For those that do not know, Robert and I spent almost the first two years of our relationship long-distance. He and I originally connected through an online dating site while he was stationed in Hawaii and I was living in Vancouver, WA. After several weeks of communication, I flew out to Hawaii in March of 2016, and we spent nine magical days in paradise. Unfortunately, it would be months before we saw each other again. In August of that same year, he flew to me and we spent almost two weeks on an epic road-trip travelling the western United States, making stops to visit his family and landmarks along the way. That journey ended with three days up in a secluded cabin at Mt. Hood, Oregon. The next gap in visits would be the hardest as in September of 2016, Robert deployed to Japan where we were not only separated by thousands of miles, but by time as well. After 6 months I once again flew to Hawaii to meet him when he got back from deployment. In March of 2017, Robert's command was relocated to Whidbey Island, WA, only five hours north of where I lived. Taking advantage of our closer distance, I left Portland every Friday night, battled rush hour traffic, and drove to Whidbey just to spend two days with him before returning on Sunday evening. The next stage of our journey began in August of 2017 when we found that his next command would be in Gulfport, MS and I would be going with him. In November, we packed up our lives and our fat cat, and drove for 6 days until we reached the Gulf Coast. It was there that we started to settle, adding two more fur babies to our family and buying a house! Shortly after, Robert popped the question under the magical Christmas lights in New Orlean's Botanical Gardens. The rest, as they say, is history.