6 pets 5 dead plants 4 years 3 Crewsmas’ 2 houses 1 moment to forever A life to share and a love to celebrate

Sometimes Bumble gets it right.

Our first date … our first time meeting … was dinner at Matt’s Tavern in Mason, OH. I was ready to give up on dating. My luck with meeting someone I could connect and talk with wasn’t great. Before meeting Matt, I had told myself this was going to be my last date for a while if it didn’t work out. Walking in, he was sitting down and first impression was, cute, great smile, oh geez I hope he’s funny. To my delight… and if you don’t know Matthew, he has a great sense of humor. I couldn’t stop smiling or laughing the entire time. Matthew was kind, courteous, intelligent, funny and both of us realized, by the time dinner ended, we didn’t want to stop talking. Matt suggested bowling as a follow up activity. Accepting, I truly found out how humble Matt was in describing his bowling skills. “I like to bowl” vs. “I bowled competitively on my high school team” are two very different things. He crushed me. After bowling, we still didn’t want the night to end. Things were closing. Activities were limited. We decided to walk and talk. Time took us to midnight and beyond and still, we had so much more to say and laugh about. Finding Matt was like finding the best friend I didn’t know was missing. When we finally decided to bring the date to an end, we shared our first kiss and something in my gut told me, this one. Give this one a chance. And something in his gut must’ve said the same thing because we have yet to stop talking.

On a cloudy Tuesday, we took our daily walk after work with the dog. It had recently rained. It was cold. And I was grumpy from a long day of work. Matt asked if I wanted to walk in my work clothes, but I was tired and figured work out clothes would be more comfortable. Matt remained in his office clothes, a nice pair of khaki pants and a plaid shirt. A little odd, but at the time, I didn’t think anything of the request. When we arrived at our neighborhood playground, Matt told Bonnie to sit and asked her for “Paw.” The ground was wet and she wasn’t too pleased about stopping. She refused. He repeated the command and got her to sit but she still kept her paw to herself. I said, “Its okay if she doesn’t want to give paw, we can keep going.” He replied, “If she doesn’t give me paw, then how will she help me give you this?” He held up the ring. “I wanted to ask you in front of the park where one day we will take our kids. Will you marry me?” I yelled at him. I cried. I yelled a little more. He had to take a minute to explain it was for real. When I finally believed him…. Yes. A thousand times yes.