We're getting married!

Our story began at the University of Oklahoma (OU) in 2022, when both of us were admin members on the Sooner Racing Team, James being the Powertrain Lead and Julia being the Aero Lead. We became fast friends as we were learning how to not only build a race car, but make it run and drive fast. We enjoyed navigating issues, solving problems, and celebrating afterwards together. It became clear that our interests aligned not only in engineering, but in our love for hiking, camping, and food. We decided to make it official on March 10th, 2023.

Between the beginning of our relationship and the end of the Spring 2023 semester we were inseparable, spending all of our time either working on the FSAE car or studying together. In June 2023, James graduated with his Bachelor's degree and started a job in Wichita, Kansas while Julia finished her Bachelor's and Master's at OU. During this time of "mid-distance" our love only grew. We took turns driving to see each other almost every single weekend for 2 years while Julia finished up school. Some of our favorite moments include: For spring break 2024, we spent a week road tripping along the west coast with James' family. We were able to explore Seattle, Olympic Nat'l Park, Redwood Nat'l Park, and San Francisco. Julia accepted an offer to intern at Textron Aviation for summer 2024, the same company where James works. We lived together that summer and spent the entire summer visiting every restaurant, coffee shop, and brewery that Wichita had to offer. To celebrate Julia completing her internship at Textron, we took a week long trip to Southern Utah and were able to visit all 5 Utah national parks in 4 days. That trip remains our favorite to this day, and was a large reason we decided to move to Utah! Lastly, both of us are massive OU football fans. We attended every home game in Norman that we were able to, and even traveled to Dallas for OU-TX and Provo, Utah for the OU-BYU game in 2023.

As Julia's time working towards her masters came to a close, James decided to rent a cabin and surprise her with a weekend away to Beavers Bend State Park in Southeastern Oklahoma as a gift for finishing her Thesis... or so she thought. After dodging heavy thunderstorms and tornadoes on the way to the cabin, James made Julia a steak dinner before dropping to a knee and asking Julia to marry him. She said yes and we spent the remainder of weekend hiking, hot tubbing, visiting local restaurants & shops, and celebrating our engagement. Now engaged, both of us couldn't be happier! We have continued to travel and adventure together, including a week long trip to the Great Smokey Mountains in Tennessee. While there we backpacked nearly 40 miles, including several miles along the famous Appalachian Trail. We are currently relocating to Utah and we cannot wait to explore this new chapter as husband and wife!