Sweet Summertime

Sweet, sweet summertime. My soldier and I have been soaking it up this week. Things seem more simple these days (excluding the two classes I'm still taking). Life is going great.
If I think back to the past 7 or 8 summers (geez...), there are memories of my soldiers of at least half of them. It is crazy to think that he was always there, always on the brim of my life, and I tried to ignore it for so long. I guess it is true that things happen for a reason and all happen to line up perfectly.
- In 2004, my soldier and I met through my brother at a church function. Ironically it was a lock-in so we technically spent the night together the first night we met. We had an instant connection, attraction, whatever you want to call it, and spent hours flirting and playing around and talking all night. We shared our first kiss together that summer. The first kiss for the both of us.
- For the next 2 summers (I think...) we were around each other briefly when we would hang out with mutual friends either at my family's game nights or at a youth group function we were involved with. One summer we almost started dating again. As he put it, we would "sneak off and make out on the golf course". Cute, right? Oh, high school....
- The summer after my senior year of high school, when we were both dating someone else, my soldier called me and insisted he take me to dinner to reconnect. He took me out to a nice dinner and we sat and talked the whole time. It wasn't until right at the end of the night when he told me he decided to enlist. This was such a shock. I didn't even know it was an option. Not only did he enlist, he was leaving for boot camp the next day. I cried the whole night. While he was gone, we wrote a few letters, which I still have.
- The next summer, while deployed, my soldier was hurt. I remember sitting on my bed when I found out the news...via his brother's Facebook. I ran downstairs to my mom, where she was ironing clothes, and cried on her shoulder. I was crying so hard I couldn't even get the words out about what happened. All I could do was stand there and cry.
- The summer after he was hurt, we reconnected yet again. This time, it stuck. In a short amount of time, we knew that this time we were meant to be. After work every day, we would meet up for dinner or a movie and just spend time together. We talked about what life would be like if we decided to date and what it would be like if we didn't. We knew it would be hard if we stayed together, but we knew it would be even more difficult if we didn't stay together.
- That leads us to where we are today. Still together and just absolutely crazy about one another. We love walking around outside just before dark as the fireflies come out. We take picnic lunches by the river. We grill out with our friends. We splash each other in the pool. We like to feel the sand between our toes. We stay up hours later than we should talking and laughing and joking around with each other.
Yes, summer has always been good to us. It has always brought us together for some reason. I hope summers will always be a blissful time in our lives. A time where we can just be together and have so much fun playing around. There's always so much to do during the summer, and I am so glad he is back here to do it all with me.