoulder, and he types it in. Back then we didn’t have high speed internet, a 28k dialup modem was about as fast as you could get. So it took awhile for the page to load, but I could tell that there was already something there. Oh man! Kevinandamanda.com is already taken! :(

But when the page fully loaded, here’s what I saw:

Countdown to the happiest day of my life.

It was a countdown to our wedding day.

“Surprise,” he whispered.

He’s always had a talent for showing his affection through romantic, thoughtful gifts.

Click here to take a peek at what Kevin & Amanda has looked like over the years!

Thanks so much for reading. Have a great weekend!

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15 Responses
  1. Lucy

    I tell you … you need to clone that man of yours;-D You two are truly a match made in Heaven!!!
    I’ve loved your blog for years … thank you so much for sharing your wonderful travels, stories and life with us. I’m so lucky to have you in my life!!!

  2. bonnie morgan

    So romantic. You are a great team. Congratulations on your 13th!
    We have celebrated 43 and time flies so savor every year.

  3. Sarah @ Will Run for Pasta

    Congrats on turning 13!! You were one of the first blogs I discovered and I’ve read your story before but it still made me tear up just now, he’s so sweet!

  4. Jen F

    Happy blogaversary! I remember discovering your page through a LiveJournal community that specialized in identifying fonts — someone was looking to i.d. one of the Fonts for Peas and I knew I had to check them out at the source! Thank you for sharing your photos, fonts, and other creations, and for letting us into your life for the last 13 years. :)

  5. Senika @ Foodie Blog Stalker

    WOW! Happy blog-a-versary! LOVE hearing {reading} people’s blog-ventures. Such a fun, romantic, incredible story you have :) Looking forward to keeping up with your next 13 years, cheers!

  6. Averie @ Averie Cooks

    I knew you had been blogging about 10 years, had no idea it was over 10! I loved hearing this story too. I knew he had bought you the domain but I love hearing how you have always been into ‘blogging’ long before it was even a word, tinkering around with codes and all. Wow, so cool and huge congrats!!

  7. Lynne

    Charming story! I’ve kept up with your blog for a while now, probably 5 years or so, and I really love your postings. Congratulations on 13 years!

  8. Anele @ Success Along the Weigh

    Happy Blog Anniversary! May the teen years be far more kind than if it was a child going into the same phase! ;-)

  9. Jeanette

    Lovely photo of the two of you! Great gift idea Kevin. I have been following your travels & have really enjoyed seeing some areas of the World I have not been too. Thank you for taking the time to post.

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Meet Kevin & Amanda

Kevin and Amanda

We love to travel and to eat! Here we share our favorite quick and easy recipes, plus travel tips and guides for our favorite places around the world. If you have any questions about what camera I use or how I edit my photos, check out my photography tutorials.

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