After being friends for a while and dating for a bit, we decided to take it to the next level and travel together. We drove up to Niagara Falls on July 1st to begin our weeklong vacation. We saw the falls from all directions: from New York, Canada, the cave, and a boat! After taking in the falls we decided to trek to Toronto because, why not? On the way, we stayed on an alpaca farm, ate brunch on Lake Ontario, and had a drink at a bar in "Letterkenny". Once we got to Toronto, we checked in to our AirBNB, an apartment looking over the city, and decided to walk around. I fell in LOVE. Not just with this new, beautiful city, but with this incredible guy who lit up my world in colors I had never seen. We went up in the CN Tower, had the amazing BBQ, saw local art, took a bus tour, and talked and joked non-stop. On the way home, sore from walking, exhausted, and not ready for it to end, I realized that not once had I been bored, sad, angry, or homesick on this trip. I had found the guy that brought out the best in me. The one who showed me friendship, happiness, fun, and true love. I had found the one I wanted to spend my forever with.

After dating for three months, Amber moved to NC for work. Long distance was tough but made us both realize that we hated being apart. I had fallen, hard. This girl, this funny, astoundingly talented, and intelligent girl with Disney princess eyes and breath-taking beauty liked me. She had fallen too. After only seven months of being together, my head and heart agreed it was time to buy a ring. Buying the ring was easy, finding the right time and place to ask her, that was the real challenge. Luck (or fate) intervened, and I was asked to speak on a panel in San Diego. She was excited to come with me, as she had become my traveling companion for work. After getting her mother and father’s blessing and discussing the plan with an overjoyed Jackson, the wheels were in motion. I wanted to ask her on the cliffs of La Jolla beach and, luckily, it was her who offered up the idea to go hiking there. The morning of, I was on a panel in front of a hundred professors answering questions on analytics while having a panic attack internally about what was about to occur. The hike was beautiful. I let her walk a little ahead and I felt my nerves subside. She was the one. The one that made me laugh the hardest. The one that challenged me in deep conversations at three in the morning. The one that made me smile when I felt despair. The one that I could be myself with, all of me, my dumb quirks, my bad jokes, my (mis)adventures, my son, my real self. The biggest realization in this moment was that she felt the same. We got to a beautiful outlook over the beach, and I got down on bended knee, and said “Amber?”. She turned around and her eyes swelled, and her smile grew. For once, I kept it short and told her that she was the one that I could not imagine life without and that the only thing I wanted to change about her was her last name. She said yes, and in that moment, she was officially mine and I was hers. She was going to be my lifelong partner in crime, my best friend, my wife.