After church one Sunday in Galveston, we found ourselves at lunch with mutual friends. We hit it off, and after a few months of commenting on each others' BeReals, Jesús shot his shot in the DMs.

DMs led to phone calls & FaceTimes, and a few weeks later Jesús stopped to meet Kaila for coffee in Waco on his way to a concert. He said he could "only stay for 30 minutes"...he stayed for an hour and a half :)

Two weeks later, Kaila drove to Houston to visit Jesús, and after a full weekend together, Jesús officially asked her to be his girlfriend!

Less than one week into dating, Jesús was brave enough to join Kaila to work a weekend retreat at Laity Lodge Family Camp. Jesús had a blast and Kaila loved getting to share her favorite place on earth with him.

We went back to Galveston to meet Jesús' parents and made sure to get dinner at The Original, which was where we shared our first lunch back in May.

Long distance dating included LOTS of FaceTimes and phone calls, plus two separate months of international long distance while Jesús was in Europe for work.

We traveled to several different cities together, including Chicago! Highlights from Jesús' first time there were deep dish pizza and visiting the Weiner Circle.

In all, we took 29 trips back and forth to see each other in Houston, Austin, Galveston and Chicago. We got to make new memories each time we were together, meet friends and family, and establish traditions like Tex-Mex Friday and Saturday morning walks.

On a Wednesday afternoon in October, Jesús drove in from Houston and surprised Kaila after work with a proposal at Town Lake. We celebrated with Tex Mex (duh) and each of our families! Side note: Our dear friend (and Kaila's roommate!) Maggie took our pictures and wrote the sweetest blog post about it here: https://www.maggiekaptures.com/blog/lady-bird-lake-boardwalk-proposal/

Our wedding day, where we will get married in the same place we met! We are anxiously awaiting the day we get to delete our weekend planning shared note and start building our life together in the same city FOREVER!!!!!