It all started at the poolhall... I knew he was going to be trouble for me when he walked through the front door that first night... lol. Our mutual friend, Matt who played on my team at the time, recruited Troy because we were down a player. Little did we both know, a couple of years later our worlds would intertwine and we would be become one.

We had been dating for about 8 months and neither one of us had yet to say those three little words. It was literally killing me inside not to tell him lol... but I wanted him to tell me he loved me first... because that's how it usually works, right? There were several times, especially one night when I had a few glasses of wine, that I almost let it slip out... but I kept it contained. I would just stare at him sometimes, hoping he had some sort of telepathy and could hear what I was YELLING at him in my head... but he didn't lol.

Anyways, back to the story.....

He had a work trip planned for Dallas for the last week in August of 2017 and he asked me to go. It was such a fun trip, full of site seeing, yummy food... and toll roads lol. We decided to go to the Dallas Arboretum on the afternoon of August 30th, 2017 when he got out of class. We walked around the arboretum for a while, taking in all of the beautiful flowers around us. As we were finishing up, he wanted to sit down on a bench. I could tell something was on his mind but I didn't want to pry. After about 10 minutes or so of quietness, I mentioned that we should probably head back to the car because the arboretum was closing soon, but I could still see his wheels turning. He looked at me, in that moment, hugged me and whispered those three words that still to this day make me melt.... "I LOVE YOU!" Of course I blurted out (all in the same breath lol), "I LOVE YOU TOO... what took you so damn long!" ;P

As much as I wanted him to say I love you wayyyyy before then, I am so glad he waited. It was such a magical moment that I will never forget.

His birthday was rapidly approaching and I wanted to surprise him with a weekend trip somewhere neither one of us had ever been. I had a few places in mind but I kept circling back to Huntsville, AL to visit the U.S. Space and Rocket Center. I knew we that both LOVED space (Hello... you can't be a Trekkie if you don't like space lol) but I was still a little worried he wouldn't like going there. I finally asked him a couple of weeks before his birthday if he would be interested in going and he was in. I didn't waste a second... I booked the hotel for the weekend after his birthday, not knowing he had something up his sleeve. I feel like I should put this out there... if you know Troy, you know that he is always up to something (in the best way possible) ;P.

We got up early that morning so we could get to the space center when the doors opened.... because we wanted to make sure to beat the crowd and we were also very ready to geek out! I wasn't feeling all that wonderful because I was about 6 weeks pregnant at the time and the nausea was taking it's toll on me, but I wasn't going to let that ruin our day. We saw so many awesome things, taking our time walking every inch of the center. Anyone who has ever been to this space center knows there is A LOT of ground to cover.

After about 4 hours of walking around, we decided to head back towards the car. We both wanted to take a picture in front of one the shuttles outside by the entrance.... I was ok with just taking a selfie with it, but he was pretty adamant on finding the "perfect stylish woman" to take our picture. I should of known something was up, especially when several women walked by us and he kept saying that they didn't fit the criteria and more than likely wouldn't know how to get the right angle. (I am going to blame my cluelessness on the pregnancy brain... that's a real thing you know lol) I finally found a woman that had style so I just walked over to her and asked her to take our photo. (Troy wanted me to add in here that at this exact moment, he started panicking. He had planned to give the woman a head's up that he was about to propose, but I didn't give him a chance to do so...whoops hehe) She even took a few steps back to make sure to get us and the whole space shuttle in the photo, which was perfect. She took a couple of photos and then he asked her to take one more. I still didn't think anything about it. As I am standing there, I see out of the corner of my eye, him kneel to the ground. Now you would think it would have clicked somewhere in my brain that he was about to propose to me lol.... but no, I thought he had dropped something on the ground and was just picking it up. When I turned to face him, the realization hit me.... HE WAS PROPOSING TO ME!!!!!!!!! As I stood there, taking it all in, I kept thinking, "OMG.. THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING... HE IS REALLY PROPOSING TO ME!" He finally asked after quite a few seconds, if I was going to say yes and I snapped out of it and said YES, OF COURSE! Unbeknownst to us, as all of this was happening, the "stylish lady" who was taking our photos, also got the whole proposal on video!

I stayed in a state of shock pretty much the rest of that trip lol! It went from a little birthday weekend trip to one of the best weekends of my life!