We met on an online dating site called Bumble. There was an instant connection and Sharaz asked me out to coffee an hour after us chatting! Our first date was supposed to be coffee and a walk around Lake George in St. Cloud. Unfortunately, about 5 minutes into walking it started to rain a bit. In my infinite wisdom, I offered that we could sit in my car and continue talking. In hindsight, inviting a stranger to sit in my car may not have been the smartest idea, but it all ended well. Sharaz had bought coffee and later told me he had bought the size that he thought would match how long we would talk for. He bought grandes, expecting a half-hour or hour-long conversation. Little did either of us know that we would talk for almost 4 hours!
We were in Ashland, Wisconsin for our friend's wedding the day before. On the day of their wedding, it was a pretty nice day out, kind of hot, relatively sunny, just a nice day out. We found a little dock and he said we should go watch the sunrise over lake Superior the next morning. So we planned to do that. It had rained that night, but we still got up ridiculously early and went to the dock. It was drizzling a little and the sky looked pretty cloudy, but Sharaz insisted we go walk to the end of the dock and wait for the sunrise. This is where I started to suspect a proposal; he's usually not so adamant about finishing a plan if weather gets in the way and this was the second proposal-esque plan he had been adamant about in the last week. So, we got up at the crack of dawn, the sky still a dark blue- gray and drove the few minutes to the pier. Wind shook the trees like no tomorrow. We sat in the car until it got a little closer to sunrise time. Then, about 10 minutes before sunrise we made our way through the cold and we walked to the end of the pier in this crazy wind and stood there for 15 minutes awaiting a sunrise that never came. When we were both absolutely freezing, we decided to go back to the car. We warmed up in there a little bit and Sharaz began to tell me out of the blue how much he loved me and all the things he wants us to be able to do in the future together and asked me to marry him. Of course I said yes. I believe it is very fitting that the proposal didn't go quite as planned and that it ended up being in his car because our first date was in my car and he asked me to be his girlfriend in his car.
It was a cold dark damp morning, it had rained the night before, the faint smell of worms and dirt was in the air, the sky riddled with clouds I decided to continue my plans to propose today, I just couldn’t wait to put the ring on her finger. We hopped in the car and drove to a nice long pier to watch the sun rise, the wind was obliterating us, we had an umbrella but it was just being tattered by the wind, luckily Lexi chose to wear pants and a sweatshirt for this excursion, me on the other hand wore a t-shirt and shorts as I usually do but we braved through the icy cold winds and reached the end of the dock, at this point I could see Lexi was freezing, she was white knuckling the umbrella like a life line, I decided to call it, the sun wasn’t going to emerge today begrudgingly we left, my sister Sandi who was hiding to take pictures I had leave as to not draw attention to my plans to propose and we braved the cold winds once again on our walk back, finally after what had felt like hours we got back into my Honda Civic and I cranked the heat, me and Lexi conversed until the warmth was back in our faces, at which point I thought was a good time to propose, I had the ring underneath my car seat but I couldn’t find it “this isn’t going to be as smooth as I wanted but I’m still going for it!” Echoed in my head as I dragged my hand around the underside of my seat, once I felt the firm edges of the box which held the ring I looked at Lexi and began my conversation that would lead to me proposing and like a newborn deer I stumbled to get the words out of my mouth “will you marry Me” I asked Lexi and she responded “Absolutely I will” we sealed it with a kiss and began to head away from the dock, my sister waiting just on the outskirts congratulated us and then we proceeded to get some McDonald’s for breakfast