Patrick and I first met in college in 2011. I worked for the football team studying Pre Med and he was on the football team studying Civil Engineering. We ran in the same circles but didnt know each other well. We graduated 3 years later in 2014 and went our separate ways. Patrick got a job in Arizona and I went to Physical Therapy School in Colorado. We were completely out of touch and living separate lives. Patrick decided to go back to school to pursue a graduate degree and ended up back at our Alma Mater. He had just finished his Master’s in Civil Engineering and was continuing on with his Doctoral degree when I graduated Physical Therapy School and had just accepted my first job back in our college town in South Dakota at the local hospital. On March 4th, 2017, my cousin happened to be getting married in the Colorado Mountains the same weekend Patrick was skiing in the area. I opened my long forgotten Bumble app to walk a friend of my mom’s through this new method of meeting people when I saw a photo of a blue eyed man with long hair and a handsome husky and immediately swiped right. We matched that night and began talking. When Patrick and I first met, he had a short hairstyle. The man I matched with had long hair and i didnt recognize him initially. His profile did not mention our school and we matched in a town that we didn’t expect to have in common and in which neither of us were residents. After a day of talking, Patrick’s location was changing and the map matched up with my well known drive from Colorado to South Dakota. I asked him if he was headed to my college town and he said he was a student there. After a few questions were exchanged, we found out that we knew who one another were. Even more ironically, I was moving back to our college town where he was living in only 3 days. Patrick helped me move in that Tuesday and we were dating by the following Sunday. We both knew only a couple months in, this was it. When you know, you know!

We moved in together after 10 months of dating, and at 13 months Patrick accepted a job in Colorado and made the move. I followed a month later, but the day I moved to Colorado, Patrick was sent to Florida for a 3 month work assignment with nearly zero notice. Patrick had initally planned on proposing earlier that summer, but Florida derailed those plans. We spent 4 months apart and decided to celebrate our reunion with a weekend retreat with my best friend and her fiancé and Patrick’s older brother and his sister in law. They flew out to join us in Colorado and we spent a weekend in the mountains exploring. On Saturday, Augsust 25th, we went on a hike to Mohawk Lakes near Breckenridge. Patrick’s sister in law is a professional photographer and had us posing for photos all weekend. I thought nothing of it when she asked me to face the mountains across the lake for a shot. I heard the camera clicking away, but a sound on the gravel behind me grabbed my attention. I turned to find Patrick on one knee holding a ring box handmade from a tree branch from my family’s ranch, asking me to be his wife. Our husky, Ox, had made the hike with us. He was wearing his hiking pack which, to my surprise, was filled with tiny bottles of champagne. So there we were, surrounded by the most beautiful scenery, with our best friends and dog, popping bottles of champagne and we were engaged! We went back to my parents ranch afterwards and were joined by more members of my family and a wonderful home cooked meal. I couldn’t have imagined a more perfect proposal or a more perfect man to spend forever with!