It’s finally happening!

We meet in the fall of 2000, Derek had just moved to Petaluma and joined the local swim team, the Riptides. From first glance Derek knew she meant something to him. "I needed to talk to her, but I'm not brave enough to start a conversation so I asked one of the other boys what her name was and what she liked....I shouldn't have listened." -Derek "No one likes the new kid who tries to make fun of you." -Katherina Our families connected quickly when our younger bothers (Alex and Morgan) became best friends. They even plotted ways for them to become brothers - "Derek you have to marry Katherina so Alex and I can be brothers" - Morgan From a young age they were drawn to each other, and as teens began the sparks began to fly. Neither one was smart enough to know it, but others around them could tell there were feelings not being expressed. But in the fall of 2006 Katherina posted a "Boyfriend application" to her myspace wall. Derek took the opportunity to see if he made the cut. "We'd been talking as friends, but I didn't have (still don't) the guts to approach her and ask her out. So I filled it out instead." In fall of 2011 I made a trip up to see Derek in Davis where he made a fool of himself slipping in mud while chasing geese. In April Derek planned a trip to travel down to San Diego with the express intention of not coming back single. To set the scene Derek is not an extrovert, and was excused from public speaking in highschool after fainting giving a book report his freshman year. So after a 12 hour bus ride from Sacramento to San Diego the two walked the SDSU campus as Derek scrambled to think of the right words, Under the night sky on April 27th 11:58pm Derek mutters the words "....so....are we Boyfriend and Girlfriend?".

After 8 years, we both knew it was about time to take the next step. Unfortunately Derek was never good at hiding anything from Katherina so as with his trip to San Diego so many years ago, her birthday trip to New Orleans was going to bring them to the next step of their relationship. Derek proposed to Katherina on March 15th of 2020 on Langles Bridge of New Orleans, LA with a photographer to capture the moment. "Ever since the moment I met you, I've had dreams of spending the rest of my life with you. Will you make my dreams come true and marry me?" -Derek