A few weeks after graduating highschool in May of 2015, I decided to start attending a college-aged small group at Heritage Christian Church. My first time attending was a big cook-out the group was having at Alum Creek Park in Westerville. Shortly after arriving, I was introduced to a group of people playing spikeball. Michael was a part of this group, and this is when we first met. I immediately thought he was really cute, but assumed he already had a girlfriend or something like that. However, I quickly realized he didn’t, and was pretty excited about that. I had never dated anyone before, and had always said I didn’t even want to date until I graduated. But he had caught my attention pretty quickly. It’s funny how God works things out the way He does. :)

Within the first few weeks, it was pretty obvious we both liked each other. After about a month after meeting each other, two of our friends helped set us up on our first “date” (before we started dating). We played tennis, then went out to Graeters for ice cream. We both really liked each other at this point, but neither of us really said anything about it to the other. Throughout the rest of the summer, we did a lot with our college small group. This included hiking, volleyball, ice cream trips to Graeters, and staying up late playing cards.

Towards the end of the summer in August, Michael asked me to go out to a movie and dinner. We ate at Molly Woos, one of Michael’s family’s favorite restaurants. This is where he officially asked me to be his girlfriend, on August 15, 2015 (about 3 months after we had met). Little did we know, a year and a half later, he would be asking me to marry him. :)

The photo below is our first photo taken as a couple, about a week after we started dating.