She fell in Love with an Aussie? and... has a "Modern Family?"

Yes, it's true I fell in love with an Aussie. I have always liked the idea of falling in love with a foreigner and making the ultimate sacrifice of moving away from home. Of course, when I first dreamed this up I was at summer church camp, at the age of 12, wanting to move into one of the overnight cabins so that I could "see my friends whenever I wanted", and had no real concept of sacrifice. None-the-less, my 12 year old prophecy (or my partner, since he is the one that moved here...) came true!

Meet Adam...

Handsome, over the top, sports loving adventurer with
a genuine heart, a fast mind, and a loud voice!

I met Adam just over two years ago. Its funny because I always tell people that we met on Tinder, but thats only half true. I was working downtown doing marketing for a tech company. Our building was located in an area where "The Flash" a CW network show often does filming. A friend and I were on our way to get a matcha shake when were were stopped by a film crew and told to wait before we could pass. This is when I first saw Adam. I noticed that he was wearing a grey super villain outfit, and I actually stopped to watch. Of course, I thought nothing of it really, and continued on with my day. The friend that I was with is very intuitive and later told me that she thought it was "meant to be" by the way that I was focused on the filming. You just never know when you are going to meet (or see) someone special!

Its funny because Adam's account of the story is (sort-of) similar. He noticed me as well but... If I am being totally honest he actually "noticed two hot blondes" that day. Haha, but I can wipe that part of the story from the record right?

I had recently dowloaded the tinder App. For those who don't know, Tinder is location based online dating app that allows you to swipe right on people you find interesting and attractive or swipe left on people you don't. If both parties swipe right, then you have a match. 

I wish I still had Adam's tinder profile to post, it was so funny/enduring, mostly acting head shots (of course lol!), a pic with his family and then a cute (genuine) little blurb about himself. Compared to most profiles, it was actually pretty good. The worst profile I have ever read was (Sorry Bro!) from my brother circa 2006 when his leading line was that he was a "hiphop deejay," and his finishing line (after 2 long paragraphs written with a "gangsta" theme,) was "BOOM!" OMG. The funny thing is Aaron (my bro) is such an intellect and that is about 5% of his personality. You just have to laugh at that. "Boom!" Oh my gosh, too much!

Adam and I both swiped right and matched. Unfortunately (or fortunately for Adam) I was not that active on tinder. I was working crazy hours, and had Aurora, and travelling a bit, so I didn't really check tinder all that much. Adam actually had messaged me 3 times with nice "how are you" type messages before I responded to his fourth one "So... I guess I should have opened with a joke message!" His persistent nature (a constant theme in his life) really paid off here.

Our second hockey date.                                                                  

We set up some time to go on a date at a drink bar downtown called Probation. It's kind of a swanky, oldschool bar, neither of us had been, so we decided to go there. I remember walking into the bar and chatting with the hostess about the fact that I was nervous and on a tinder date. She thought it was cute and sat me at a really nice table. She also offered to come check on me at the one hour mark and offer to get the bill if things were going downhill. (What a gem - I could have used her for other tinder dates... but lets save that for another blog!)

I was so nervous sitting there waiting for Adam. He was 10 mins late (this should have been a sign of the future!). But I have to tell you, the second that we started chatting the nerves left. My first thought "What a babe!"

Adam joked on our first date not to ever worry about awkward silences. He we would never have nothing to chat about and he was right! Again - another ongoing theme in our relationship. We chatted for 4 hours at the bar and then after that for one hour at Starbucks. After that, he walked me back to my car. As we were walking next to each other our hands would slightly brush, we were both leaving them there until the other person grabbed it. It just so happened that we got bumped a bit and Adam grabbed my hand. I am such a romantic at heart so of course, I got butterflies in my stomach and my cheeks probably went pathetically pink. When we finally got to my car, Adam kissed me.  (Remember when I said I was hopeless) I honestly thought it was the best first kiss, his account is the same. On my way home, I called my brother and his girlfriend at the time and just gushed about our date. 

           His first skiing in Canada.                                          

Our second date was super cute. Adam decided that he was going to plan something. He took me skating at Robson Square downtown Vancouver. Quite the choice for an Aussie who grew up with no snow! He was HILARIOUS. He had the initial skill of the kids skating around, but then improved as the night went on. But, a bad skater is a good reason to hold onto someone... right? (Hopless, I told you!)

On this date he asked me questions that really attracted me to his person. These are things that are very important to Adam, for example"What do you think about Gay marriage." Right away I knew that we had some very core values in common. Adam and I were quite literally joined at the hip from that point on. We hung out about 2-3 times that week and pretty much every single week since.

Since Adam was from Australia, finding someone with a quick connection was a bit scary. The first time he told me he loved me wasn't really quite the romantic experienced I had imagined. It was about 3 months into the relationship and he turned to me with a super pained looked in his eye's and said "I think I'm falling in love with you, that's why today was tough." I was a bit confused at the time, but this was before I understood that Adam was such a tortured soul picturing 10 years in the future and imagining a life in CAD VS AUS. Eventually I understood and without hesitation committed to countless trips to AUS. (I mean who doesn't want a lifetime full of Aussie trips?)

Another area that Adam considered was my daughter, and so he should, it's a pretty big deal!

From my post divorce dating experience, I have learned that a lot of men romanticize the thought of dating a woman with a kid. They feel that in someway's Mom's need rescuing from the single Mom life. They don't realize that it comes with a lot of work, that the Mom will always put the child first, and that most of the time it requires a high level selflessness. SO while in theory rescuing sounds like a lot of fun, sure, the single Mom's of the world need someone to take their groceries in or be taken out on dates... but in reality, its a lot work.

Adam met Rory about 4 months in. We definitely have had ups and downs. At first she loved him because he was new, then for a solid year it was ups and down of liking and feeling very uncomfortable and threatened by him. We would have good days and bad days. Adam, myself, JC and Kim (My Ex and Aurora's Step Mom) all gathered together and worked very hard to assess and understand issues and try and address them. We collectively came up with a game plan that involved five main items:

Dealing with this stuff together is the foundation of what we call our "Modern Family." We collectivly want Aurora first and foremost to be well taken care of we all really work together to make that happen.

After implementing our top five items for, I kid you not, about 2 weeks... everything just... got easier. Aurora now loves Adam and we still try and secure her thinking with the top five items.

This is one of my MOST favourite pics.
We love to celebrate everything... This was our
Dec 1 celebration!

As you can imagine though, this time with Aurora has challenged Adam and pushed all his limits but it has really grown him. Something I love about Adam and drives me nuts about him is that he is a thinker. His mind goes about 10 million miles a minute and he weights out ever scenario in his mind. So this was a doozy, but we made it. It makes me love him even more. I feel very lucky.

BIG shout out to step parents here. Its not an easy job, and when you are flexible and love our kids (or at least try to (lol) am I right?!) Its such a huge deal. Being a child of a step parent myself, I now look back and go... "Omg my god - what did I put them through!"


Nowadays, Adam and I have this connection that we care about each others soul. We are both quite strong people so we definitely challenge each other. We both have a common need to adventure in life, common values and are attracted to each other. He hates it when I say he's my best friend because he says that take the romance out of things.... But he really is.

BFF <3 

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this post feel free to share!

Steph XX