Gather, brave souls. We're getting f****** married!

My first meeting with Ash was when we were three and she was staying with her Grandma Ruth in Colville. My mom, Katie, bumped into them at the Safeway and they got to visiting. Somehow Ash had remembered my mom, and then told her Grandma she wanted to go stay the night with her. Thus begins Ash and I's relationship, where my first sight was her cuddled up with my mom on my couch in my house. And as all my family well remembers, I was an extremely patient child. So of course I was not at all frustrated, or jealous, or completely outraged at this unknown little girl. I certainly didn’t scream at her to give my mom back, nor did I attack her and have a mental breakdown about it. Anyways, skip forward a decade and I got to meet Ash for the second time. When my mom decided we should go visit the Tri-Cities for a week to see her friend Erin and the demon child who had previously tried to steal my entire life. As we travelled down there my mom told me all about Erin and Ash, how much fun they were and that I’d love the vacation. Little did I know that when we arrived Ash and I would start hitting it off immediately. She was easy to talk to, fun to be around, and we listened to all the same music. A little suspicious, don’t you think? She asked me directly if I had a girlfriend while we were swimming in the pool. Unfortunately for us I did, and I wasn’t gutsy enough to lie about it. But she took it in stride and we kept hanging out as friends, during which I traumatized her by falling asleep during a horror movie five minutes into the film, leaving her alone to stay up all night. My mom and I visited once more the next year, but despite Ash's best attempts I had (have?) poor communication skills and we didn't see each other until her high-school graduation party. We started talking and picked up right where we left off, and then she offered me a job. She was going to start working for the Forest Service doing Goshawk surveys, where she would be hiking all summer and needed a partner. At 18, I found myself getting paid to hike through the mountains with this cool, attractive girl. I was a little bolder then, and I asked her if she had a boyfriend. She did, and I got to spend the rest of the summer losing my mind. Little did I know she would have broke up with him if I asked. We parted ways after that when she went to college and I joined the Navy. We didn't talk for about a year, but then my childhood friends messaged me asking, "Do you know a girl named Ash?" - and boy did I. She ended up living in Pend Oreille for fishery work during her college summers, and became close with all my best friends from high school. Which was great because I got to see her a couple times when I came home. After this we caught up on the phone once during the Covid-era but that was it. We didn’t talk again until 2023 after my mom had mentioned to me that Ash was working for the Colville tribes. I was living in Australia, riding a bus out of Sydney when her post popped up on my phone and I messaged her that we should catch up the next time I’m home, and the rest is history. Now that you all know the full story you can see it’s been a long time coming. And my mom has been shipping us since day one.