For different reasons, we both ended up trying online dating, and one day Elijah stumbled across this cute girl and decided to send her a message. We quickly hit it off and discovered that we had a lot in common (like being nerdy engineers), so Elijah asked Rachel out for their first date. At this point we didn't live super close to each other so we decided to meet at a Starbucks in the middle (coincidentally right by where Elijah lives now). Rachel was coming from a work event at Scottish Rite Hospital teaching kids how to make slime so she ended up showing up to this date covered in dried pink and blue glue and glitter hoping he wouldn't notice (spoiler alert: he did). ~ Fun fact break: Rachel's initial impression was that Elijah liked tea since that's what he ordered...but about 5 months later learned that this was false. ~ We ended up sitting and talking for hours until we noticed the employees cleaning up and decided we should probably leave before we got kicked out. After Elijah asked Rachel out on a second date she realized that it needed to be soon since she was about to be across the world in China for 2 weeks...so the day she was flying out Elijah took her bowling (where she also learned that you could take fun classes in college too, like bowling) and then they proceeded to talk twice a day while she was abroad (despite the 12 hour time difference). Luckily, the jet-lagged text messages didn't scare him off...

A few weeks before the big day, Elijah had invited Rachel to go get breakfast the morning after their anniversary at the Starbucks where they had their first date. Rachel excitedly said yes and since dining-in was still not an option, Rachel suggested they go eat at one of the parks nearby (little did she know she was making Elijah's life a whole lot easier since he was already trying to figure out how to get her to the park after breakfast anyways...) The morning of started off like any other morning. After narrowly avoiding being late because of an unfortunately placed U-Haul, Rachel got to Elijah's and they went to pick up breakfast and headed to Newtown Park. ~ Fun Fact Break: Newtown Park was where we watched fireworks last Fourth of July and did a virtual 5k in March. It is also the spot where Elijah first realized he was falling in love... ~ When we got there, Rachel was under the impression that we were just going to wander around and find a spot to eat, but Elijah already had a plan for the perfect spot (which is when Rachel started getting suspicious since it seemed like he was on a mission and was less talkative than normal). He ended up leading her to a cute pond with a fountain in the middle and they sat on a ledge, ate breakfast, talked, and turtle-watched. This was the spot where Elijah got down on one knee and asked the love of his life to marry him. Good news: Rachel said yes!