About a year before I met Chris, I had decided to explore the world of online dating. Wow what an experience to say the least. After a year of going on some dates that really bombed, I decided to hang up my hat in the online dating world. I cancelled my subscription to Eharmony. The next day, the site reached out and offered me a few more months at a reduced rate and I figured, why not? I couldn’t have any dates worse than I’d already had in the past year, right? Then a few days later, I saw a profile for a very handsome silver fox. In reading Chris’s profile, his kindness, humor and commitment to his family were immediately appealing. We messaged and then texted for about a week. We figured why not meet up? I figured I could at least get some free tacos out of the date..... We met on a Friday night at Modern Margarita in Phoenix. We had an instant chemistry and I was pleasantly surprised to see that Chris really was just as handsome (and tall) in real life as his profile indicated. We sat there for hours, eating tacos (I introduced Chris to his now favorite al pastor taco), drank Dos Equis and just talked. He really was as kind and genuine as I thought he seemed on his dating profile. He was kinda funny.... It was the most at ease and totally myself that I had ever felt on a first date. I knew when we said goodbye that evening that this would be something special, but don’t think I realized just how right I was.

On Sunday, May 5, we decided to celebrate Cinco de Mayo in our own way, a hike in Sedona. We headed north to the West Fork Trail, a 7.2 mile out and back hike located just outside Sedona in Oak Creek Canyon. I'd only done the hike one time before, a little over a year before, and it was the first time we'd ever gone hiking together. We arrived to get started around 12:30. Our dogs, Emmett and Sawyer, joined us because why else would you go hiking if you weren't bringing the pups! Around 2:30, we rested at the end of the hike in. The end of the hike in on West Fork Trail is a picturesque creek with a wide, flat stone path out to the middle and a high wall of red rock creating a quiet, peaceful, enclosed resting point. We hopped across the rocks and found a place on a nice, warm, wide stone. While Johanna fumbled to get water for the dogs, I pull the ring box out of my pocket and crouched down on one knee and waited. And waited. Emmett seemed to have no interest in the water she was offering even as she coaxed him to take a drink. Finally, I couldn't wait anymore and said, "Johanna," and she froze. Now when you've been dating someone for two and a half years, you fall into a pattern of never using each others' names. And it sounds like glass shattering when one of us uses the other's name. So when she heard hers, she knew something was up. Later she said, "I couldn't figure out why you didn't sit down but had taken a knee. But when I heard my name I knew you were up to something." Finally she turned and I asked, "Will you marry me?" The rest is history (and the beginning of a beautiful future)...