Picture it: Fall in Tuscaloosa during some peak Nick Saban gamedays. Sorority girl meets fraternity boy. The rest is history. LOL JK. That really is how we met though! Fun fact: he actually came to see me in Birmingham over Christmas break that year, making it our first official date. We went to dinner at Full Moon in Hoover, followed by a movie at the Rave at Patton Creek. Once we got back to school a few weeks later, we spent many an evening at the AKL House, including the night of the National Championship Game (roll tide!) where I may have spilled a drink or two on him. #memories Then life happened! A lot of life! But TEN YEARS LATER, he found me on Facebook. Both of us were single, only I had 3 little munchkins in tow. We'd wound up in the same town. (One of those things that cracks me up - of all the places my parents looked at houses up here, they landed in Madison - where he was.) And THEN the rest was history! He took me on our *second* first date on his birthday to Old Black Bear in downtown Madison and I was sold.

We got engaged on what was probably the hottest day/night of all of 2023. Josh only gets one weekend off work a month, so we'd been talking about doing a date night this night for a couple of weeks. He gave me the choice: dinner out somewhere or a Trash Panda game. Considering I always drag him to nice restaurants and make him "dress up in fancy clothes", I figured a baseball game would be a fun change of pace. LOL The day of the game, he was *hell-bent* on changing the spark plugs in his truck himself. Again, it was the hottest day EVER. Looking back, I think maybe he was trying to keep himself occupied. ;) But we got to the game, and he'd gotten us club-level seats - our fave! So we ate - we'll circle back to this later...IYKYK. He got me some wine, and we just hung out! We (he?) chose this night specifically because they were doing fireworks after the game. The first few innings of the game, we were in our own little world. Nobody was really sitting around us - it was nice! But hot. Towards the end, a group of super belligerent fans sat next to me and behind us, so I suggested that maybe we watch the fireworks from the truck, to a) get away from the loud folks, and b) get a head start on the traffic out of the parking lot. So we went to the truck, hopped in the back and waited. When the fireworks started, I looked around because he wasn't standing next to me and he was down on one knee! I don't remember anything after that. LOL We came home, Mills was annoyed I got a ring and he didn't get a prize, and we celebrated with ice cream in bed! The celebrating took a brief pause when I woke up with suspected food poisoning the next morning, but hey, it made the weekend all the more memorable! Other funny things that happened leading up to the proposal: 1) a few days earlier, I was managing bath time for all 3 kids, when I ran out to the kitchen to grab diapers. He and my parents were chit chatting and all suddenly stopped and stared when they saw me. Turns out, he was telling them his plans and the ring was sitting on the counter in plain sight. 2) He spent a lotttttt of time getting ready for this baseball game date. I'm talking shaved his head, trimmed his beard, the works. I even remember thinking, "all this for a baseball game we're going to sweat our tails off at?"