We’re getting married!

Well, it's a funny story... Neither of us were expecting to get into a relationship going into the Fall of 2018. Joshua had returned from Canada to start his junior year playing for the Liberty Hockey Team and I had recently started my job as Video Coordinator for the Club Sports Department at Liberty. With close ties between my department and Joshua's team, we crossed paths several times without even knowing. One of my officemates was one of Joshua's coaches and happened to know both of us were single. So the matchmaking began! After a couple weeks of dropping hints, Joshua finally caught on and built up the courage to ask me out on a date (which I said yes to). We spend a couple months getting to know each other until we decided to make it official and never looked back!

This was something that had been a long time coming. From the first date we went on together, I knew that Olivia was someone special and I knew that we could have a future together. After a summer together, I began to think more and more about that future and started to ask Olivia what type of ring she liked. Let me tell you, it was a nightmare trying to figure out what she really liked. After spending hours looking at different jewelry stores, I set up an actual appointment after this past Christmas to get it nailed down once and for all. Finally, I knew the design and could work with something. I then moved to asking her parents for her hand and finalizing the ring. Then came selecting the date. This posed a challenge as schedules didn't line up well with my hockey season and eventually Covid-19 becoming a factor. I narrowed it down to two dates and ended up choosing March 28th. When the day was finally upon us, I had organized for the proposal to happen at Olivia's Grandma's house at Smith Mountain Lake. I was able to get her out there by telling her I wanted to get some graduation pictures taken. We both got ready and headed out around 2:30. When we arrived, everything was set up on the dock with a massive canvas I had a close friend of ours paint reading "Will You Marry Me?", visible from the driveway. As we walked down to the dock emotions hit and all my prep work to memorize what I would say went out the window. Since I suspected that would happen, I wrote it down as well. So I read the letter, got down on one knee and asked her to marry me. She responded with an excited scream "YES!" as her answer.