Reagan and I met many years ago while we were both in middle school, but it wasn’t until 2017 that we connected. We found ourselves hanging out with the same friend group during the summer going into our senior year. We then started dating in January of 2018 and thankfully she has stuck around ever since! We’ve accomplished a lot together, one being graduating high school together in 2018 and the second, graduating from Kirkwood College together in 2020. While attending Kirkwood we spent many hours together just hanging out, or taking our beloved dog Phoebe on long walks around campus. On our first spring break as “adults in the real world” we talked ourselves into making the road trip to Colorado so we could see the mountains and catch up with friends from school. We had a great time sightseeing, hiking and riding the electric scooters all around Denver, so we kind of made it a tradition for the next few years. (The 2020 pandemic being an interesting one.) When looking back on our trips to Colorado, we felt it would be the perfect place to unite in marriage. After having our dog Phoebe for about 5 years, we discussed getting another dog. That didn’t take Reagan long at all, the next week I came home from a work trip to a second dog, who we ended up naming Hank. Our dogs are our world and we don’t know what our lives would look like without them! Our most memorable trip was when we took the dogs to the beach on Lake Michigan, they loved the sand, sunshine, and just being on the journey with us. But we do hope to be able to take them to Colorado some day. I proposed to Reagan on November 30th 2024 by putting the ring on our Christmas tree after we had just got done decorating it. She was pointing out one of the ornaments right next to the ring and she still didn’t notice it. Over the last 8 years of dating, we have lived in 3 apartments and 1 townhouse, this means we’ve really mastered the whole “moving” thing. We look forward to buying a house in the near future, somewhere in Iowa. Thank you to our family and close friends for always supporting us and our relationship, we are very excited for this next milestone in our lives together!