We have been connected throughout our lives going to the same co-ops and music classes since we were kids but never spoke more than 5 words to one another! I actually had my first dance with Ben at our senior prom, we did the "singles dance" and got paired up for one song. Fast forward to 2017 when I started hanging out with Ben's sister Maizie. We went to the City Museum for her graduation party and spoke to each other juuuuust enough to find a mutual love for It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. After that I went to their family's lake house for a weekend to hang out Maizie and allll of their cousins! That is when we actually had some full conversations! I saw that Ben was playing the new Animal Crossing game at the time and noticed that he wasn't getting very far. I played an older version of the game growing up so I helped him out a bit, telling him how to go further in the game. After that trip I immediately went out to buy my own copy of the game, snagged his Snapchat username from a group chat and started talking to each other from there!

After we started talking on Snapchat, we talked coooooonstantly for about a month. I asked him to come over to my parent's house to watch a movie called Turbo Kid, we watched that and then maybe 3 more movies in that one day! He was over all of the time after that point watching movies with me and my family and playing video games. He would stay over until 4 or 5 in the morning watching movies just to go home and go to sleep and then come back over and watch more once we were both awake again! On 7/1/17 he asked me to be his girlfriend before we had even had our first date but of course I said yes ❤️ We went on our first date 7/8/17, he made 3 playlists on Spotify, each timed for the exact driving time to and from all the places we were going to go on our date! He took me to Casper's for lunch and then to the Springfield Art Museum. And then back home where we both didn't want the date to end so we started watching movies again. We started Moana because I hadn't ever seen it before and mid movie he told me he loved me, and RIGHT when he said it my dad walked into the living room leaving us feeling a little awkward! But it was also kind of perfect because it gave me some time to process being told "I love you" for the first time and be able to say it back!

So after being together for almost 4 years we have obviously talked about marriage a bit. We had planned to save money and get married in 2020 but then I broke my arm in February and Covid-19 shut down America in March, so we decided to post-pone until 2021-2022. 2020 came and went, I healed from my car accident, and we started talking about it again. We got my ring size and I sent Ben a few ring ideas just for him to know what I liked and disliked and we kind of left it at that! We had a big trip coming up in the middle-end of May and I got it in my head that he may try to propose while we were on the road. Well, he decided to do it the week before! We normally go to small group/family night at Jackie's every Thursday night after I get off work. 5/13/21 comes around and as we are on our way out of the apartment to go to Jackie's, Ben "gets a text" saying small group was canceled! We decided to go to one of our favorite parks that we go to ALL of the time after I normally get off from work so this was all feeling very normal and I had absolutely no clue, we were just going to the park! We get to Lake Springfield walked to one of our favorite spots in the park there to just look out at the lake and Ben tells me to lead us somewhere, I am thoroughly confused but walk ahead of him anyway to lead us somewhere, then notice that he isn't following so I turn around and there he is on one knee! I was completely surprised and not expecting it at all even though in hindsight, all of the signs were there 😂 He said he loved me and asked me to marry him and I said yes without hesitation! Then his sister came out from behind a tree taking pictures, his mom was also across the field taking pictures and we went to his grandma's for an engagement party that they all put together to surprise me ❤️