Engaged - May 26th

For those who may not already know, I got engaged to the man pictured above (we don't have any pictures of the two of us together yet, we'll get to that eventually). We met at Ft. Huachuca, on the temple trip I wrote about on here a few months back. So yes, it's been fast. Faster than either of us ever intended on moving. We've now become one of those annoying couples that say things like "well once you know it's right, why wait?" I never in a million years thought that I'd hear myself echoing those sentiments, particularly since I secretly regarded people who did say that as idiots. To make things worse, we met at AIT. Drill Sgts. started issuing warning about AIT relationships back in basic training. During the first briefing I attended at Ft. Huachuca an officer stood up and delivered a lengthy speech about not involving ourselves in romantic relationships at AIT. By all accounts they are distracting, lead to bad behavior, are costly, and are ultimately desitined for failure, and heaven help the stupid soldiers who go so far as to actually marry their significant other from AIT. Apparently I am an idiot, because I'm still convinced we're the exception, and that I met my one and only at AIT.

So a little bit about him...his name is Justin, he's enlisted in Idaho National Guard, and lives in Boise for the time being. He is a little bit younger than me so he's got some schooling ahead of him and he will start at USU in January. The good news is that this also means that I outrank him. (Although for the most part whenever I try to pull rank he blantantly disregards my authority over him. We'll work on making him a better soldier with more respect for his superiors.) He graduated from AIT a while back, and returned to Idaho, while I remain trapped in TRADOC. We periodically get to see each other on 4-days, but for the most part we're restricted to self-inflicted sleep deprivation from our evening/late night phone calls. (My roommate threatened to Nair my eyebrows off in my sleep if I don't start cutting the phone calls a little bit shorter, so that's something to consider going forward.) It sucks, but we make the best of it. I don't know what else to say about him, other than he puts up with me, and even professes to enjoy our limited time together.

On May 26th we'll be sealed in the Bountiful temple in Utah, over one of my 4-days and we will finally get to be together again. It's a pain in the neck trying to plan a wedding (I hate planning what to pack in my suitcase for vacation, and now I'm expected to plan a wedding from an Army base in nowhere Arizona...not going well at all...), but I can't wait for him to be my husband, so I'm determined to get this all figured out. With a LOT of assistance from the home front I'll make sure we pull this off, because he is the only man that makes me want to ditch the last minute vacations, live on a budget, answer to someone else, and basically just grow up and act like an adult.