The Met Morris Homecoming 2017. Colin and Kendra had known of each other, but had never really had a conversation before. They both ended up at the Met the night of Homecoming and enjoyed some talking and dancing. A few weeks later, Colin asked Kendra to go get burger baskets at the Met and the rest is history :)

Colin and Kendra only got to date in the same town for about 6 months before he graduated and moved back to Grand Marais to teach and coach. They agreed to try long distance and see what happened. The drive from Morris to Grand Marais is 6 hours, which didn't seem too terrible of a drive at the time. Then Kendra moved to Memphis for optometry school and the 6 hour drive was now 18 hours...So they both got good at flying and visiting each other every couple months. There were lots of tears, late night facetimes, Netflix movie date nights, and of course counting down the days until they saw each other.

Colin moved to Memphis in May 2020 and a few days after he moved down, they got Rey, the dog that stole both their hearts! They both agreed that living together was WAY better than long distance! They finally got to enjoy normal couple stuff like cooking dinner together, taking Rey for walks, and saying goodnight in person every night.

It was one of the last Saturday's that they would spend in Memphis so Colin told Kendra he wanted to take her out for a lunch date. They went to Toro's for tacos and chips and queso, then walked over to Crumble Cookies for dessert! They got back and took Rey out for a walk and to play fetch. When Rey was tired and ready to head back, Colin suggested that they sit on the bench for a couple minutes to rest before going back. Kendra was in a hurry cause she wanted to start getting ready for her Senior Sendoff that night. They walked over to the bench and Kendra saw a box and flowers. Kendra opened the box and found a note. She started reading the note while Colin put on his white suit jacket (he had joked about proposing in it for as long as they could remember). Then he got down on his knee and asked Kendra to marry him. She said yes and tried to slip on the ring that they found out was the wrong size. They got to celebrate with all of their optometry friends by attending Senior Sendoff ( a cruise boat on the Mississippi)!