We first met in high school but our story didn't start until 2017 when Mike came out to New York City for a work trip. He knew that I was working in New York City as a travel nurse and he reached out to meet up. Little did he know that I was going to take him to all of my favorite places in NYC (and walk 30,000 steps). We enjoyed each other's company so much that we kept talking once Mike returned back home to Bloomington. I moved to San Diego two months later which gave Mike an excuse to visit someplace warm during Illinois winters. We got tickets to the first round of March Madness in San Diego and had another great weekend of adventuring in another city together. After this trip, we planned to meet back up in St. Louis after I returned home from San Diego. Since then, we have survived distances as far as San Francisco, Seattle, and Hawaii to Bloomington, IL. We finally ended long distance in April of 2020 when we both moved to Dallas, just as the pandemic hit. He popped the question in October of 2020 on a hike to Blue Lakes in Telluride, Colorado. The adventure continues as we just started travel nursing again in the summer of 2021 - first up Seattle!