Hello dear friends and family. Emma and I are elated to share this wonderful blessing with you all. In case you are not familiar with the tale of our love, allow me to quickly bring you up to speed. Emma and I met the old fashioned way. No swiping on tinder involved here. We met at work. A schoolhouse to be specific. An edifice of Education. Franklin High School. Emma was starting her first year at FHS back in 2021 and I was working on my fifth. I introduced myself to Emma as I like to do to all new teachers in the Social Studies Department. Teaching is a heck of a job, and being a first year is H-A-R-D. So I did what I thought was a nice thing and said hello and offered well-wishes. Come to find out, Emma and I were actually assigned to co-teach with one another. How fun! Pretty soon, we found ourselves sitting together during assemblies and popping in for visits quite frequently during lunches, planning periods and other down time. As the year got rolling I think our students could tell before we could what was happening. Our little seed of love was watered during Friday Happy Hours at nearby Reter's Crabhouse and Grille. We loved laughing together, learning about one another and discussing all the craziness of school although Emma was and still is good about sometimes separating work from the rest of life. As spring of that year brought a rebirth all around, it also saw the beginning of Emma and I's relationship. After a fun trip to Charlotte and consulting my cousin/brother Adam I decided that I was ready to declare my intentions to Emma. Once I had returned from Charlotte and Emma had returned from Puerto Rico for our Spring Break trips I had my mind made up! On the date of my parents anniversary and my sisters birthday, April 17th, Emma became my girlfriend! Huzzah! The crowd went wild! (that's you all) Ahh how sweet it was! Emma and I continued spending a lot of time together and wrapped up a great first school year together. Come the start of the next school year I bought a house! It wasn't long until it was clear that Emma should move in. Although our two cats experienced a good deal of friction with this process, it was smooth sailing for Emma and I. Very natural, very lovely. As our cats tempers cooled, our love grew and we began to understand how special of a love this was. Ahh yes. Times were good. And time flew by as our love deepened and our garden grew. On Father's Day 2025 I told my parents that I was planning on asking Emma to be my wife. My dad smiled uncontrollably and my mom cried. If you know my mom, this is not surprising. While Emma left on a trip to her friend Sara's Bachelorette trip in Savannah I took out Emma's family and asked for their support. Thankfully, it was granted! Nice! With permission granted, I went about procuring a ring! Ring procured, it was off to Shenandoah Mountains. Both my family and Emma's family were on this trip. Emma's family has been going to Shenandoah her whole life. It's a special place to them and to us. My plan was to propose on a walk shortly after our arrival and then go to dinner with both our families and celebrate. So we arrive and I am excited. Somehow no one has spoiled the surprise and it's time for this to go down. Emma is not suspecting anything. So off we went on our walk. We intercepted my mom walking Charlotte and took Charlotte with us. For some reason, this trip to Shenandoah was very buggy! The flies were out (hence the green masks in some of the pics.) So we are walking and I have my Anam Cara book and a beautiful passage to read all picked out. I just did not know the location. Very quickly I realize this is a hot, buggy mess but I know I need to make this happen! We settle on some benches next to a place we had stayed before. This could be it. Nope, too buggy. Can't ask someone to marry you with a gnat in your nose. So we continued walking. This walking ended up leading to the house of George Pollock and I did it!! I'm out of space! Love!