As many of you know, we were very active in FFA in high school. Little did we know, we would fall in love and be with each other forever. Eli and I were best friends and he picked on me all the time, of course boys and the way they flirt. Everyone kept asking me if I had a crush on him, of course, like any other girl, I would say "ew, no he's my best friend!" Also, my parents kept asking me and Autumn which one of us he liked, haha. Well, Ag Day 2018 came around and me and Eli were inseparable that entire day, which then led to fall break so we would not see each other. Autumn, my twin sister, kept asking me "are you sure you don't have a crush on Eli?" I kept denying it, until one night over fall break me and Eli were on FaceTime and Autumn came in and heard who I was talking to. Which of course sisters being sisters she said "HA I KNEW YOU LIKED HIM!" Eli still did not know I liked him though and he had heard her say that!! That then lead into a conversation with Eli asking if it was true and I told him yes, but I was so scared of our friendship being ruined that I didn't want him to know in case he did not feel the same. After several days of talking pretty much 24/7, we came to the conclusion that we would take a shot at it and he asked me to be his girl friend on October 10, 2018 and the rest is history. I am glad we took that shot at love because now I have my best friend for the rest of my life.

If you know me, you know how I can not keep my mouth shut to save my life! So of course any suspicion I had, I had to say something...oops. So my family does a family Gatlinburg trip every year and its a trip me and E looked forward to. In my head, I just knew it would be the perfect place for him to propose. SO we are loading up the car and Eli looks at me and says, "Can you back the car closer to the door?" So I say sure and go move the car, but in my head I am thinking oooo he is grabbing the ring. Of course, I can not keep my mouth shut and I look at him and say "Couldn't forget the ring could ya?" Eli then convinces me that it is in fact not happening this weekend and he just didn't want to have to carry his bag to where my car was parked. We get to the cabin on Thursday and start planning the things we wanna do over the long weekend. We have began to make going to Cade's Cove a tradition now, so we ask my sister, brother, and sister-in-law if they want to go with us and they say yes. So we plan to leave the cabin by 5 AM Sunday which is the normal time we usually go. We get in the car and everyone is ready to go and Eli has been waiting in the car since 4:45, and then he looks at us and goes "Ah, I need to go get a water!" He comes back with four waters "just in case anyone else needed one." We have one spot we always stop at Cade's Cove and it is the Elijah Oliver cabin. It's about a half mile hike in to get to the cabin. When we get to the cabin we all walk around to look at it and then everyone else wants to take a picture in front of the cabin, so we do. Then Eli wants to take a picture with me in front of the cabin, Eli hates taking pictures, but we take one anyways. Since I am so short, my head is right against Eli's chest and I hear "thump, thump, thump..." and I said "hmmmm why's your heart racing?" Eli then says "I just hiked up a mountain" and walks away and then turns back and says "Logan it's not gonna happen if you are expecting it." Well, I thought we were all done looking so I started walking back down the mountain back to the car. At this point, I am mad at myself for saying anything because I knew I had ruined the moment. About half way through the trail there is an old barn, we all stopped looking at it and I wanted to tell Eli sorry for ruining what I thought was the moment but as I was hugging him, he dropped to his knee and asked me to marry him. This man does not cry often, pretty sure I have only seen him cry once before this in the four and half years we have been dating, and when he looked at me while he was proposing I saw him starting to tear up so I started bawling. So I may have ruined the initial plan, but he still caught me off guard.