The "D Word"

This is one of my favorites from the wedding - that "trying not to laugh" face is a classic :)

I promised I would be updating more soon and the time has come.  I took my last final of the semester today.  I will be graduating from nursing school in exactly one year.  Zack and I are still doing the long-distance thing since we got married.  He is deploying very soon so since my nursing school is 2 hours away from Ft. Hood, it was not logical to move in together with a deployment starting only a couple of months after we got married.

First off, I want to say that I'm positive that I've found my dream profession.  We had a couple of people drop out this semester because they felt like nursing school consumed their entire lives and it might not be what they want to do.  It's true that nursing school consumes your life.  Sometimes it's stressful to pack up and go see Zack (which I always do, regardless of the stress).  These past few months have involved traveling most weekends to see Zack, putting together an entire wedding by myself in March, surviving nursing school, learning how to be married, and preparing for a deployment. I figure that once Zack is deployed, I'll appreciate that nursing school consumes all of my time.  I even got elected for vice president of my class (because, you know, I don't have enough going on).  I'm really excited about all the activities involved with being an officer and I am so thankful for all of my wonderful classmates, who I consider to be good friends.

So now back to Zack.  I mentioned he would be deploying very soon.  The down side is that we still only have a 6 day span as to the exact day that he will deploy.  The up side is that since I'm done with finals, I can spend every possible moment with him until he deploys.  Preparing for a deployment has definitely been a roller coaster.  First, I let the wedding consume all of my concerns and purposely pushed the deployment out of my head.  After the wedding, I focused on the fact that I needed to finish strong for this semester in nursing school.  Unfortunately this method has resulted in random bursts of bawling with little warning.  Now, however, I'm just so happy to be with him that I'm feeling better.  I know this deployment will be rough.  A year away from my husband is completely incomprehensible to me.  Honestly, I can't imagine a man more worth it though.  And on the bright side, we have so many amazing things to look forward to when he comes home!  The game plan is as follows: I graduate from nursing school and become an RN during the same month he comes home, we will finally get to move in together :), we're going to Vegas again because we absolutely loved it, and we're going to get a new puppy.  I'm so glad that I have an amazing husband and so much to look forward to!

Love, Heather

xo