N & E

So there I was, visiting the Black Hills of South Dakota in the summer of 2023. They certainly aren't the Rockies, but they're good enough. One of the evenings I was there, in the typical Gen-Z 21-year-old way, I was swiping away on Tinder to ease my boredom. What I didn't expect during my 15 minutes of swiping was that I would end up finding my soulmate, my wonderful wife Ella who I would then go on to have a wonderful baby girl, Olive with. After we had matched, we had agreed to hang out. After I had left my hotel room, I was letting Ella know I was on the way to come get her, but get this, while I was on the way, this girl had the nerve to tell me "Oh golly gee, I'm not sure if I have the bandwidth to hang out tonight, I have a project due." After a miniscule amount of convincing, she decided to give that night a try. After I had picked her up, I just started driving, and driving, and driving some more while we were talking. Before you know it, we were outside of town (It's Rapid City, leaving town isn't saying much). Ella had asked me where we were going to which I responded, "I have no idea, I don't know where I even am right now." We had a wonderful evening of talking and I thoroughly enjoyed talking and spending time with Ella that night. However, *pause* on the way back, I had finally mentioned that I was in the Air Force to her. There's plenty of responses to finding out the man you're talking to is in the armed forces. One response is: "Thank you for your service." Another response is "What do you do? What is your job like?" Ella's response went something like this: "If I had known you were in the military, I probably wouldn't have come to see you tonight." So naturally, after I dropped her off, I forgot about her. Give or take a few months, she had posted things on her social media that interested me, so I talked to her about them, but it wasn't anything too serious. We talked on and off for a little while before we finally started talking consistently. The turning point was me joking around about Ella coming out to Colorado to see me and her essentially inviting herself out to which I had no objection. The time we spent in Colorado was the glue that had sealed our relationship and after that we had started making trips back and forth to see each other. Fast forward 15 minutes into our relationship, it was the holidays and Ella, and I's Christmas present came a couple days early. We had found out Ella was pregnant, and the rest is history.

Have you ever met someone and thought “I am going to spend the rest of my life with this person”? Because I have. It was June of 2023, and I was hard at work closing up the store that I worked in at the mall (not actually working hard at all). My coworker Marissa and I thought it would be fun to take a break from cleaning to mess around on my Tinder account. I didn't think anything would really happen (nothing ever did because I honestly didn't really like actually meeting up with people). But what would you know I matched with this guy with extremely blonde hair and interesting fashion sense. Later that night Noah and I began to talk when he asked if I wanted to go on a drive, I decided "why not?", but as soon as he told me he was on his way to pick me up I got nervous and decided I wasn't really sure that I wanted to go. So, I lied. I told him "I actually have a project due tonight and I'm not sure if I can hang out tonight". Noah thinks that he convinced me to change my mind that night, however as soon as I said it, I regretted it and had already decided that I would be hanging out with him. Noah picked me up and we started driving. As we were driving, I noticed that he had a super nice car so I figured I would ask what Noah did for work, that's when he told me he was in the AirForce. I am sure my response could have gone many different directions; however, I choose to be funny and respond with "well if I had known that I wouldn't have met up with you tonight." however what was just a joke to me (because I have delt with my fair share of cocky-full-of-themselves Military boys before) was actually an insult to Noah. In my mind the rest of the drive had gone on without a scratch, so imagine my disappointment the next day when Noah started to ghost me. While I was a bit disappointed at first, I soon forgot about it and got sucked into the motions of everyday life. Until a few months later when Noah and I reconnected over a Krooked Kings song that he had posted on his story. This time I knew I was not going to let him ghost me again. In fact, I made him facetime me one night using the excuse that I wanted him to see my family's new puppy (shout out Grayson) but in reality, I just wanted to talk to him myself. Soon enough Noah was talking to me about how not many of his friends would go out to Colorado to actually see and hang out with him, so I decided to use this as my in. Now Noah will say that I invited myself out, however this is not true, Noah invited me out... after I baited him to. A few weeks later I went and spent a long weekend in Colorado and really this weekend just solidified our relationship. From there I decided I needed to find my own apartment so that Noah could come visit me whenever he wanted/whenever he was actually allowed to come see me. So that is exactly what I did, and in the beginning of December 2023 I had signed a 6-month lease at the Estes Park Apartments. Later in December I had decided to invite Noah to spend Christmas with my family since he had told me previously that his family was not super big on Christmas, and so Noah made the trek up to South Dakota and spent Christmas with my family. However, Noah and I got an early Christmas surprise when we found out that I was pregnant on December 23rd.

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