I had just started my new job in the ED, and my coworkers decided to go out to Ballpark Village after class one night. Mathew was invited to tag along through our mutual friend (for protection, of course!). I still lived at home at the time and our mutual friend offered to pick me up from home, with Mathew in the car. Having just met this mutual friend, I thought that Mathew was the friend's husband. We chit-chatted the whole drive to Ballpark Village, and I finally figured out that they were not married once there. We continued to talk , and I pulled him on the dance floor when one of my favorite songs came on (we still cannot think of the song!). We danced and sang and talked the rest of the night. We did not exchange phone numbers that night, but we both texted the mutual friend the following day for each other's numbers. I texted first, but Mathew swears he was typing a message to me as mine went through. We went on our first official date shortly after.

We were coming up on the one year anniversary of our first date. A couple weeks before the proposal, Mathew texted me and said "let's dress up and do a fancy date night on July 24th. Events will be a surprise". Throughout the weeks leading up. Mathew was asking me my guesses for the activities during the date. He told me there was one casual, indoor surprise and a dressy, outdoor surprise. I had mentioned earlier that I thought indoor go-carts would be fun to do. So I correctly guessed that the indoor surprise was indoor go-carts, and I had no idea what the outdoor surprise would be. We had fun go-carting (Mathew is proud to say that he beat me all 3 races), and then went home to shower and change. At this point, I did not know he would propose that night, but I was suspicious. My first clue was that he shaved off his mustache (Mathew loves it, I do not) and that he was very concerned about "matching" my outfit. We got in the car and Mathew's phone was blowing up with text messages. We pull up to a park and I remember thinking "why are we all dressed up to go to a park?". We turned the corner and there was a man standing there with a canvas, two chairs, and a camera on a tri-pod. On the way up, Mathew told me that this was an early anniversary present and that he hired this man to draw caricatures of us. He told me the man wanted to record our session to promote his business. We sat down and started talking about how we met, what we do, etc. About 5-10 minutes later, the man told us that he was done. I looked at it and it was a pre-printed caricature of him on one knee. Both of our parents were there to celebrate with us and a friend of Mathew's came to take pictures of the proposal.