Stephen and I met 2nd semester of freshmen year of college at NC State. I had plans to go out with one of my friends from high school, Samantha Poulos, on a Friday night. She had told me that we would be picking up a few other people that were going with us, so we went to Wolf Creek Apartments to meet up with them. The group of people just happened to be Stephen and his friends.

Stephen and I had been wanting to visit our friend, Samantha Poulos, out in Colorado for a while. She had recently moved to Denver to work for a professional hockey team and we knew that flights out there weren't expensive. We made plans in February when she didn't have a game to come stay for a few days. I had a feeling that Stephen might propose while we were out there, but I wasn't sure when he was going to do it.

We left Augusta bright and early on February 10th as we had a 5:30 am flight out of Atlanta, which was 2 hours away. We got into Denver that morning and took Sam to work so we could use her car to explore the surrounding area. We ended up exploring Golden, CO which is just a little outside of Denver. We found out that Golden is where the well known Coors Brewery is, which we explored that the following day.

February 12th, 2016:

When researching things to do in Colorado I found that dog sledding was an option. It's something that I've always wanted to try, so I had made arrangements for Stephen, Sam, and myself to go. The closest it was offered was in Breckenridge, CO which is about 1 hour and a half outside of Denver. We got there a little bit early so we had time to explore Breckenridge a little bit before dog sledding. We then went out to this large expanse of land where the dog sledding company was located. We were organized into a group with other people and the instructor gave us the instructions for how to stop, slow down, and speed up. He then asked "who wants to go first?" Everyone else was quiet and Stephen pipes up "I'll go!" The instructor then said that I was to sit in the sled while Stephen drove and then once we slowed down, we would switch. It was a lot of fun! You get up to a pretty good speed and flying through the mountain scenery is a truly beautiful experience! Once I was done with my turn driving the instructor made a signal to slow down on this curve. I thought it was odd because I didn't think that my turn had been that long and I wanted to go faster! Stephen then gets out of the sled and gets down on one knee. I was so excited, but I couldn't move because you have to keep your foot on the brake or the dogs can take off! It was the best proposal that I could've imagined and I was really happy that we could share that moment with Sam. Later on I found out that she and the instructor were in on it!

Afterwards, we called friends and family to share the news while we drove to Winter Park, CO. We had plans to go skiing the next day with Sam and Mike and needed to check into our hotel. That night we celebrated with our friends.

After returning from Colorado we came home to our apartment door decorated and a large bottle of champagne at our door. Our friends Lauren and Jed had gone out of their way to say congratulations and make us feel even more special! The next day at work my co-workers had gotten together a congratulatory breakfast with a stack of wedding magazines for me to begin the wedding planning process.