Some kind of wonderful...

The last 5 years have also been the best 5 years of my life.  And no it's not because I've been married to Ben. 

Haha!  JK! Of course that's why!  Had you going though didn't I?

He was a take charge kinda guy from the beginning and anyone who knows me knows how I feel about a man with a plan.  Plus I'm a total sucker for a man in uniform.  Can't help it, I was just born this way!  There's something about camouflage that attracts me...I wonder if it's my incessant need to use the "hon, I can't see you joke"  Ha!  Cracks me up every time.  I never get tired of using it!

I knew I was in trouble when after our first date/meeting he called me up and invited me to lunch the very next day.  This was no ordinary invite.  The typical guy would say something like 'so are you busy this weekend?  Wanna hang out and do something?'   Boring!  My automatic response is no, followed by some back tracking from saying no too quickly.

This man knew what he was doing...he had a plan.  He gave me an ultimatum.  Little did I know this man with a plan was full of ultimatums.  This particular one was between to restaurants that I got to choose from for lunch. 

Confession: neither place sounded good at the time I was half tempted to suggest something else...but I was so intrigued by his clear cut objective that I couldn't resist choosing one of the options.  It was kind of like being on a game show and having to choose between door #1 and door #2.  I racked my brain about which one to choose!  Thank goodness there were only two options.  What a brilliant man!  How did he know I was so indecisive?? 

After choosing door #2, unless of course it was actually door #1,  we ended up spending an entire day and evening together.  I dragged him to the mall with me where he duped me into believing he was 'a holder' and actually enjoyed shopping with me.  I believed that wholeheartedly until the truth came out after we were married, and I never went to Idaho Falls again.

That's ok, silly man, thought I liked football. Pft haha!  Sucker.

After 3 wedding proposals, one dramatic break up involving a running scene through the kimball building, followed by an equally dramatic make up scene...we finally tied the knot.

Looking back on the past 5 years some of my favorite snapshot memories are:

Ben lowering a fridge over a balcony with his brute strength, chasing me in circles in our Sunrise Apt, picking both me and his cousin Megan up and locking us outside, throwing me over his shoulder and running me up 2 flights of stairs to our Aspen Apt, chasing me at my parents house while saying things like 'if it moves, I chase it!'  fighting over a bag of cheetohs, calling my sister Marie after a fight in which he told me I was selfish, his emu farm idea, his beekeeping idea, his candy machine idea, his alpaca idea, you get the idea.

The list goes on and on.

After 3 short weeks of marriage we moved to Alaska.  Ben went a few days ahead of me to find a place for us to live.  I remember over hearing him telling someone after the fact that he was really stressed those few days in Alaska trying to find a safe/nice place for his new wife to live.  By some stroke of luck Ben found a place for his new wife just an hour before she flew in.  The new wife had no idea he was so worried about providing her with a nice safe place to live.  I guess an army guy like him could live anywhere, but a new wife is a game changer ;)

Those few days apart seemed like forever and I was elated to see my very young handsome husband waiting there for me at the airport.  He took my luggage from me, I hopped on a ferry for the first time ever and we headed off for the remote island that was our new home.

Alaska was love at first sight.  The way the mountain islands popped out of the ocean was breathtaking.  I had never seen anything like that before.  There was wildlife everywhere.  I got used to bald eagles swooping down from the sky right in front of me to scavenge for food.  On my morning walk to work I would see humpback whales waving their tales at me, and I would hear reports from the tourists about all the bears and killer whales they had seen that day.

A picture of us camping as we made our way back from Alaska.