Even though we both attended University of Florida (GO GATORS!) and overlapped there for two years, we didn't meet until we had both lived in Atlanta for a year. We met at Sidebar in downtown Atlanta at a Florida vs. Miami football watch party. After bonding over a beer, chatting about football and mutual friends, Ken asked for Julia's number "just in case we were at the same bars later tonight". ;-) We love that so many of our friends were there that day to share that memory. After hanging out in a group the next Friday, Ken asked Julia if she would like to go out "just the two of us" the next night. Ken picked Julia up at her apartment and they walked to Cypress Street Pint & Plate in Midtown Atlanta. On the way there, a man stopped us on the street and said to Ken, "Excuse me, sir, I don't mean no disrespect, but you gotta put a ring on that, man. She's beautiful." Ken replied, "Thanks, but that's a little quick.” We got the giggles together the rest of the way to the bar. We sure wish we could find that man now!

Ken proposed on a hike in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park outside of Gatlinburg, TN. See the photos page for our sweaty pic after the proposal!

After almost 5 years together in Atlanta, we decided to embark on an extended trip around the world to cross off some bucket list places. We've traveled together a lot in Florida, the northeast, and even Colombia, but this was a journey not quite like the others. A lot of people have asked us how we managed to do this, either financially or timewise. The answer is: by being intentional. We were intentional about saving and carving out the time to do this. It wasn't going to just happen by chance. We had to make it happen. So, we left our jobs, moved out of our townhouse, sold our furniture and stored the rest. Then came 16 countries in the next 7 months (Ken went to two more countries after Julia came home) while living out of two backpacks . And THANK YOU to everyone who followed our blog while we were gone! Documenting our journey that way made us feel so much more connected while we were on the other side of the world. If you haven't seen it you can go to outboundfrommidtown.wordpress.com. Now that we're back in Atlanta after our trip (fairly unscathed), we have a ton of cool photos to share. Haven't quite counted how many but it's definitely in the thousands. Let us know if you want to hear more about any of the following places: Vancouver, CA, Iceland, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, Romania, Geneva, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Nepal, Australia. The last FAQ we get is if we have anywhere else left in the world we'd like to see. The answer is OF COURSE! For our honeymoon, we're going to hit up a place that we didn't get to visit on our longer trip. Then we'll have a lifetime together to cross off the rest of our wishlist.