Caitlin and I met when I showed up to her office to sign the lease on an apartment. I hadn't seen the apartment yet, but I thought she was cute, so I asked if she would take me to tour it. In reality, I just wanted to spend a little more time around her, and I learned she laughs at everything. A few weeks later, I had to go back to her office to pick up the keys and complete the walkthrough. After briefly considering asking her out during the walkthrough, I used my better judgement and decided not to. As I drove back to work slightly disappointed, I got a call from Caitlin. She "forgot" to have me write the rent check, and I needed to come back to the office later. I was having a particularly long work day at this point, and the idea of her saying "no" to a date didn't seem like it could make the day any worse, so I decided to give it a shot. I utilized my time on the drive back to her office to mentally prepare and work up some courage. After two voided checks due to my distracted writing mistakes, and tripping over the carpet in her office, I quickly found myself walking back to my car for the second time with a failed plan and no date. After reminding myself how "easy" it is to just ask her out and how I totally bailed, my feet turned me around and suddenly I was standing in the doorway to her office, unfortunately with no reason to be there anymore. For once in my life, I decided to keep it simple and just asked if she'd like to get a drink. To my surprise she said yes, and I walked out the door with my wife's number. One text, one phone call, and one day later we had our first date!

First things first, Karl is terrible at keeping secrets. Prime example being that he gave his original plan to propose to me away on accident while we were out to dinner one night. A few weeks later, we had a trip to Minneapolis planned so Karl could do a Tough Mudder and I could visit my sister (Ashleigh) and best friend (Robbie). Unfortunately, on the drive down, both my sister and Robbie had called me and cancelled most of our plans for the weekend (as per Karl's request). Feeling a little upset and annoyed they had both cancelled so last minute, I noticed that Karl was very distracted and had been on his phone the entire way. All in all, it wasn't a great drive. The next day, I drove Karl to his Tough Mudder and by the time I picked him up, the weekend was almost over and I had spent almost the entirety of it alone. We rushed over to my sister's salon where I had an appointment for her to do my hair and then made it just in time to our evening dinner reservations. Karl was once again distracted, fidgety, and constantly looking at his phone. After dinner, Karl suggested we go for a walk to a nearby park and I begrudgingly agreed. On our way to the park, I must have been a bit preoccupied thinking about the conversation I was going to have with Karl about feeling ignored, because I drove right by my sister and Robbie standing on the sidewalk! We parked, got out of the car, and walked to the edge of the park to a ledge that overlooked the city. Suddenly everything made sense and Karl was in front of me on one knee asking me to marry him with Ashleigh and Robbie popping out from behind the bushes to congratulate us. I was so overwhelmed with confusion, realization, and excitement that I barely squeaked out a "Yes" through a flood of happy tears. Needless to say, my weekend instantly turned around and we couldn't be more excited to start our future together!