According to Haylee... We always kind of "knew" each other, but we really weren't friends until one summer when Kody asked me to go get ice cream with him. He swears we went to DQ, but I know it was Busy Bee because I distinctly remember getting a blue-goo cone. From that day on we sort of just started being pretty good friends; we would hangout every so often and talk here and there. It wasn't until around Christmas of 2015 that we really started dating. After we rang in the 2016 New Year together it was within weeks that we officially became official. Since Kody had just started working at Wilson's and I was still at IU we spent the next two years seeing each other only on weekends. Once we got Bruce I knew there was no turning back because neither of us was going to ever give him up. After I graduated and moved home, we pretty quickly bought our fixer-upper and although I was ecstatic that we were making that leap together, I just knew there was no way we would be getting engaged anytime soon having just purchased a home... According to Kody... I got Haylee's number from Facebook and asked her a couple of times to come to a party with me; she was always busy and would never come. Then I asked her to go get ice cream one day in the summer and she said yes. After ice cream we were always talking on and off. I invited Haylee to go to one of my friend's Christmas parties and she came with. After that night and over the next couple of years I started going down to IU to see her and she started coming back home on the weekends to see me. I had been looking into buying a house for a while and once she graduated and moved home we bought a house in Brook. I knew that getting married was the next step in our relationship, I just had to come up with a way to propose without her expecting it.

According to Kody... I always knew Haylee wanted it photographed, but I had no idea how to do that without her knowing that I was going to propose. I started talking to a couple friends and family members and tossed around different ideas. After some planning, her mom told her she wanted new family pictures and I suggested asking my sister-in-law, Sarah, to take them. Before I knew it plans were getting changed- some of Haylee's family really thought they were getting pictures; Sarah was planning test shoots; I had no idea what was going on anymore. Finally the day came and I kept telling Haylee how much I did not want to take pictures. When we got to Thompson, I'm dragging my feet and also really nervous... We make our way out to a pumpkin I had Sarah hide the ring in before we got there. Haylee knocked the pumpkin over so we could sit down and there was the ring. According to Haylee... My mom convinced me she hated the family pictures we recently had done, so Kody suggested we take new ones at Thompson (one of my favorite pieces of land his family owns) and ask Sarah to take them. We were in the mist of renovating so I kept forgetting to ask Sarah if she would take them. After probably three weeks of forgetting, my mom made me ask her. Thankfully Sarah agreed. Kody was being such a downer about getting pictures done because "it was weird", but with great reluctance he went, and we met Sarah early one morning to do some test shots before my family pictures. After a couple pictures Sarah suggests we go by the water. When we get out there, there is a white pumpkin sitting in the middle of a hay bale. Kody says "you should move that so we can sit down" and I'm wondering why he can't move the pumpkin? So I (a little aggressively) push the pumpkin over and out fall these white rose pedals and there's a ring box. Before I can even comprehend everything, tears are running down my face, Kody is down on one knee, and I'm saying "Yes" to forever with my best friend.