When Fede was 16 years old, he played on the Italian National Baseball Team. After playing against an American high school baseball team from Colorado in Italy, he asked the coach (Dale Nehls) if there were any opportunities for him to play baseball in America. Fede then decided to travel to the United States when he was 17 years old to attend to Skyline High School on his junior year, play baseball and join his host family, the Nehls, in Colorado. After high school, he played baseball in Kansas at Barton Community College before being recruited to play for Creighton University in Omaha, NE. During his Junior year at Creighton, he was drafted by the Baltimore Orioles. Two years after being in the orioles organization, Fede went back to Creighton to finish his degree - this last year to finish his degree happened to match up with my senior year at Creighton University. Long story short, on January 23rd, 2016, Fede and I both decided to go out with friends to a popular bar at the time, known as "The Hive." Instantly bonding and connecting from the first hello (and after Fede's infamous "stair dance"), a lot of coincidences were also in play such as the fact that my parents had recently become fluent in Italian because they simply traveled there and fell in love with the language and culture, AND that my Mom even has family from Italy! After a few months of seeing each other came graduation, meeting each others families, and the rest is history.

Every year, Fede travels back home for Christmas to visit his family in Verona. I tagged along with him the winter of 2017 and again for 2018. My second day in Verona, December 29th 2018, Fede and I decided to go out and walk all over Verona to see our favorite places. He asked me what my favorite place was and I said Castel San Pietro, a castle that oversees the city and has breathtaking views. We headed out on our walk after lunch towards the castle. Fede describes it as he had no plan of where or when he was going to propose, he just knew it would be this day. On our walk, we passed by an enchanting garden, Palazzo Giusti, with massive front gates and walls covered in vines. We were given a map of the garden to follow around, and I am not kidding, it was the most beautiful place, filled with the iconic tall and straight Italian cypress evergreens and mazes- Google pictures of this place! Towards the back of the garden, the path takes you up on a hill and through a spiral staircase leading to a balcony, and further down the path at the top of the hill is a little wooden bench. We decided to sit down on the bench and to our right, we could see Castel San Pietro and all the visitors. We had the same view of Castel San Pietro without the busyness of other tourists and people; it was perfect. Throughout walking in the garden, we both said so many times that this was our new favorite place. While we were sitting on the bench, Fede asked me why this was my new favorite place. I had so many answers for him, and then asked him if his answers were different from mine. As he responded, he got down on one knee and said "because this is the spot where I asked you to marry me." After saying YES a million times over (and crying), we celebrated and were completely surprised again later that night because my parents flew in! Two days later, his brother took pictures of us at the garden for the memory of our engagement.