Dakota and I have attended the same church since he came into the Denton Freedom House in 2022 and have known of each other since. We had 2-3 brief conversations within this time, but always related to church and evangelism. We came to find out later that we both noticed each other early on, but neither one of us had any intentions on acting on it! lol sounds about right.

I (Lizi) had become friends with his soon to be roommate, Tommy, at a service event in February of 2024 and connected with Tommy over a love for plants and hating being in a room full of people with no one to talk to (lol). When it came up that Tommy was going to be moving into a new house with a group of guys, I told him I would bring over house warming plants whenever they got settled! So at the beginning of March, they had invited me over for dinner and we ate and played Uno Flip.

During this time Dakota and I had the opportunity to really talk and joke around for the first time and we realized we had similar senses of humor and were interested in the same movies, so their household invited me over for movie nights on Fridays and this is when Dakota and I began getting to know each other, still without the intention of being more than friends!

Over the month of March we would message each other here and there and we got to know each other more and more! Thus commenced the "What does it mean?!" phase where we over thought every interaction and played the "he/she likes me, he/she likes me not game!"

I (Lizi) was CONVINCED that I was reading too much into it, because he would always go to bed early on movie nights and not stay around and try to talk to me, and wouldn't really talk to me at A2 (small group), etc. and I have always been taught that if a guy wants to date you he will make it known.

He (Dakota) had doubts that I liked him because of my many "how annoying it is that just because I'm nice and like to joke around with people, doesn't mean I'm flirting with them," and "why can't guys and girls be just friends," monologues haha. Leave it to me to always put my foot in my mouth lol. This led him to always question, "does she like me, or this just her personality?"

Two weeks before we started dating, Dakota discovered that I couldn't ride a bike and the Friday before we started dating, his business #YeehawTractorGuys picked up a bunch of kids bikes to clean up and sell. This somehow ended up with him riding a children's bike over to my house around midnight and teaching me how to ride it! We did that around my neighborhood for about 30 minutes, and then spent until around 2 or 3 am talking and joking around in my driveway. And of course with me being me, I still told myself he wasn't interested lol!

My roommate (shout out to Cree Cree) told me there's no way a boy comes over in the middle of the night to teach a girl how to ride a bike if they were not interested (she was correct of course)!

On Friday March 29th, Dakota texted me after I got home from movie night and asked me if I wanted to go to the zoo (which I had mentioned many times in conversations that I LOVE the zoo), and I audibly went "YES!" in my kitchen and started doing a little dance, because he had FINALLY asked me on a date!

Two days later on Easter Sunday we were texting and he asked me if I wanted to hang out that evening. We ended up going to Mooyah (where he paid for my meal and I asked myself once again, "what does it mean?!" lol) and Southlakes Park to take a walk.

While walking he was telling me how his roommates were teasing him, calling me his "girlfriend," and telling him he should ask me out on a date already. This led us to have a conversation that went something like this:

"You did already ask me out on a date though!" -Me

"I did?" -Dakota

--Let us note this is where I start to panic from fear of embarrassment haha--

"Yeah, you asked me to go to the zoo...but if you don't want it to be a date that's okay!" -Lizi

"Oh, it can be a date!" -Dakota

Then Dakota went to hold my hand and I pulled it away and jokingly said, "dang, take a girl on a date first!" This made him stop walking and look at me confused, "Isn't this a date?"

"Do you want it to be a date?"-Me

"Yeah" -Dakota

"Then it's a date." -Me

And then in Lizi and Dakota fashion we nudged each other a bit in silly awkwardness and spent the rest of our first date walking, being silly, and playing on the playground!

We were really into each other when we first started dating, but it wasn't long before we were head over heels for each other, or head over boots as Dakota likes to say! We knew we were headed for marriage just a few weeks into our relationship and by May started talking about getting married and even told our families in late May/early June! We even met with our Pastors (shout out to Alton and Staci) to talk to them about Pre-Marital counseling in June! We truly believe the Lord has brought us together to spend the rest of our lives together and that this is definitely a "if you know you know" situation!

Dakota planned a ruse birthday scavenger hunt for him that would turn into our proposal! His mom (shout out to Michelle!) texted me earlier in that week to let me know she was planning a birthday scavenger hunt for Dakota on Saturday and that the theme would be "His Life Journey," and that she needed my help since I am a part of that. The plan was for him to start the hunt at 2 pm Saturday and that I needed to be at Zera Coffee waiting for him with his clue at 3:30. I was supposed to be the last clue since I was the most recent part of his life journey and we were to go to the last destination to get his present.

When we got to the last location, which was Southlakes Park AKA our first date destination, there was a gift bag sitting on a rock near the pond. He opened it and it was a couples Bible. He handed it to me and I opened it to where a book mark was sticking out and it was a folded up heart that said, "Marry me?" on the inside! I was so happy that he was FINALLY proposing that I turn around really fast to hug him and I knocked the ring out of his hand haha! Luckily it was still in the box because he was on his way down on one knee so we didn't have to go searching for it!! After hugging for a few seconds he pulled away and looked over and there was a photographer taking pictures of us!

Dakota gave me such a sweet proposal full of intentionality and love!

Fun Facts:

1) I was super suspicious the week leading up to it, because he told me weeks before his birthday that he doesn't really do much for his birthday, so I was a little suspicious that there was a whole scavenger hunt, but his mom is also awesome and would totally do something like that so I wasn't sure. There was also a few other things that kept me on alert and I was going back and forth texting my sister and roommates, "it's a proposal," "nope its definitely for his birthday," over and over again lol!

2) He knew I was suspicious because my sister told him, and so he actually drove around to all of the destinations of the fake clues his mom made, with his mom in the car with him, just to throw me off because he knew that I would be checking his location to see if the scavenger hunt was real or if he would just be at his house and come to Zera at 3:30 pretending to be on a scavenger hunt! Y'all...he drove around for 1.5 hours to try to convince me it was not a proposal! Way to go babe lol you almost convinced me...almost! (;