Becoming Byrnes

It was a typical day-in-the-life during my first semester of my junior year in college. I headed to the community-style laundry room for the apartments on campus, you know, to do the laundry I'd procrastinated on. When in walked Tyler, headed to the laundry room to visit the drink vending machine to find his next mixer. He struck up a conversation with me, invited me to a party that evening, and we exchanged phone numbers. We still debate on who texted who first (it was always him), however over the next several months we began to develop a friendship that later turned into a closer bond. We also continue to debate on when we "officially" started dating, however we celebrate June 2016 as the start of our dating journey that has brought us to the start of our next big journey together!

It was perfect timing: I had just finished all of my didactic work for my degree in physical therapy and was moving to Asheville, NC for my clinical rotation lasting the last 6 months before graduation. The same week I was moving, Tyler was coaching a travel baseball team with a tournament in Gatlinburg, TN. He and his childhood best friend, Chase, helped move me in and we all drove to Tennessee together. In between tournament games, we found fun outdoor things to occupy our time and Tyler came up with hiking a destination trial called Laurel Falls. The hike was crowded with all kinds of tourists like ourselves enjoying the beautiful weather and going to visit the waterfalls. When we got to the top, there were all kinds of people hanging around and taking pictures. Once we had been there for a little bit, I turned to Tyler to see if he was ready to make the hike back down. Usually he's one to enjoy the views and head out, but this day he was abnormally hesitant to leave and I was so confused but didn't really mind. That's when he points to the bottom of the falls on some rocks and says, "let's go take a picture there!" Down for the adventure, I followed him down the rocks where buddy Chase was snapping away on the camera, when suddenly Tyler drops to a knee. It was the easiest and happiest "YES!" of my life!