In the summer of '97 a family moved into a home two doors down from my house. There were two brothers who had moved with their mom from Texas and one was going to be in my first grade class at South School. Before the school year began, my mom told me the new neighbors had come over to visit and that my new classmate, C.J. brought one of his pets. You can bet I immediately thought they had a dog and was very excited to meet it. I was only a little bit sad when I learned that his pet was a lizard. I was expecting a quick, skinny lizard and was surprised to see a fat, lethargic one. Gecko's are cute and may be popular now but I had never seen one before then, at 6 years old. My younger brother Dan and I hung out with C.J. and his older brother Ryan a lot during their first year in Illinois. It seems we showed each other everything we weren't allowed to do at each others houses. Like jumping on my parents waterbed or falling over the railing in the kitchen onto the couch in the living room at their split level. C.J. and I continued our close friendship but it wasn't until high school when the romance blossomed. We dated through college and moved into our first home together in 2016 back home in good ol' Westmont.

The decision to ask my girlfriend and best friend Nicole to marry me was easy, the gesture was what made me nervous when I have always considered myself calm and collected. In order to make the night perfectly special for Nicole, I enlisted the help of her sister Madeline. I treated Nicole to Front Street Cantina, a restaurant she used to work at while attending North Central College in downtown Naperville. She may not have thought of it as very romantic at the time, but to me it is symbolic because I had made the decision to marry Nicole while she lived in Naperville and worked at that restaurant. After dinner and a pitcher of margaritas the plan was to take Nicole to see the Christmas lights along the Riverwalk. Madeline was to meet us on the Riverwalk but she was running late and I began to panic. Nicole, oblivious to our plans, and her deep love of wine, spotted a wine bar and asked if we could go in. I figured it would be the perfect way to kill time until I saw the extent of choices this wine bar had to offer. Nicole was carefully looking through her options while I was sweating because Madeline was only a few minutes away and I had to make an excuse to leave abruptly. Once I was able to convince Nicole to come outside she spotted a dog across a clearing with the same light harness as our dog Cash. And white toes just like our dog Cash. It only took her a moment longer to realize that it WAS our dog Cash with her sister Madeline. Cash as always, was excited to see her and came running up to her with a big yellow bow around his collar. I untied the box from his collar and I dropped to one knee with Cash by my side. I asked. She said yes. How could she not say yes with Cash next to me.