We met by chance, we had a class together freshman year of high school but never talked or interacted. One day we happened to be hanging out with mutual friends who met up, but still didn't talk. I was with our friend Nick one day and we all ended up hanging out that night. I had brought baked good- and Alex decided to comment that I should've made a pie instead of cookies. I asked Nick for his number that night and texted him in rebuttal to his commentary. We started talking from there, most of his friends told me it wouldn't last and that he'd barely talk to me longer than a week. Things grew and we talked every day for weeks. We had a lot of time to get to know each other at first, as he was living at the farm up north. August 8th, 2014, he came home for a few days, and finally asked me to be his girlfriend.

A few weeks prior to AJ's birthday we decided we were going to go out of town to celebrate. After some looking and planning we chose 4 state parks to hike at, as that's one of our favorite things to do together. Sunday, January 12th we got up, got ready, and got on the road. It started as any other road trip we talked, listened to music, and stopped for some snacks. Our first destination on the list- Amnicon Falls State Park in Poplar, WI. This was a park we had looked at hiking at before, and since we were staying in Duluth it was only about an hour away. We got to the park and bundled up for our hike, every part of this park was absolutely beautiful. We started on the main part of the park following all the trails, exploring some smaller trails people had made, and taking tons of pictures. We hiked for quite a while before we made it back to the parking lot. When we got back we decided to take a smaller trail to another piece of the park- the large overlook of the falls. When we got up to it there was a sign that said "test your selfie skills" and had a ledge where you could set up a self-timer with the falls. I had tried 3 times before I asked AJ to set it up instead. He went and put his phone down, and I asked him to do a kiss picture instead. I got the typical, "we'll see" answer out of AJ as he walked over to me. What I didn't know was that he had pushed record on his phone when he set it down on the ledge, walked over and got down on one knee, and asked me to marry him. Of course said "YES" as I tried to keep myself together. After we spent a few moments together, we began to call family to tell them the good news. This was easily one of the best trips we have ever gone on.