Nick and Ashley first met our Freshman year of college when Ashley became friends with a group of Nick's friends from High School. Nick would come down to the Milwaukee School of Engineering on the weekends and we would all hang out together. According to Nick, Ashley initially turned him down Freshman year but she was unaware that he was even interested although his goofy personality definitely caught her eye. Fast forward two years and Ashley was getting season passes to ski and snowboard at Alpine Valley for friends and Nick reached out to one of them to let her know that he wanted one as well. We all went down to Alpine on a Friday night and started out on the normal passes. Nick and our friends like to go down the terrain park, but Ashley is not coordinated for tricks so she would always just go around them and watch. After going up the ski lift a couple of times, the guys decided that it would be faster to get up the hill on the tow rope, but again Ashley is not coordinated enough but was willing to give it a try. The first time she gave it a try the edge of her board caught the snow wrong and ended up completely biffing it and also took out the small child behind her. Nick noticed that Ashley was struggling and decided to stay behind and help her. Though he was very helpful she continued to struggle and after watching her crawl up the hill to go down, he was nice enough go up the ski lift with her even though it took longer. On those trips up the ski lift we started to talk a little more and realized how much we had in common and that's where it truly all began. The following night our MSOE friends who rented a house downtown were hosting a cowboy themed party where we continued to talk and get to know each other a little better. After texting for a couple of days he then asked her out to dinner and we ended up going to AJ Bombers for burgers and now the rest is history.

Nick and Ashley's first major vacation where it was just the two of them was a road trip to go camping in Yellowstone and Grand Teton. We currently have the goal of getting to all 63 national parks in the U.S. and heading out to see two iconic national parks was a perfect way to spend our first vacation together. The story of our proposal actually starts before we even packed up the car and hit the road. Ashley coached high school volleyball in the fall and we were taking this vacation in the beginning of September which is in the heart of the volleyball season. Due to having to get things prepped for volleyball and needing to help Nick pack for vacation, Ashley was very stressed and pressed for time. So when one of her friends asked her to go get her nails done, Ashley turned it down. However, her friend was not taking no for an answer and after Nick encouraged her to go get her nails done with her friend she hesitantly agreed and still had not connected the dots and had no suspicions. Since we were camping Ashley was complaining about how inconvenient it will be to have nails done while camping and was making Nick very nervous that she would rip the nails off before he proposed. Our vacation started in Yellowstone where began our days of hiking and seeing beautiful sights. On the third day of our trip we made our way to Grand Teton. The day started out rough as Ashley woke up not feeling the best, but eventually she felt better and we started to make our drive down to the park to start our day of hiking. The hike that was planned for the day was a 14 mile hike around Jenny Lake and up to the Cascade Pass where there were several scenic outlooks along the way. After we made our way around Jenny Lake we started our climb up the mountain where we had a 1200 ft elevation climb to get up to the start of the Cascade Pass. The climb up ended up being a lot more challenging than anticipated but we were determined to get to the top. Once we got to the top we were 5 miles in and ended up at the outlook that Nick initially planned to propose but there were so many people, so he decided against it. We decided to then head down the Cascade Pass and unknowingly to Ashley, Nick started to take note of other possible proposal locations. 1.5 miles later we began to get hungry and decided to sit down and eat a snack. This is where Ashley noticed that Nick was acting a little weird as he wanted to stay longer than we needed to at the spot we stopped to eat. He almost proposed at this location when two other hikers made their way to our spot and also stopped to eat. Nick then asked the two other hikers how much further down the trail it was before it opened up and you could see the mountain range on either side of the trail and it was only another 0.5 mile further. We then decided to continue down the trail and sure enough the trail opened up and you were consumed by the mountain range as it stood on either side of you and the views were absolutely incredible. We then stopped to take it in and for Ashley to take some pictures and all of the sudden Nick started to try and prop up his phone and told Ashley that he was going to take a picture of the two of them. Ashley should have been suspicious at this point as Nick never takes pictures on vacation, but somehow she was still oblivious. After finding the smallest stick ever and digging a small hole with the corner of his phone he got it to stand up all by itself. He then told her that he started the timer to take the picture, when in reality he started recording a video on his phone. He then walked over and got down on one knee and asked Ashley to marry him. He spent so much time planning this out and it could not have been more perfect. (See picture below of the spot where Nick proposed)