February 2023: For our first date, we met at Cossetta's Bakery in downtown Saint Paul, Minnesota. We ate sweet treats and strolled around the Irvine Park historic district nearby.

March 2023: We took our first trip as a couple in late March to a small cabin on the North Shore. To our shock and then frustration we were greeted with a meal of spaghetti chicken parmesan the previous lodgers had abandoned on the table. We spent the first few hours of our first romantic getaway cleaning cold chicken and hardened pasta from dinner plates in a cabin with no running water. It was our first trip and first challenge to sort out as an official couple. Summer 2023: We road tripped to South Dakota. April 2024: We flew to Nashville, Tennessee and drove to Missouri to watch the solar eclipse. June 2024: Evan convinced me to do a backpacking trip. We spent three days hiking the Teton Crest Trail. With only a few minutes to spare, we caught the last tram down the mountain sparing us an additional six mile hike. On the drive home, we hit an elk in the grasslands of Wyoming. We were able to make it home but realized we a camper would be a great upgrade. August 2024: We purchased a small 2008 travel trailer. We spent four weeks pulling it through South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah. We especially enjoyed bird watching near Lake Oahu in South Dakota, hiking in the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming, paddling the Black Canyon of the Gunnison River in Colorado, and the squeezing through slot canyons in Utah. We returned home with a deep longing to return to the road with our camper. March 2025: Due to unforeseen circumstances, we were able to take our camper on another road trip to Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. We climbed wind whipped dunes at the Great Sand Dunes NP near Alamosa, strolled the botanical garden in Tucson, indulged in tacos in the border town of Nogales, toured a mine in Bisbee, saw a shoot out in Tombstone, had our truck fixed twice in the hot springs town of Truth or Consequences, star-gazed in the mountains of Ruidoso, saw UFOs in Roswell, and walked through the caverns of Carlsbad. However, our most memorable stop was in southern New Mexico...

At White Sands National Park, Evan dropped to his knee and proposed! We left to eat rueben sandwiches in town and returned to retrace our footsteps in the sand to the top of "our dune" to watch the sunset over the mountains.

We will be married at Gale Woods Farm Pavilion in Minnetrista, Minnesota