Our first "date" was in May of 2014, I was 13. We walked around the shops of Mystic and browsed the bookstore for almost an hour. From this point on the bookstore has been our favorite place to browse in Mystic. We had ice cream from the Mystic Drawbridge Ice Cream Shoppe, sat on the dock and watched the drawbridge rise and the boats go by. To finish up our day, we went back to Aaron's house and watched the movie Grease. We always enjoy visiting bookstores on all our trips. Grease is still one of my favorite all time movies.
Spring 2014, 8th grade. I was going over to my friend Leah’s house for a party. At that point, Leah was the only member of the Jesse family that I knew. I entered the house with my family and I saw most of my friends and their parents. As I turned the corner into the living room, my eyes wandered around the room. I stood at the corner and that’s when I saw Aaron standing in the door frame to the hallway talking to Mrs. Eppler. Our eyes met and we looked at each other for a long moment and I felt an instant connection. Aaron excused himself from the conversation he was having and walked over to me. We talked for almost the rest of the party and found we had very similar interests. By the end of the night, we were holding hands. Throughout the years of us being together, we really should have met a hundred times over before the moment we did. Since we are from such a small town, I believe we met at exactly the right time. From that point on, the rest is history and I am so thankful we found each other.
Lexi had come to visit me in Lakewood, Washington for a week before the Christmas holidays. I had been planning to propose, with my parents and her parent's permission, for a while. I rented us a farmhouse that was next to pastures of goats and chickens. Lexi was becoming suspicious and had started to suspect something was up. I kept denying anything was going on. On the last morning we started to pack up our stuff and that’s when I said, I had something to say to her. I finally told her, “I’ve been lying” as I got down on one knee!