It all began in the wake of Hurricane Irma. One day while in the Supervisor of Elections office doing some computer repairs for work a conversation was struck up about damage done by the storm. Mike was showing some photos of the damage done to the building where he stores his vintage fire trucks to some of the staff. Karen began to ask about the fire trucks and wanted to know if Mike had ever thought about putting either of them in the local Christmas parades. The Elections Office staff had been looking for ideas for their entry in the parades. Karen asked Mike if he would be interested in allowing the Elections staff to use one of his trucks for their entry. Mike gladly agreed.

After the second of the three parades, which was in Sebring, Betty, one of the staff from the office, asked if anyone was interested in going to Dimitri’s for a bite to eat since none of them had dinner yet. Mike readily agreed and with a little prodding by both Betty and Mike, Karen agreed to go along. It was during the course of this outing that Mike found out that during the coming week was Karen’s birthday. So Mike hatched a plan and left some chocolate cup cakes on Karen’s desk.

The following week was the parade at Lake Placid. Mike gave Karen and Betty a ride to the parade in the fire engine. Then after the parade was another trip to Dimitri’s. A few days later Mike got up the courage to ask Karen out to see a movie. To his surprise, she agreed. They decided to go to “The Man Who Invented Christmas”. Unbeknownst to Mike, “A Christmas Carol” was a favorite of Karen’s and held a special place in her heart since she was a child and her father would let the kids stay up on Christmas Eve to watch the movie.

Then came Christmas. Much to Mike’s disappointment Karen would be out of town visiting family for the holiday. But they would get together between the holidays to have a dinner date and exchange gifts. Long nights of texting, messaging and talking on the phone began after that. But the biggest test in mid-January was when Karen had to prepare a batch of chili for a luncheon for her office staff. Some discussion had previously ensued about Mike meeting Karen’s mom. After meeting Karen at Publix to help her pick up the fixings to make the chili he asked if she would like some help fixing it, since he had learned by then that cooking wasn’t one of her favorite pass times. But this would involve going to her mother’s house, and meeting her mom. Both the meeting with mother, and the chili, turned out well. The rest, as they say, is history……. 🙂