The year was 2018, when the great state of Texas came calling our names. The smell of barbecue and new beginnings were in the air, as two strangers from opposite sides of the country were about to begin their long journey of becoming physical therapists. But little did we know, the lone star state would take us on a more important journey - the journey of being less "lone"ly ;) Stephen, being a fair skinned Chicagoan, went into school counting down the days he could escape the harsh heat of the Austin desert. That all changed the first day of class, when a beautiful blonde fire cracker by the name of Heidi walked into the packed classroom. His attitude quickly changed after that, as his heart let out a little "Yeehaw". It was love at first sight. As the months of school went on, we quickly became best friends bonding over our love for queso, food trucks, her dog Cooper, hiking, Austin City Limits music festival, and pulling all nighters to study millions of impossible to pronounce body parts for our tests (Seriously, what is a pudundal nerve...). And this friendship went on for a long, long 2 years. Stephen could no longer stand pretending to like watching The Bachelorette just to have an excuse to hang out with Heidi. The amount of queso eating sessions were starting to have legitimate health ramifications... It was time for Stephen to finally confessed his love for Heidi (Heidi was not dumb, she already knew for a long time). On March 7th, 2020, Stephen finally asked Heidi to be his girlfriend in Dallas, Texas (he was hoping she would ask him first...) Since then, we have had an action packed two and a half years full of laughs, adventure, and love. We even added another pup to our family, Goose! We took our show on the road for our clinical internships, as we loaded up our cars with nothing but the dogs and 8 tons of Heidi's clothes. We braved hurricanes, attack spiders, broken down cars, lots of car sickness from Goose, and COVID as we travelled the country. We survived it all, and only cried like 4 or 5 times max. Eventually, we achieved our dreams of becoming Physical Therapists and our journey led us back to Heidi's home town of Phoenix, AZ. We decided Heidi's 8 tons of clothing needed a formal home, so we bought a house! We have been enjoying being home owners, physical therapists, dog parents, and best friends in the dry heat of Arizona ever since!

On April 24th 2022, it was finally time to find out the answer to the question everyone was dying to find out; Is Heidi as easy to fool as everyone thinks!? It turns out, the answer was no. Disguised as a "late mother's day celebration", we began the day at the Desert Botanical Gardens to see the butterfly exhibit. The fact that Stephen's mom flew all the way from Chicago to Phoenix for a "late mother's day" somehow did not fool Heidi and she started to anticipate something was up! She was on edge the entire day as Stephen would make her wait the whole day; it wasn't going to be that easy! As the sun was setting over the valley and the day seemed to be coming to its end, it was finally time to ask the question. We drove to Different Pointe of View, a restaurant over looking Phoenix and, more importantly, our new home. Heidi arrived to a slideshow of all of our favorite moments over the past 3 amazing years and Stephen sang "Better Together" by Luke Combs (A nod to Heidi's love of Stephen's singing). We made our way outside, where she was surprised to be greeted by all of her loved ones. Everyone was on pins and needles as they awaited the answer to that one most important question... "Will you Marry Me, Heidi Thompson?" The answer was an easy "Yes!"