In January 2020, right after my 30th birthday I decided to try app dating again (previous attempts were....less than desirable 😂) Within an hour of updating my app (OkCupid) I had a message in my inbox from Brent. He was very polite, and his pictures showed him kayaking (which I wanted to try), fishing, and looking cute so we made plans to meet the following Sunday for laser tag. fast forward to Sunday, I was hungover, and not feeling up for the original plans, and I begged him to take me for a cheeseburger instead 😂😂 We went to Smashburger for food, and then to El Nopal for a drink while we waited for the Star Wars movie to start. We ended the night talking in his truck for hours, until I forced him to leave since he had to get up super early. I remember going back to the restaurant (Come Back Inn) and telling the other employees how much I liked him. Then covid hit. Working around babies, the customers and employees in the restuarant made me wary so I essentially told him that I was all in and he might as well start staying with me so we wouldn't have to go back and forth. Within a year we had brought our cats together, I had 2 (Gandolf & Spinx), and he had 1 (Sam) and adopted a puppy named Frank. I had a full house again and it felt so nice.

Brent had taken a traveling electrician job, which took him to Maryland. It was difficult to navigate, as we were on different schedules, but we made it a point to facetime once a day, and send care packages/letters to each other. Me and Frank planned a weekend trip to go visit him for Memorial Day. He was such a good boy on the trip and was so excited to see dad after 6 weeks! Every place we went was dog friendly and he was able to join us on all our outings. The first day I got a little bout of food poisoning, which ruined Brent's original plan to propose in a kayak on the river 🤦🏼‍♀️The weather also changed drastically from sunny 80° to 45° and rainy. We had to rearrange some of the plans we made but we got to see a few of the memorials (he would not let me run in the water like Jenny and Forrest did, in Forrest Gump 😂) and he didn't particularly like me running around yelling for AOC to come be my friend but we ended up having a lot fun. The last day I was there the weather cleared up and I suggested a trip up to Chesapeake Bay, where I had read about a little hidden beach that claimed to have lots of shark teeth and sea shells. We went on a beautiful hike to get there, and got to play with Frank in the water and on the beach. He loved it. He saw us digging for shells and joined in! After a while Brent was like "Hey come look what I found!" and when I went over, he pulled out the ring and asked me 😍🥰 It was so sweet and perfect. We spent the rest of the day swimming, playing with Frank and just enjoying ourselves before I had to head back home.