“Love: a temporary insanity, curable by marriage.” – Ambrose Bierce

Back in late March 2014, we were just in the 8th grade. My route to school included two bus rides to reach the local middle school. I had just gotten off my first bus at the transfer location, only to find out my 2nd bus had already left for the school. I panicked because it was cold and I could not walk alone to the middle school. I walked down the row of buses asking each driver if the bus went to John Muir middle school, I hopped on the first bus that said yes and allowed me to come aboard. Relieved, I sat down in a seat and patiently awaited the departure. Before I knew it, three boys came onto the bus. Two of the boys walked past me, but the third one sat down in my seat (weeeeird, I know). I didn't know what to say but Kayson just started talking to me. Before I knew it, I was purposefully getting onto the wrong bus to sit by this weird kid every morning. We started texting back and forth non-stop for HOURS day and night getting to know each other. Even over spring break we never broke contact. Kayson even made his family race across the country (literally) to get back to Wausau to see me (which at the time I thought they were just coming back from the trip as scheduled). On the first day back from spring break, Kayson and I sat on the bus just like normal...but this time was different. He handed me a folded up piece of paper and told me not to open it up until I got home. I didn't wait. Written on the paper was a full page love letter of him expressing his fondness of me and asking me to be his girlfriend. I was smitten, and that was the beginning of our crazy journey.

It all started with planning our annual “end of summer” vacation. Normally we go camping in a Wisconsin state park, but this year Kayson had suggested we go on a road trip! We decided we would head west to Yellowstone within a week’s time. Our first day in Yellowstone was wonderful, seeing lots of wildlife and exploring the park. Kayson had suggested that afternoon that we find a lookout over Yellowstone lake to watch the sunset. Of course I had suggested we go back to camp to make dinner first. Upon cooking up some freeze-dried beef stroganoff, I had realized it was starting to get late and it was still a drive to get to the lookout the ranger had suggested to us. We decided to pack up our dinner and take it with us. Naturally, on our way up to the look out, I had spilled the beef stroganoff on my sweatshirt but I wasn’t worried about it because we were in the forest and nothing crazy was gonna happen (spoiler alert: I was very wrong). We got out of the car and started down a path along the cliff side and at this point the sun started to set. We had reached out destination and as we were getting situated to sit down, Kayson had wasted no time pulling out the ring and getting down on one knee! I almost fell off the edge from pure shock! Both of us were instantly ugly crying. Kayson managed to choke out, “I love you…*sob sob*..I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?” And well…the rest is history 😉