it's happening!

In a modern world full of technology, meeting on dating apps is becoming the norm. Neither of us thought we'd find our future spouse this way, but here we are! We met on a dating app called Bumble, and it didn't take long for us to fall head over heels! Ben was out of town for a few weeks for Army training at the time we "matched" on the app, so we had to set up our first date two weeks after we first met. We got to know each other a little via texting before we met face to face, so when it came time for our first date, we had a lot to talk about...almost as if we had a "head start!" We had dinner that night, and we were so smitten with each other that we scheduled another date the next night! We've been inseparable ever since!

Before the pandemic hit, we had been day dreaming of a vacation to Hawaii. We checked on flights for the heck of it when the pandemic was in its early stages, and found that they were excitingly cheap! We decided on a whim to go ahead and book flights for later in the year, a crapshoot for timing around the pandemic. Sure enough...a few weeks before we were scheduled to go, Hawaii came out with a strict no-outside visitors mandate. When they loosened their policy, we re-booked, got our negative COVID test results, and were on our way. We started in Oahu and were going to fly to Maui for the second part of our trip. When we arrived in Maui, they immediately asked for our proof of negative COVID result. When we presented it to them, they told us it was 2 days expired (had to be within 72 hours), and we had to fly back to Oahu right then. We were shocked, as we had been keeping up with the requirements of the Islands, and nowhere did we find anything indicating we needed a second negative COVID result before inter-island travel. There were several other people on the flight who were in the same dilemma. After cancelling our Maui reservations, we got on the next flight back to Honolulu. We had a great time despite our abrupt change in plans! Come the last day of our trip, we decided to get up early to watch the sunrise on the prettiest beach we found earlier on in the trip. We were going to set up a tripod to take some pictures. When we got there, the view was breathtaking, literally like something from a movie. Next thing I knew, Ben was down on one knee asking me to marry him. I’ll spare you my answer ;-) He turned me to the direction of an awesome professional photographer who he’d hired in advance (see pics!) (side note: he originally planned to propose in Maui--hired a photographer there, but had to get creative in figuring out another one back on Oahu!). Ben pulled off a pretty perfect proposal...perfect for the beginning of the rest of our lives together!