Dakota and I were 17 & 18 when we went on our first date in Feb 2014 & we immediately connected. I grew up in Junction City & he grew up in Monroe. Separate small towns that are only 10 minutes apart with several mutual friends, we had to have walked by each other or seen each other several times, but never met until the time was right. We were young and didn’t expect to fall in love as quickly as we did, but it happened. He would visit me while I was working at my Uncle Glenn’s Dairy Queen & I would visit him while he was working at Bi-mart. We had a fun, first summer together. We went to concerts, spent a lot of time at bonfires with friends, & went on plenty of hikes & drives in the woods. We became best friends. I started college at OSU in Sept 2014 & we moved into our tiny, first apartment together in Philomath in Feb 2015. Dakota started working at Georgia Pacific in Philomath shortly after & I worked at Figaro’s pizza & then ATI while going to school. We learned a lot about ourselves during these years as most people do in college, but instead of growing up & growing apart, we grew up & grew together. We learned to love each other even more. We learned that relationships weren’t always easy & took work, but we learned how to work through it by choosing to love each other every day. We spent many weekends in Corvallis/Philomath which were towns that we grew to love, full of great people that we met & loved, but we spent many weekends back in Junction City and Eugene where many of our friends and family remained. In June 2019, I graduated college and started my career at an accounting firm in Eugene. We were ready to move out of our tiny, first apartment & bought our first home in Junction City in Dec 2019. We got our first puppy, Dale, in March of 2020. And after 6 years of dating, Dakota proposed while we were walking our puppy in June. We are so excited to get married and celebrate our love with all of our family & friends.