Buckle up folks - this one is a long one. Josh and I originally met in middle school. Well - not exactly. I knew Josh, and some could say that I was infatuated with him. However, he had no idea I even existed. He was the class clown, always getting in trouble in 8th-grade English class and I was the quiet, reserved girl that always paid attention. Shortly after the start of 9th grade, I moved back to Palmerton from Lehighton and we both went on with our separate lives for 4 years. We were reintroduced through mutual friends. Although neither of us wanted a relationship, our friends saw potential and pushed us to start hanging out (thanks Hunter!). Eventually, we started dating and were together for 3 short weeks when Josh went away to Marine Corps Recruit Training. 8 long months went by (these months were long-distance, filled with lots of letters, minimal contact, monthly visits to NC, and nightly FaceTime calls towards the end) and Josh was finally finished with all of his training. We thought that we were at the light at the end of the tunnel, but boy, were we wrong. Josh moved into my house and we spent almost a year there together before moving into our own apartment to start our lives together. And we got a cat, Hazel! Our little life in our tiny, wonky apartment with slanted walls and unleveled floors was cut short due to a fire, but we didn't let that get in the way of our relationship. We powered through it and eventually moved into our second apartment and added to our family. We adopted Athena, our perfect little angel baby Golden, and Houdini, our little magician kitty that disappears and reappears (we almost never know where he is). In September 2021, we took a trip to the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia to celebrate our 3 year anniversary. It was... memorable. We got fleas from the hotel we stayed in the first night of the trip. We had to very carefully and slowly drive to the very tip top of a mountain in my FWD Corolla to our AirBnB. The listing said that it was steep and rocky terrain, which I thought was just an exaggeration... It was not. But the trip that started off rocky (pun intended) ended in a beautiful, unforgettable time. Josh proposed during a couples' photoshoot and we spent the day celebrating by hiking, getting some BBQ, and watching a stunning sunset with a distant thunderstorm from our mountaintop cabin. We like to say that our experiences since our lives entwined have been like rocky road ice cream, minus the road - just a bunch of rocks. But it has brought us to where we are now - about to get married!!!!!! Our story is so unique and different from any story you read about online or see on tv. Retrospectively, we are so fortunate to have this crazy story behind us because it has molded us into the couple we are today. If it were up to us, we would do it all over again in a heartbeat. That's all folks! *roll the credits* I hope you love Our Story as much as we do. We are so lucky to have each other in this crazy thing we call life - even if Josh was once considered "just a Band-Aid." *cough cough*