Full of Surprises.

This past year has been a complete 180 from where I thought I might be at this point. Everything has changed for the better in every way, I have completed my Master's, I have a full time job that fell into my lap, I have the opportunity to save up my money before leaving my wonderful roommate to live on my own, I am continuing to live near my friends, and best of all I have dated my boyfriend Blake for almost an entire year now.

From this:

To this:

A whole year of going back and forth from Oregon to Arizona to Colorado and soon to Vegas. A lot of traveling to keep up this long distance relationship but it has been one of the most exciting years of my short little life. A lot of surprises that I never saw coming. 

Blake and I have actually known each other since the summer of July 2004. Our families were both new to Utah and we were expected to be neighbors. I met him out at the pool and thought he was the cutest guy I'd ever seen. We became really close friends and had feelings for each other that we couldn't place. Or at least I couldn't and wasn't necessarily ready for. I didn't want to lose his friendship if something went wrong and things usually went wrong with my relationships ( if you could even call them that). 

Here is when he came to my highschool Christmas Formal:

Eventually my family moved to Arizona and I began college. We tried to keep in touch but it was hard, especially when we had our own lives going on. After I graduated and my parents moved to Alaska, I was staying up there for the summer and Blake and I reconnected. We would Skype all the time and I started to realize that I wanted to be more than just his 'best friend'. We had decided that when he and his father were going to be in Arizona for a fraternity conference, that they should come down for the night so we could see each other. 

That night changed our friendship into something more when Blake told me he wanted to be with me and had wanted to for a long time. When I told him that I felt the same way there was a new issue to deal with, the distance. We decide to be in a hypothetical relationship because it would be too hard to maintain anything across the country. But when he came down for a week in August, things were finally made official on the 30th. The reality of the situation was starting to set in but became increasingly worse through this past year through trying to see each other as much as possible.

As hard as the distance is, though, I believe it will only makes us better in the end. I lost some of my independency in college and the distance was helping me to learn to stand on my own two feet, even when I have someone to carry me sometimes. It has been a crazy year but I don't think I could have done it with anyone else. 

That's pretty much the story of how we met and why we are together now (maybe plus or minus a few details...). BUT its pretty close :)

The distance is obviously hard day-to-day but even more so when special occasions such as birthdays and holidays are missed. This year my birthday was on a Tuesday this ast month and since I had already started working full time and Blake was in summer school, I knew having him come visit just wasn't going to work out. This summer has been the longest time we were going to go without seeing each other, a whole 3 months.

Well my birthday comes and goes and I never got so much as a card from Blake, so of course I'm thinking "whadaheck"? Well he insists that there is a package in the mail that should have been there by now so he is sorry it didn't make it in time. Okay, I can wait for it. He also said that since our weeks were so busy we should set up a time to have a Skype date for a couple hours where we have enough to time to maybe eat dinner together (oh yeah, this is what our lives in long distance have come to) and maybe watch a movie. So that was decided to happen after I got home for work on Friday.

The work day was long and miserable and when I walk in the door I am hustling around because I don't want him to be waiting around for me. When I walk past the kitchen, the roommate yells "Your package is here!" So I am excited but still trying to hurry. I walk out of my room and into the living room to see Coco going nuts and she scratches my leg, this is what happened next:

Biggest surprise of my life. I had no idea, none whatsoever. Also I sound like the biggest whiner when I am yelling at the poor dog who is only freaking out because of the strange man in her house.

Isn't my boyfriend just the best in the whole world? The funniest thing was that even though Blake was standing right in front of me, I was still feeling like I needed to rush to get onto the computer for our date!

Total shock. Best weekend ever.

Boom. Posted.