There was a part of me that knew on that first weekend that I could spend the rest of my life with Collette. But as a fairly (formerly hopeless) romantic human, I'd learned over the years to not get too carried away. When we came back to SF that sentiment grew and grew. At first, I tried to push it away. It's such a large and important decision to make. But it kept coming up, and slowly I started to sit with the question and it become less and less daunting and more and more obvious.

In October of 2021 I made the decision. I also decided it needed to happen in Tahoe and I wanted some of the people we loved most to be there. Pulling this all off, without coco suspecting a thing was going to be a tall order.

I told my parents in December.

In January 2022, I called Matt (Collette's brother) and told him my plans, and enlisted him as my inside man. Two weekends later, Collette flew up to visit her friend Caroline in Portland. I turned off my location in Find my friends, told her I was going to spend the day hiking. That morning I woke up at 4AM, put on a suit, and drove down to LA. Matt had made sure that his parents were at home, I rang the doorbell, sweating in my suit and holding a bouquet of flowers. Betsy opened the door while on the phone with her cousin Jim and was fairly shocked to see me. I think she got the message pretty quickly, repeatedly telling me that "a facetime would've been enough." Pete came out and was told that his scheduled walk with Mia was going to have to wait.

Matt went out to pick us up some in and out, I monologued for quite awhile, once I got to the whole "I want 5 kids thing" they both broke in telling me that was way too many. I asked for their blessing and they very kindly gave it. After lunch I was back on my way up to SF.

The next couple months involved me calling up Collette's friends Meredith and Caroline while at the office to see if they could come out and be part of the surprise on the 4th. I changed names in my phone, deleted call logs. Felt kinda like a secret agent, but less in the cool way and mostly in the stressful way.

Before I knew it the weekend came about. We woke up and hiked up to the top of Maggie's peak. I was giddy with excitement, running on adrenaline. At the top I told Collette I wanted a picture, she said no, we already had a picture here.… I insisted, and our friends encouraged us. We walked over to the edge, I started blabbing, I don't think she understood what was going on so quickly I got to one knee, thinking the physical cues would make it more obvious. It sure did. She said yes.

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