In the concession line at a third grade skate night, Cierra's mom blurted out "Is that the boy you have a crush on?" pointing at Josh who was in the front of the line with all his friends. Josh and Cierra both remember walking into our 3rd-grade class and seeing our assigned seats right across from each other and getting so giddy we were next to each other. We laugh about that now, we had no clue back then that we liked each other then. Well until mom embarrassed me at skate night. The story is different depending on who you ask. Josh remembers being boyfriend and girlfriend in 5th & 6th grade, Cierra doesn't. However, Cierra's yearbook had "I <3 U -Josh" written in it and we didn't realize this until 2 years after being together... So Josh must be right. Our real story though began in 8th grade when the cheerleaders were in trouble and a parent meeting was called. Us cheerleaders didn't know where to go, so one mentioned going into basketball practice. This is where it actually began. Josh was practicing and kept locking eyes with Cierra. That night he texted "Heyyyyyy :)" and we haven't missed a day of talking since. A week later it became "official", as official as 13-year-olds could be that is. We hung outside of school through bi-weekly hangouts, only at Cierra's house per her parent's rules, all through summer and for a year until it got moved to weekly hangouts. Every hangout was 100% chaperoned until Josh turned 16 and we went to dinner only for the first time alone for our 2-year-anniversary, and our first official date for Cierra's 16th birthday. Josh took Cierra back to MBMS for our seventh anniversary and had us write letters to each other from separate benches. We used to write letters all throughout school as a time killer when we were bored in class, so this was sentimental to us (sorry to any teachers reading, at least we looked busy). We then had to read what we wrote to each other and Josh got down on one knee.