hashtag for the weekend!

What do you do for fun is my favorite thing to ask someone as I try to get to know them. The first time I met Shar may not have been the most appropriate time to ask that question, seeing as it was at a job interview, but I wasn't sure I'd see her again and I had nothing to lose. She responded with, "I like to go to farmer's markets on the weekends to buy all my fresh vegetables". At this point, I wasn't sure we had much in common. Over the next several years of working together, though, I realized that was far from the truth. Fast forward a few years, and I finally struck up enough courage to ask her out on a pub crawl with me. Not only did we make it to 5 different bars, but we proceeded to meet a dog along the way (this was my first glimpse into her obsession with dogs), eat some pizza, and she even managed to break one of my Oakland Athletic's bobbleheads. The conversation was effortless, and after just 6 hours of hanging out, I realized I wanted this to be much more than "just friends". This may have been our first date, but our second date was no slouch. I figured out pretty quickly that I wanted to spend as much time as I could getting to know her, and on a random Wednesday, asked if she would go to Santa Barbara with me that upcoming weekend. Bear in mind we had gone on one date at that point. After some initial hesitation, she said yes and we had an awesome weekend in a dog friendly hotel (where she proceeded to tell me we could only date if we eventually got a dog ourselves), biked across my old school (Go Gauchos!) and hung out at the beach (all during winter - thank you California!). This was the foundation of our relationship and a glimpse into our future...with dogs, farmers markets, A's games, and a whole lot of California Sun.

For anyone who knows Kunal, he's living his best life between the hours of 5am - 10am - definitely the early riser. For anyone who knows me, I am 100% not. But when we were both visiting Phoenix at the same time and he suggested hiking Camelback early in the morning, I couldn't say no! Fast-forward one year later, I had just returned to Phoenix from a trip to Mexico with my family, and we were getting ready to host Kunal's family at our house for dinner. Luckily, Kunal's family travels to Phoenix every Christmas to visit Kunal's eldest sister, Nina, who lives there with her family, so having his whole family in town was totally normal! The morning after the family dinner, Kunal and I had made plans to hike Camelback again, but this time with Tushar (my older brother) and Hema (Kunal's other older sister). The four of us started the hike at the crack of dawn (much to my dismay - I ALMOST even tried to cancel!), after a large cup of chai of course :) Not suspecting a thing, I took many breaks on the hike up, complained a fair bit, and watched as Hema and Tushar took a significant lead, while Kunal waited patiently by my side. Finally, at the top of the mountain, as I pointed out my Phoenix valley knowledge down below, I turned around to find Kunal down on one knee, asking me to marry him! After a failed attempt at putting the ring on the wrong finger first, he finally got it right and I very happily accepted :) <3 But the adventure was not over yet! Kunal planned the perfect day ahead - filled with manicures and donuts, lots of face times, bubbly & brunch with the families and a photographer at the Phoenician, and a night out in Scottsdale with our family and friends!