Valentines day is coming and I received great news!  My guy FINALLY is off restriction.  This means he gets his privileges back, which include taking OPP's and pass to leave post and come see me.  I am so excited for this, and not because Valentines day is right around the corner, but because this means I don't have to spend the 2+ hours driving up to him.
On the note of Valentine's day....I actually hate this holiday.  I should wake up everyday with a smile on my face and be happy to have people in my life that love me.  Saint Valentine is a martyr in the Roman Catholic Church and has nothing to do with people being in love and celebrating love, mostly in a physical relationship.  Valentine's day was created in around the Middle Ages and managed to manifest its way in to mainstream culture generation after generation, which has made me dislike it.  I would rather have everyday be special and exciting, rather than have a commercialized holiday be the day I am lavished with gifts, told I am extremely loved and then have cliche passionate, romantic sex after dinner.  However, I am pretty sure he plans on coming to see me that weekend, but I do not plan on doing anything special.  I actually have a track meet on that Saturday the 15th, that I am hoping to participate in, and maybe he can finally see me in action :)

a promise is a promise

So when me and my boyfriend first started talking we decided we would write letters to each other.  One of the main reasons I wanted to write letters is because they are so personal and you can really just write what ever you feel at that moment.  I also wanted him to be able to have letters when he one day gets deployed, so whenever he needs a pick me up he will be able to look back at letters from all times of our relationships, the good and the bad.  So the promise we made is to always write a letter, I write him one and he responds and then I respond....we've started to write a list of all the dates on our bucket list, some of them include: skydiving, visiting Plattsburgh, and going to a rodeo (which was suppose to happen in January but we were already on our cruise).  I'm originally from a midwest city and he is from a mid-size town in Montana so we both have some country roots.  He can hunt and I can fish, so I think it's a perfect match :)
Anyways not only do we have a list of dates we want, we also include 2-3 questions in our letters for us to respond to and then create our own.  This might be my favorite part because we ask questions as serious as "What are your two biggest fears about me" which he answered he was afraid something bad would happen during my brain operation that I had in August and that I might make a bad choice one day that could break us apart and then we ask other questions like "What's the grimiest thing you've ever done?"  I will leave out the answers to those, because we both have our fair share of college stories, even though his college is MUCH different than mine.  We always manage to remember to date each letter and to include quotes from our favorite country songs, "Dancin in your wooden shoes in a wedding gown", one of the songs we danced to on his balcony one night in the summer.  Probably one of my favorite memories, because it was one of the last nights I would see him for a while, and it was a beautiful clear night and the stars were heavenly, I also cried a few times, but he held me close and played this song.

spend the night together

My boyfriend is amazing.  For Christmas he got us a 7 day cruise on the Royal Caribbean, of course he spent months before asking me if a cruise would be okay, and I kept saying NO!  I know you're thinking what the heck is wrong with you?!?! I just felt that it was too much and I would have been okay with just a pair of socks or a weekend to Kansas City to see my best friend Darcy (check out her blog), but when he explained to me why he wanted to go on a cruise I finally accepted it.  His reasoning was because we don't get to see each other regularly like most couples he thought a week away would help make up for the days we don't get to see each other.  And for that I am grateful.  We spent a beautiful 7 days, we left from the Port of New Orleans, docked at Key West, which of course we found a bar that had the black lager from the one and only theChive.  Then our boat headed its way to Nassau and then CoCo Kay.  It was one of the best vacations I've ever had and I can't wait for the many more to come.
He gets off restriction soon, which means he can finally come visit me, and we can finally spend some date nights in New York City!  I've been waiting for this day since we had our first date, which was in the city.  Speaking of our first date, it was actually the first time we EVER met in person.  That story will come later though :)

Happy Friday

and so it begins

I began my college career wanting to be a psychiatrist and here I am four years later graduating with a degree in Sociology and the dream of working in baseball operations.  I am pretty sure I never would have seen this life coming and to make it even more difficult, I have fallen in love with an Army cadet.
I guess it doesn't make it difficult, just complicated.  Knowing that I will spend my life moving around, waiting by the computer and the mailbox, and never knowing what could happen has really changed my perspective on the world. Even more so it has made me re-evaluate the life choices I made before I met him. 

I'm one of the lucky ones, for now at least.  My boyfriend is only a short 98 mile drive from school, which means I can see him any weekend I have free.  The only down fall this past semester was that he was under restriction, which meant that he couldn't leave post.  So every time I wanted to see him I had to make the drive up there, which 98 miles doesn't seem too bad, except I have to drive through New York City in order to get to him, and for those of you who have never driven in NYC, it is a highway engineers WORST nightmare.  So sometimes it can take 3 hours to get up there and not to mention having to drive back to school 6 hours after I get up to West Point.  It is a journey I have been willing to make and is always worth it in the end.  I think I went up there at least once a month from September until now and was able to spend three weekends at the lovely Thayer Hotel, which if you have the money I would highly recommend spending a night there.

Until Next Time