I started Infantry Officer School at the Ft Benning GA in the fall. After surviving the first week I went out with some classmates to the downtown restaurants. Some how Megan walked by where I was and after giving her an awkward wave decided I wanted to meet her. In the bar next door I managed to say some witty line that made her laugh and it began from there. After hanging out for a few hours we exchanged numbers and wet our separate ways. The next day we met up for lunch and then spent every day together when I wasn't in the field training until I graduated. After moving home we did distance for about seven months. Realizing we wanted to keep this going and that neither of us wanted to be in GA Megan moved out to Oregon.

Here is where the truth comes to play. I wasn't planning on going out that night, I honestly parked my car and drove off twice before deciding that I should just go meet me friends for a little bit before going home and curling up on the couch and doing nothing on a friday night. ( SO HAPPY I WENT). As I was walking up the bar to meet my friends, I stuck my head into a bar I usually never stop by to see if I knew anyone in there. As i was scanning the room and awkward wave caught my eye. Having zero idea who this person was I wave and walked straight out. Within in 4 minutes of this, I felt a tap on my shoulder and a Hi, I'm Austin from a this same person who waved at me. Slightly confused and feeling stupid that I should know this person I said Hi and greeted him and his friends. Somehow we ended up talking the rest of the night just about anything you could think of. We ended up going our separate was but before we grabbed each other numbers. The next day, Austin asked me to have lunch with him and join him walking around Columbus, GA. From the point on we spent ever second with each other for the next 4 months. After that we had to make a choice of if this was something we seriously wanted. (( I knew from the very start, I did and wasn't going to give up that easily)) We did long distance for seven months, before deciding that it was time for us to live in the same time and see how dating life really was. July 2018 I packed up my stuff and moved all the way to Oregon.

Austin had been planning this for awhile and somehow i never noticed anything at all. Austin had planned a date day before he was supposed to deploy. The day started as normal Saturday did for us, We stopped to get coffee then went and picked up our friends Brennon and Kayla Lovejoy. We were planning on going to the cabin that Austin family owns on the side of Mount Hood. That morning I was so mad at Austin and fought with him for a good 45 minutes about not wanting to put make up on, get cute, or even brush my hair. Someway somehow he was able to convince me to do all things and I'm very happy I did. As we were driving towards the mountain to get to the cabin it was a pretty cloudy day but somehow by the time that we got to the lake all of the clouds around the mountain had disappeared and it was a beautiful 72 degree day. We then made our way out to the lake on the rowboat, and were in the middle of the lake when Brennon and Kayla said that they had never seen the dam. I was very confused because I mean it was a dam. But, I just let it go and Austin then rode the boat over there to dropped them off. We continued to row around and then told me he had a present for me but it would all depend on what my next three answers were to the following three questions. I was so confused but was playing along. To this day I still thought it was going to be a puppy he was going to pull out of his book bag. After the three questions that made no sense Austin told me to close my eyes and not to open until he said so. He had rode the boat into the middle of the lake perfectly with Mount Hood in the background somehow someway was able to get down on one knee and asked his final question “ do you want to marry me”