Mitchell was one of the first people Cricket met at Gonzaga. Only by the fate of his flirtatious roommates going around to all the girls' dorm rooms, looking them up on Facebook, and writing their room number on the girl's dorm room name tags if they thought they were attractive. So, not quite the storybook beginning, but his roommates did lead them to the beginning of a great friendship. Both business majors, they had several classes together every semester. Spending time started out with studying, and once living off campus making dinner together with roommates every Wednesday. But senior year something changed. To this day it still isn't clear what changed but they are so happy it did!

Cricket always said she wanted her family or friends to be there when we got engaged. We planned a weekend for her college roommates and their significant others to go to my grandparent's cabin in Orondo on the Columbia River. I knew for a while that was going to be the weekend I proposed, but the challenge was keeping it a secret for so long. Saturday was going to be the day, and the only other person who knew was Bob, but he wasn't there yet. So it was up to me to convince everyone to come home early from wine tasting in Chelan before it got too dark. After a couple bottles of wine it's pretty hard to convince the women we should go back to the cabin and not go to the next winery. Typically I'm pretty relaxed especially when wine tasting, but the sun was starting to go down so I told everyone to chug their glasses so we could go! We got back to the cabin and Cricket immediately changed into her comfy clothes before I could make a move. I came up with an excuse that my grandparents wanted a picture of everyone by the river so she had to change back into her nice clothes. We took a picture and before I could react she went back inside! I turned to Bob (who had arrived by this point) and told him to get his phone out and give mine to someone else to take a video. I made up another excuse to get Cricket out to the bank of the river with me. It was a beautiful and calm evening on the river. No wind and the water was so flat it had a glass-like reflection of the hills behind it. The perfect setting for the perfect moment. Cricket came out to my side as we both over looked the gorgeous river. I said a few words to her and got down on a knee to ask the easiest question of my life. She was never able to get the words out of her mouth but I took the tears and the nodding of the head as a YES!