And I’d do it all again

Nolin & Lydia

Our first date was a couple days before Nolin had to go back to California. He was home on leave before his 7 month long deployment to Japan. He took me out bowling (don’t ask who won) and showed me Pike’s Peak.

Throughout deployment we kept talking to each other as much as we could. For a 3 month period, we could only talk every 2-3 weeks due to the ship moving to dock in different countries. We wrote letters for each other during the weeks we couldn’t talk.

Nolin wanted to wait to asked me to be his in person. He asked me out after picking him up from the airport and at this point we haven’t seen each other in person for 8 months! At around 1am while we were driving back home from the airport he turned to me and asked, “Can you do me a favor? Will you be my girlfriend?”

This time consisted of countless FaceTime calls, falling asleep while on the phone together, love letters, and a lot of trips to California.

Nolin took me to Black’s Beach (which is a tradition of ours). Everything was what we normally do… he made a fire while I yapped his ear off, had a couple sandwiches while listening to the waves, and we danced on the beach to our favorite songs. He asked me to dance with him and we played our song. Then while we were dancing he told me how much he loved and got down on one knee. Obviously, I said yes!