In 2013, my friend, Roxanne, that I went to college with, sent me a text message with a picture of her friend, Jacob, with his cute, little, speckled dog! :) She raved about him and wanted to see if I was interested. I simply replied "Haha, he looks nice." And that was that. Fast forward two years, Roxanne and I had plans to go to an ugly sweater Christmas party. When we arrived, we were the only two wearing ugly sweaters. We left our gift for the host and quickly ran out. Roxanne told me her friend, Jacob, would be at a bar in Old Orchard Beach as his dad and brothers have a band. At this point, I didn't make the connection to the Jacob in the photo from two years ago. I tagged along and was greeted by Jake and an invitation to play pool with him and his friends. Little did I know, Roxanne had seen Jake that morning and this was a bit of a set up!! Before I left, he asked for my phone number, and we haven't gone a day without talking to one another since!

Jake told me that his mom invited us over for dinner on Friday night, a very typical invite! I happened to have that Friday off from work, and went to visit my parents as I had gifts for them from my recent business trip to New Orleans. My mom quickly told me that was fine, but I had to leave by 2pm because she needed to take some trash to the recycling center. I thought it was strange and very unusual that she put a time limit on my visit, but didn't think too much of it. I stayed past 2pm, and was met by frustration by my mother who essentially kicked me out at that point! When Jake got home from work, We drove to his parent's house and let the dogs out of the car to play outside for a few minutes before dinner. He told me to "come look" at something in the woods. Truthfully, I expected to see a dead animal, or something unexciting of that sort. He dug up an extension cord out of the snow, which I insisted he did not plug in because I was sure he would be electrocuted!!! He did plug it in, and lit up a fir tree in the woods, because Christmas is my absolute favorite time, and asked me to marry him! To my further surprise, my family was inside his parents' house with flowers, balloons, champagne, tacos, and cupcakes-- all my favorites-- which explains my mom's eagerness for me to leave her house earlier as she had work to do for my proposal night. I was so happy to have our two families together to celebrate our night with us!