It's hard to pin exactly when we first met, but we can certainly say music was the first thing that brought us into each others orbits in high school. In marching band, Colin played trombone, and I played baritone, often marching behind him.

We started talking & flirting more the spring of Colin's senior year. However, with Colin going off to Madison in the fall for college and myself still too wrapped up in show choir shenanigans, it seemed to be that we were not meant to be....

Winter break of my freshman year of college, we reconnected and got coffee. However, we never really defined it as a date and Colin may have literally ran away from the coffee shop as we were leaving due to nerves? Lol...oh well another missed connection.....

I came home for memorial day weekend and Colin's parents came over to my parent's place for a BBQ. When they asked me where my boyfriend was, I let them know we had broken up at the beginning of the month. They responded "Oh no, sorry to hear that....you know Colin has been windsurfing a lot in Madison."

I ran into Colin's family at the Waconia tree lighting ceremony, sans Colin. I texted him later that night to say hey missed you at the lights, and finally we scheduled a proper date for New Year's Eve 2017!

For our first year of dating we were long distance, with me in Winona and Colin in Madison. Luckily, the 2.5 hour drive wasn't too bad and we made time to see each other every other week. We had a lot of fun along the way :)

We both graduated from our first round of college. While the future was exciting, we both didn't know what to expect as we threw ourselves at the mercy of graduate programs. We hoped to be in the same town, but we knew it wasn't a guarantee...

Well, we were back to long distance! I began my Master's in Omaha while Colin started his PhD program in Madison. I also adopted Rosie around this time (3 days after moving to Omaha lol).

During COVID, we both retreated to Waconia as our grad programs flipped to remote learning. While this time period was scary and full of uncertainty, it was nice to be in the same town for a couple months and be able to lean on each other.

When we went back to living long distance, we made a point to make every Friday night a date night. We would each order some food for takeout and then sit down to eat on zoom together. We would even watch films together, counting down on the phone to make sure we hit play at the same time (shoutout to all the marvel films).

I graduated with my Master's and started heading over to Madison to finally close the gap, move in with Colin, and start my research career!

After less than a month of living together, we made the rational decision to adopt a 2nd dog, Bert, thinking he would be a Rosie 2.0. We were proven wrong pretty quick, and he's been our little gremlin ever since.

We made our way down to Austin, TX for a weekend getaway. We loved the BBQ and dancing!

We saw Hadestown for the first time together and immediately fell in love with the score and musical!

We went out to Salem, MA for all the Halloween festivities. If you're even remotely a fan of anything spooky/historic, you seriously have to do this trip. Here's us at the Hocus Pocus house!

We went down to Chicago for Colin's birthday and got to see the river dyed green! We love traveling together!

We went down to Indiana with the dogs to see the solar eclipse. The dogs were not impressed.

We ran our first 8k, felt very accomplished and very dead!

We flew out to NYC for my birthday to see 3(!) Broadway shows (Colin's a trooper) and hit the museums. At the Natural History museum, Colin seemed to know a ton of fun facts about the gemstones....

We got engaged! Colin proposed in Central Park, completely taking me by surprise! It was a beautiful day!

Colin defended his dissertation and officially became Dr. Swee!

We moved to the Seattle area for Colin's new job. We love the area and can't wait to see where life takes us next!!