We're getting hitched!

I (Rachel) was renting a house with some friends. We would regularly have parties and invite friends over, Tj being one of the friends invited by my roommate. One of the these nights, Tj and I were beer pong partners and no one could beat us. I took one of the ping pong balls we had won with and signed it (and made/forced Tj to sign it) and told him that he had to keep it forever or we couldn't be best friends. He showed it to me a couple of months after we started dating (2 years since we had signed it), and we still have it!

The EXACT date we started dating is a little up to interpretation. We decided to be "exclusively seeing each other" on April 17th, 2022. But Tj officially asked me to be his girlfriend 2 months later on June 18th, 2022 on the way back from Cripple Creek at 1 am. This was after I very subtly mentioned that he had never asked, and we hadn't been dating for 3 months at that point. I then decided I didn't like the date 06/18/22 and changed it back to 04/17/22. 🤷 As of our wedding date, we will have dated for 1,252 days or 3 years, 5 months, and 3 days.

Tj proposed July 29th, 2024 in the most beautiful field in the Washington State mountains. He couldn't have planned it better, we got to enjoy all the rain and clouds. Luckily, we were on vacation with our favorite photographer & best friend (shoutout Katie) and got to capture the moments of that day forever. We were also fortunate to enjoy an engagement party afterward (thank you Denise, Jordan, & Meagan) and got to celebrate with friends and family. As of our wedding date, we will have been engaged for 418 days or 1 year, 1 month, 9 days.

We bought our first home at the end of 2024! We closed on November 15th and started moving in that weekend. It had "almost" everything on our wish list and has been great so far! We can't wait to experience even more firsts here and hopefully get to all of our DIY projects.

With Tj's work schedule, we have to make the most of our "off" days together. We try to stay busy and find things that we can do together. Most of our at-home or work nights are spent playing video games on our gaming PCs. For context, we have spent ~250 hours playing Apex Legends, ~180 hours playing Farlight 84, and ~120 hours playing Grounded. We love to cook, it was one of the first activities we found we both loved to do (and loved to do together). While it might not always be fancy, we like to try out new recipes and make them our own. We both enjoy traveling and try to have trips planned semi-frequently, whether they're near or far, to have adventures to look forward to. We have traveled around the state, across the country, and to Mexico (with a honeymoon to Saint Lucia planned). Kenai (our 6-year-old Border Collie) also keeps us busy. He loves walks, playing fetch, and being in your business at all times.