Christmas 2018 was a Christmas that I will never forget. As a worship leader, the holidays can be a crazy time with extra gatherings, scheduling multiple teams, added creative elements etc... We had to contract a keys player at the location where I was leading. This keys player showed up to rehearsal and was not a good fit, so we had to go a different direction. This rehearsal was on a Thursday night and I was leaving the next morning to have Christmas with my family in Oklahoma. I was so stressed and didn't know what to do! I flew to OKC and had Christmas with my family. On Sunday, I flew back to Colorado in preparation for our Christmas Eve gatherings the next day. Sitting in the Oklahoma airport, I got a text from some of my friends who are in the worship field in Fort Collins. They were telling me that this guy named Marcus Robinson asked if we needed any help for our Christmas Eve gatherings (band wise). Out of fear of repeating a similar issue that happened at rehearsal with our contracted keys player, I declined Marcus' offer haha. Luckily, one of those friends that was texting with us about Marcus explained how talented Marcus is and that he's a great guy. I decided to accept Marcus' offer to come play keys for us for Christmas Eve! Christmas Eve call time came quick, and honestly I felt nervous about the whole thing lol. BUT, I'll never forget this handsome guy walking up to me asking if I was Calli. I died on the inside haha... he looked so sharp in his black jean jacket, fancy shoes and fly hat. I began showing him around and getting him all set for sounds check. I started blushing and didn't stop for hours... or days lol. We had plenty of opportunity to chat that evening, and it was enough for me to text my closest friends that I met the guy of my dreams. His heart and passion We ended up getting coffee shortly after and chatted for 4 hours. That became our weekly routine. The rest is history!

Let me start by saying, Calli hates surprises; and worst than that- she wanted this to be a surprise. Typically that wouldn't have been as difficult to do. I had been given 2 directives from her about the proposal, and I believe these are direct quotes: 1. I don't want to look gross 2. I want to be able to celebrate with people after Pre-covid, those are pretty simple directives, but knowing she was working from home nearly everyday and had no real reason to "get dressed', that made it a little tricky, and same with being able to celebrate with people. The morning of, we had a zoom meeting with a mortgage broker, so I had seen that she was "dressed" (at least dressed enough for that meeting lol. I promptly lied about going to do a podcast recording because I needed a solid reason to not answer my phone. Specifically, I needed a reason to not answer any facetime calls from her because I was on my way to the barbershop, and the plan was changing by the minute! If you know Calli, you know she loves to fish, and on this particular Friday, she was wanting to go fishing. It was her day off, and she was wanting to go out and relax a bit, but she was also a bit suspicious, so she asked her maid of honor Marie (who graciously helped me plan this) if she should go fishing or not (trying to figure out if today was the day or not). Marie said yes, knowing that if she said no, Calli would immediately know why and the surprise would be ruined. SOMEHOW, she decided to not go, and stayed in for the night. So I met with the photographer around the corner, and we made our way to the house. She was sitting in the yard facing the opposite direction with Marie and Maggie looking through bridal magazines (adorable). I walked in, and the girls went inside. I was shaky and nervous to say the LEAST! But I walked up to her and said some very true things that you don't get to read here ;) and then I asked her to marry me. SHE SAID YES!!!