It’s funny how life works. I remember the first time I saw Elaine sometime around 2013. I was walking to work and she was on her way home. I remember being instantly attracted to her. As we approached each other down the hallway, I tried hard to make eye contact with her, hoping to get to her attention and flash her a quick smile. ;) But she didn’t - she just walked passed me and ignored me! :( I thought that was the end of that! Fast forward one year later, I left my old unit and had transferred to the Medical ICU. As fate would have it, my friend who worked on her floor had recently become a nurse and we had the same critical care class. I asked him if he knew this girl who ignored me the previous year. To my luck, they were friends. I asked to get her number and shortly after we went on our first date. And here we are...

I’ve always wanted our engagement to be during one of our adventures together. I’ve marveled at the beauty of mother nature so I hatched a scheme to propose under the magic of the Northern Lights in Iceland. Little did she know, when she was looking for the forecast for the Northern Lights before we left, she was planning her proposal. I couldn’t wait to propose and take the responsibility of the ring off my hands. (I feel you, Frodo!) I had hidden the ring in my backpack and she kept getting mad at me to put it in the overhead bin on the plane, instead of crowded under my feet. During our ventures, she kept telling me to leave my bag in the campervan but kept going through it since I made it our traveling day pack. I started becoming paranoid if she had begun to wonder what I was hiding or what was wrong with me. We decided the second night would be the best to look for the Northern Lights. It was the only night of our trip with clear skies but it had low solar flare activity to see them. We drove up a hill in our campervan, waiting patiently and talking about our lives together. After some time, she started to fall asleep! The sky was empty and I became sad at losing the chance to propose under the Northern Lights. I asked her if she thought we’d see them at all on our trip. She did not think so, so I placed the ring box on her knee. She had no clue what it was. I opened the box and she still had no clue what it was. I was so nervous I didn’t realize it was pitch black so I turned on the overhead light and saw the biggest smile emerge on Elaine’s face. I knew we would be spending the rest of our lives together. The idea of proposing under the Northern Lights had sounded romantic and grand. In actuality, we were unshowered, living in a campervan, in a parking lot near some semi-trucks, and later realized it was Friday, the 13th. But for us, it was perfect and we wouldn’t have it any other way.