We love because He first loved us . -1 John 4:19

We first crossed paths freshman year at Derby High School. Blaine felt fortunate to be assigned the seat next to Joanna in Mr. Paske's Anatomy and Physiology class, but didn't feel too fortunate after he realized he had no clue how to talk to a pretty girl. Joanna was patient, though, and they developed a friendship. Not too long later, Blaine and his family moved about three hours away to Kansas City. However, that didn't stop he and Joanna from meeting up every couple of months to catch up over good food and conversation - since they enjoy those things more than just about anything else. For six years, they made a special point to stay involved in each other's lives and keep their friendship strong. At the end of 2016, though, things took a turn. One weekend in September, Blaine took a trip down to Wichita to catch up with Joanna, but something was different that time. For the next three months, they both couldn't stop talking to each other via text and FaceTime, with their calls occasionally lasting over five hours at a time. In December, Blaine decided to finally tell Joanna how he felt about her after seven years of being deep in the friend zone. The rest is history!

On New Year's Eve, Joanna & I were in Kansas City and planning an afternoon of touring the city's neighborhoods before a romantic dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, The Oliver. What she didn't know, though, was that I had been planning how this day would unfold for months. After a brief detour brought about by Joanna's need to replace her uncomfortable high-heels with flats, she and I continued our day wandering around the city. Stops at Crown Center and the Plaza quickly gave way to the final pre-proposal stop of the day: Union Station. Upon walking out the front door at Union Station, we were met by an Uber and whisked away. On the drive, I gave her an iPad (previously staged in the back of my pants) and played her a video. The video, kindly made by Devynn and Matt Webb, showed some of her closest friends speaking about the things they love and cherish about her. Next, I came on screen and spoke at length about why I wanted to share the rest of my life with her and what she has meant to me over the last 8 years. As the video ended, and the car pulled up to Loose Park. At the park, we walked down the windy sidewalks to a pond. On a bridge at the far end of the pond, I stopped Joanna, turned to her, and began reading from Ephesians 5. It speaks about the duties of husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church, which is how I desire to love her for the rest of our lives. I told her I loved her for the first time, dropped down to one knee, asked her to marry me, and she said "YES." We then made our way over to The Oliver for our reservations, which Joanna still believed would just be the two of us. When we walked through the front door we were greeted by members of her family, old and new, and some of our closest friends. After a delicious dinner, we all came back to my house, which had been decorated to celebrate both the engagement and the New Year. The rest of the night, we laughed, danced, and rang in 2019 together!