Some Exciting News!

As some of you may know, I recently got engaged to an amazing girl named Ally!  Many have been asking about our story of how we met, how we ended up getting engaged, etc. so I decided to put together a little blog post about it.  Here’s my attempt at condensing a 2+ year story down to one post:

How we met…

We first met through our church, NLCF.  Although I technically don’t remember our first interaction, we think that we met at the Virginia Tech vs. Georgia Tech football tailgate during Ally’s freshman year (Fall 2012).  We didn’t really become friends until I was in Grad school and Ally was a sophomore, when we eventually figured out that we were neighbors (Fall 2013)!  She lived on the first floor and I lived on the third floor of our apartment building.  After riding together to church a few times, I eventually heard that she sprained her ankle playing basketball.  I have a certain empathy for those who sprain their ankles after spraining mine several times.  I thought to myself, “You know, my sister has a big test at her job, and Ally sprained her ankle…I’m going to bake a batch of cookies, mail half to my sister, and take half downstairs to Ally”.  With complete genuine intentions, I took the cookies and my crutches down to Ally, and made an open offer to give her a ride if she needed it.  After all, I knew from experience that riding the bus on crutches was not fun!

Lo and behold, but later that week, Ally texted me asking for a ride to the doctor since she had a cold in addition to her sprained ankle.  Talk about a rough week!  Well, the morning came and during that short drive, the conversation got deep quickly, with Ally mentioning she was single.  Never before had I considered dating Ally, but all of a sudden, everything hit me at once:  she was a really kind and funny gal that would be awesome to get to know more.

Soon after this, we ended up getting to know each other in group settings when my apartment became the popular hang-out spot that semester.  After many long conversations, I realized that Ally was someone I wanted to pursue.  After a winter break of reflecting on things, our friendship picked back up in January (2014) right where it left off.  At the beginning of February, we sat down in West End Market to have the “DTR” (Define the Relationship) talk.  After nervous small talk about Red Sox baseball, I told her how I felt.  She reciprocated, and we decided to take *about* two weeks (Ally claims I said two weeks…) to think, pray, and seek counsel on whether we should start a dating relationship.  Meanwhile, Valentine’s Day came, and we had our first date: El Rod’s for dinner, then the Great Gatsby on Redbox, and watching the winter Olympics on TV.  The next day (*about* two weeks after our previous conversation…exactly two weeks would have been the following Monday), we had planned to go to the Cascades Waterfall since she hadn’t been.  Some of you may remember, however, that February 2014 was the Snow-pocalypse…a blizzard of about 16+ inches of snow!  I knew the Cascades was out of the question, but determined as I was to ask Ally to be my girlfriend, I settled for Pandapas Pond.  We drove out in ~20 degree weather and parked along Route 460, since they hadn’t plowed yet.  We walked 0.6 miles from the road to the pond through over a foot of snow, and blustery conditions. (She will never let me forget that!)  After finding the nearest bench, that’s when I asked Ally to make “official” what I had already seen was a blossoming relationship.  She agreed, and that’s where things started!

 

We didn’t know that day what the next few years would hold, much less that we would end up engaged!  A few months after we started dating, I graduated from Graduate School and started full time Ministry Team Development: a challenging season of about 7 months of long distance.  There were many ups and downs over the next few years, and long story short, we ended up deciding we wanted to get married…

 

The proposal…

After a challenging summer of long distance while I was at LT in New York, the time had come to begin planning how I would propose to Ally.  I did my research, bought a ring, and decided to ask Ally to marry me at the place where it all began: Pandapas Pond.  That place has become so special to us.  It is where our relationship began, where we first said those three little words “I love you”, and where we had many deeper conversations about life.

The day before I was going to propose, I drove down to Smithfield to ask her parents for their blessing on our marriage.  After a successful conversation (which I disguised to Ally as a trip to Richmond to spend time with friends), I spent the night back home in Nelson, and then drove back to Blacksburg Saturday morning.  I had two close friends on the task of planning the engagement party (for later that night), and I nervously spent the afternoon with Ally relaxing and watching TV.  I was very nervous about the evening plans since this was in the middle of Hurricane Matthew.  All day, they were calling for rain, but hour by hour the percentage chance of rain dropped, and I just hoped the rain would hold off!  Now, Virginia Tech had a football game that day, so I knew I would need an excuse to stop watching the game and go out to Pandapas.  That “excuse” was that I needed to get my Christmas card picture done with our friend, Rachel, who had taken several photoshoots of us in previous years.  She bought the idea, and we both dressed up nicely for our photoshoot.

After arriving at Pandapas, Rachel “was running late”.  While we waited, I suggested we look for some good picture spots and we could also go through a box of memories I stashed in my car.  We started walking, stopped at the same bench where I asked her to be my girlfriend, and started delving through the ticket stubs, programs, receipts, and more memories from our relationship together.

 

As we neared the bottom of the box, we came across a new memory: a notecard flip book containing various “numbers” of our relationship:

967 days together

188 miles from her house to mine

16″ of snow the day I asked her out

10 weddings

6 birthdays

3 Valentine’s Days

a few sweet nothings that “you can’t put a number on…”

1 Question Left to Ask

 

That’s when I got down on one knee and asked her to marry me!

 

She said yes, and our friends taking photos from the bushes came out and greeted us!  We were, and still are so excited for this next phase in our relationship.  We also realize how blessed we are, and how many friends and family have helped us along the way.