ciao!

Why in the heck would Alex leave good ol’ Kansas City (and his family in St. Louis) to move down to Austin for some girl? Aside from the fact that his precious Southwest points were draining from flying to visit Lauren so much, they both knew they had something rare and long-distance wasn’t going to cut it. How did they find themselves in the long distance situation in the first place? Well, it goes back to 4th of July weekend 2021, and some mutual friends of theirs, all of whom take credit for them getting together. Lauren was with Stephanie at a grungey East austin bar called Shangrila, awaiting the friends who were in town for the long weekend. Steph said, “Lauren a tall hot guy just walked in whos exactly your type… wait… there’s two of them!” For those who don’t know, she was referring to Alex and his identical twin (shout out to Adam). They walked in with the friends we happened to be waiting on, who all knew one another from Mizzou. Lauren and Alex didn’t actually talk much that night, but the following day, the whole crew came over for a pool party Lauren and her friends were throwing at a house they rented for the weekend. Lauren thought she was flirting, but Alex thought she was expressing little to no interest, so he and the other single guys in the group decided to leave to hit the bars. Just then Lauren said, “wait are you all leaving?” To which Alex finally saw his opening and said, “actually, I’ll stay.” They had such a good time together, that the following day, Alex left his crew, who were out on Rainey Street, to go back to the house party. The weekend was amazing, but they figured they may never see each other again. After a month of sparse texting and snap chatting, Alex started to lose hope. One night when he was at a Garth Brooks concert at Arrowhead, with liquid courage in his veins he sent Lauren an Instagram DM (likely a cat-call). After getting no response, he had lost all hope so he unsent the message. Little did he know, Lauren saw the message, followed by “message unsent,” so in her true nature, of course she had to call him out. And thank God she did because this is when Alex, in a last ditch effort, asked to visit her. From then on Alex and Lauren couldn’t get enough of each other and visited one another frequently (although Alex would say it was more one-sided). 7 months later, Alex moved to Austin, getting his own place that basically functioned as his office, so about 8 months later, they moved in together. And as they say, the rest is history.

It was 4th of July weekend, aka the two year anniversary of Lauren and Alex meeting. Alex's brothers were in town visiting for the weekend, just as they did two years ago. Closing out the long weekend of partying, it was their last day in town, and everyone was dragging. The story was that Alex's brothers were going to go paddle boarding, however because Lauren just had ACL surgery 4 and a half weeks prior, she and Alex would hang back. Lauren made a dinner reservation for everyone at Sammie's that night, so Alex suggested that they go have a pre-dinner drink at Nido while the others were paddle boarding. For once in her life, she went along with this plan with no suspicion, lucky for him. Where he wasn't as lucky, was with her leaving her crutch at home. He tried to make that happen, as he thought she would be off the crutches by now, but she was very much still limping, so she refused (rightfully so). They sipped their cocktails at Nido, which was on a rooftop overlooking Town Lake and the downtown skyline. Lauren just happened to get her second wind and was being a Chatty Cathy, while Alex, quietly and nervously nodded with a ring box in his pocket, unbeknownst to her. By the grace of God, despite being on a crutch, Lauren told Alex how nice it would be to walk across the bridge to get to dinner. This is when he assumed his plan was foiled and she knew what was going on, because this was exactly his plan and he thought it was going to require a lot of convincing. Rest assured, she was clueless. Just days prior telling a friend she knew "for a fact" he didn't have the ring yet, and if they got engaged any time soon she would break her 17 year vegetarian streak and eat one of her mom's meatballs. This debt has not yet been paid. They leave the restaurant and start to walk across the bridge. Alex had been calling Lauren "Pogo" the last few months, so he said to her, "hey pogo, what is everyone going to call you when you're off that crutch?" In a sassy tone she said back, "What are you talking about... i don't know... my old nicknames?" To which he said, "What about "Engaged?"" At this point he was down on one knee, asked her to marry him, and of course she said yes. She was still in total shock and disbelief when Alex then said, "Your dad is right behind you." She turned around and saw both of their families sprinting toward them smiling, with an even more shocked look on her face. Afterwards, all of Lauren's friends were waiting to surprise and celebrate the newly engaged couple <3