Neither of us really remember when we first became friends, and neither do our parents. But we do remember growing up at church together, weekends at the deer lease together, and many vacations and camping trips with our families. Then my family moved to Iowa in 2008 and we only saw each other once a year. The summer of Christian's sophomore year of high school, I visited again with my family, and as he says, "I realized you were really cute and fun to be around and I really liked you." Nothing came of it, since we were both in high school, and 1,000 miles is a big deal. But I came back for another visit in July of 2017; we went to Spring Creek BBQ together with family friends like usual, we talked over dinner, then I told him I was free to hang out during the week. I thought that he might be too busy with work during the week, but he surprised me and asked me to an Astros baseball game on July 14th. We both hoped it was a date, but neither of us asked the other. At the end of the night we hugged and said goodnight, then I left for Iowa the next morning. Christian would tell you now, that he realized the next week that he was going to do whatever he had to do to "make it work." He spent the next two weeks pursuing me and even sent flowers. He finally asked me to be his girlfriend on August 3rd, and as they say, the rest is history.

Christian came to visit me after our spring semester of college in May 2018. We had planned to go to Chicago on Friday the 18th to visit the zoo and go on a nice date. On the way into the zoo, Christian had pointed out a lily garden and mentioned we should go there when we left. So that's what we did, we walked around the big pond, then we found a rock to set the phone on to take a few timed photos like we usually would when hiking by ourselves. We took a few photos and Christian was unusually picky about the positioning of the phone. For the last picture, he had me turn around so we could take a picture from behind like we have in the past, but he switched it from a timer, to a video. He ran up and stood with me for ten seconds to fake it, then he turned to me, dropped to one knee, and proposed! I wasted no time saying yes, practically answering before he got the question out. Then we were engaged!