Hi everyone! For those of you who don't know me, you are probably curious about my ethnic background. My dad is originally from India and my mom is originally from Sri Lanka. I was born in Kuwait and moved to Connecticut when I was less than 2 years old. I have one older brother, Ryan who is married to my sister in law, Kasuni, and they both live in CT. I was raised Catholic and spent most of my life in Connecticut up until graduate school, which I completed in NYC. I joined the Army as a physician assistant immediately after I was done with school, and moved to Texas for my Basic Officer Leadership Course (BOLC) where I met Jake. We had a couple amazing months together and then parted ways, me to Killeen, Texas, Jake to the island of Oahu. That initial goodbye was devastating because neither of us thought we would see each other again, even though our connection was so strong and natural. Clearly our initial fears were unfounded as we decided that a love so rare and beautiful was well worth the difficulties of a long distance relationship. I spent 2.5 years assigned to Fort Hood, Texas, 5 months of which were spent deployed in Afghanistan and then I was afforded the opportunity to move to Hawaii to grow professionally in the Army and to obviously be near Jake!! This new chapter has been a blessing :)

Well, hello there! Fancy seeing you here. This is Jake and up until age 14 I was more interested in building tower replicas with popsicle sticks than...well, really anything. Where did I go from there? You guessed it...I didn't. I was very blessed to grow up in a close family of seven. If you are on Tania's side you will get to know them very well during this trip. I grew up in Tonawanda, New York. I went to school for Nursing- generally because my parents were nurses and I was very suggestible. I joined the Army ROTC in 2007 and did my best to attend as few morning workouts as possible until 2012 when I graduated. You'll notice that's five years. Anyways, I have been working as an Army nurse in Hawaii for about two years. Hawaii...yuck. Well, Tania took all the other areas to write so I'll give my perspective on all of this madness. I met Tania through friends at training in Texas and got to know her over several months. Was it love at first sight? She kept confusing me and another person for about two weeks so- no? Did we think we'd hold onto a relationship from Hawaii to Texas/Afghanistan? We probably would have ran away fast.... Luckily, we are both pretty patient people, and were able to have trust without too much effort. We grew much closer after booking vacation after vacation over that time. Ask Tania how many vacations to Hawaii she's taken. You'd be disgusted! Tania is a very strong, determined girl. She's very caring and is very laid back in her own way...all of which was important to me. We are more than blessed to have all of you coming to enjoy this time with us, it's going to be a great week! With love, Jake