One day, me and the boys decided to go fishing. We got the boat all packed and ready to go, and all of a sudden it started to rain. So, we sat in the boat on the hoist for a while having a couple of beers, seeing if the rain would let up. As luck would have it, it didn't! We decided the next best thing would be to go out and have a couple of drinks seeing as it was 4th of July weekend. We headed to the Thirsty Moose for a drink. This wasn't quite what we were looking for, so next stop was KDs. There I ran into some other friends that had told me about this beautiful, smart, fun girl that I had never gotten the opportunity to meet. As luck would have it, she just happened to be there with them! Their group also got rained out at a concert in Madison and just decided to stop for a good time as well. I thought to myself- this is one hot girl. I was peacocking in my gym shorts, cut off shirt ripped down to my waist, camo crocs, and a yellow trucker hat. I made a great impression on her, and lo and behold she was digging it! We went over to my buddy Kevin's house, so I could keep wooing her! We lit off fireworks, I climbed up his two story deck to impress her, and then she decided enough was enough and she headed home for the night! So, creepy me found her on Facebook and sent her an add. Not too long after, she accepted, and we continued our conversations. It took a lot of work to convince her that we were blossoming into a very cute couple. It also took awhile for me to finally build up the nerve to ask this gorgeous woman to be my girlfriend, but when she said yes, it was awesome. Since then, we have had lots of fun adventures learning each others interests. All the new things that she has turned me on to made it even easier to ask her to marry me in one of our favorite hiking places!

The first time I heard about Nate was actually when one of my best friends, Steph, and her now husband, Kevin, met at the Yellow Thunder Snowmobile Club Winter Raffle dinner. The ongoing joke was that Kevin should carry around a picture of me or the ‘Meet the Teacher’ sheet I hand out at school, and give it to any single guys that checked all the boxes Steph and I decided were most important. Well, Nate must've checked all of the boxes because Steph decided this was important enough that she should call me while I was on Spring Break in Mexico! It’s possible that this was actually the first time I talked to Nate, but all of our memories of this night are a bit of a blur. I think I remember more about the margarita I was drinking than anything else but decided that since he was 2 inches short of my 6 Ft tall requirement, he wasn’t ‘the one’ for me. Several months later I had forgotten about the whole thing. Steph ran into ‘that guy’ again at a wedding, but I finally met him for myself at KDs. The concert on the square I had been attending with some friends had been cut short due to bad weather, and we decided we weren't ready to go home yet! Nate’s fishing trip had been cut short for the same reason, so he and his friends found themselves at KDs, too. “This is that guy I told you about! From the snowmobile thing and the wedding!” Steph reminded me. Several of us went back to Steph & Kevin’s to celebrate Fourth of July early with some fireworks. It turned out ‘that guy’ was a quarter inch taller than me and pretty fun, too! With some liquid courage, he climbed Kevin’s balcony, and the snapper fireworks I threw at him while he did it didn’t even slow him down! Nate spent the night there, and I got a ride home from one of his friends. By the time I had gotten home, he had tracked me down on Facebook to make sure I had gotten home alright. He continued to check in over Fourth of July weekend, and…he never stopped! Several weeks later, Nate convinced me to go out on a date with him! I wore all the wrong things for the Harley (despite being adequately warned that shorts were a bad idea), but that didn't stop us from having a fun time and this was only the beginning! At the end of July, Nate asked me to be his girlfriend, and since then we've had too many adventures to count. He is the calm to my storm, and the best thing I never saw coming. He's taught this teacher more about hunting, fishing, and snowmobiling than I ever cared to know, and I'm sure he's seen more musicals and graded more fact tests than he would care to admit as well! When Nate asked me to marry him on the most beautiful fall days on our favorite hiking trail, this time he didn't need to convince me to say yes! I cannot wait to begin our next adventure together this July!