Our first date was to the American West Heritage center with Darren's friend Tristan and his now wife Kennan. Darren had asked Julia earlier in the week if she would be his date for this double date into the corn maze. They were excited!! but come the day of, Julia hadn’t heard if the date was still on quite yet and was beginning to worry. Meanwhile, Darren was with teammates getting for a race the next day. She was eagerly waiting at her house with her friend asking questions like, "Did he forget we were going to go out??" "Does he even like me?!?" "What do I even wear?" and the thoughts just kept going. Her friend eventually convinced her that these are all irrational thoughts and to go get ready. Then came the text and the date was on! Darren picked Julia up from her house at 5:30 and they drove south to meet up with Tristan and Kennan. The sunset was coming in as they arrived giving off beautiful shades of orange and purple so Darren just *had* to get a picture of the pretty girl with the pretty sky. We hadn’t gotten much rain that summer, so the corn maze was a little… underwhelming to say the least, but we didn’t care at all. We were just excited to be there together! We got pictures together in front of the corn maze, which has now become a special tradition that we’ve carried on for four years!! Despite the corn being a little low, we wandered around the maze until it got too dark, at which point we found the exit and played the yard games that were there. Newsflash, we BOTH were terrible at all the games. We were starting to get cold so we decided that it would be a great time for the four of us to go back to Darren and Tristan’s place to carve pumpkins! Neither Darren nor Julia had pumpkins ready to go so we stopped at the store to pick some up along with a carving kit. Julia carved her classic Mike Wazowski (she’d go on to carve the same thing the next year) while Darren carved something that resembled Jack Skellington. Speaking of Jack Skellington, we then watched The Nightmare Before Christmas because we all know that the movie is a Halloween movie, not a Christmas one. We ended the night with some hot chocolate, excited for the future and the next time we’d see each other! Aka, the next day.

On a random day in February, we decided to go ring shopping to get a feel for what the experience would be like and see what a ring would look like on Julia’s hand. We went to three different spots but landed on a ring shop near downtown Logan where Julia had found exactly what she was looking for. Fast forward four months and Darren got a call saying the ring that was ordered a month prior was ready for pickup. He was excited to see it in person, but had to turn his phone on airplane mode as he had done every time he was in the store so that Julia wouldn’t see where he was. He picked up the ring and it was immediately burning a hole in his pocket and he knew that he’d be putting it on Julia’s hand soon. The next afternoon , Darren asked Julia if she wanted to go up Logan canyon with him because he *supposedly* needed some photos of the canyon for a project he was working on. Julia was a little suspicious but Darren just couldn’t wait any longer. We went to a spot that we had been to over a year prior for pictures. The outcropping overlooks a beautiful valley in the canyon with a river that flows through the bottom. There were bunches of yellow flowers that could be seen mingled in between the pine trees. After walking on a path for a little, Darren got out his camera to take some pictures when he realized the decoy didn’t have a card inside it so it wouldn’t work. So, he quickly averted and grabbed the ring! Julia’s face lit up with excitement as Darren asked her to marry him and after a lot of “YES’s!” We embraced and stared at the ring on her hand. We took a lot of pictures and relived the experience on the drive back out of the canyon. Once out, we sent pictures and called our families to share the excitement!