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After going on a big “guys only” vacation to Colorado with his buddies in December, 2015, James decided he and I should take our own vacation to Florida. We had to work around my class schedule, and ended up going in March, over my spring break. I was taking a video editing class at the time and suggested to James that it would be cool to bring his drone and get footage of us on the beach for my class. He took my idea and ran with it! I thought “wow, he’s really into this project!” He even went on a drone facebook group and lined up another drone enthusiast to meet us at the beach to get plenty of footage “for my project”.  We got down to Florida on a Monday, and were too tired to fly the drone or even go to the beach. On Tuesday we went shopping for some beachy clothes to wear for “my project”, because James “forgot” to bring nice clothes. I started questioning his motives when he bought me a dress, and then asked a sales person for advice on what he should get to match. Wednesday, March 9th, 2016 we headed off to Miami Beach in our fancy clothes with drone in tow! What really tipped me off, was that I asked James to shave his “creeper stache” and he did! (Normally on vacation he doesn’t care about his facial hair and won’t shave at all!) I thought only one thing could be that important to him! When we got there and met with the other drone guy, the guys set up their drones as I took photos of the ocean. James even had a microphone to “record the ocean waves”! That ended up not working correctly, though. The plan was to walk down the pier, look at the setting sun for a bit, and walk back. So the drones took flight, and we headed off down the pier! Only to turn back after a few yards because one drone had a low battery! James was being a bit of a perfectionist, and I thought my project is really not worth all this stress! So new batteries in the drone we headed back toward the end of the pier, walking like we had somewhere to go, stopping abruptly in front of a stealthy GoPro glued on top of a trash can. Knowing we were on video, we were both a little awkward, me trying to be romantic, and him trying to build up the courage to do what he came there for! He needed me to look away for a moment, so he pointed out a “strange looking boat” behind me. As I turned around to look, he dropped to one knee, pulled a small box from his pocket and opened it. I turned back towards him, and he said “Molly, will you spend the rest of your life with me?” My eyes went from his eyes down to the ring he was holding and back to his eyes, it took me a second to realize this was the real thing! As I felt my eyes well with tears, I could barely squeak out a “yes!”. I didn’t know what else to do but kiss him! A few short moments later a man came over and offered to take our photo, not knowing we were being recorded by 2 drones and a GoPro already! After he took a few he told us that love is a gift from God, and to always remember this moment! We walked a little lighter on the way back and spent the rest of the night calling our families to tell them, and editing “my school project”.

 

I got an A on that project 🙂

We started dating on March 16th, 2012. We discovered early on in our relationship that we both love traveling, so we’ve taken every opportunity we’ve had to see new places. Our first trip was to Chicago to see and Cubs/Cards game with another couple, since then we’ve visited North Carolina, Memphis, Florida, Georgia, St. Louis, Indianapolis, and Kansas City, to name a few. Another big part of our relationship has been family. Half those trips were to visit family or to help them move! If we’re not chilling on the couch with a pizza and Netflix, 9 times out of 10 we’re doing something with one of our families.

It hasn’t always been smooth sailing, as we’ve had our fair share of rough waters (see what I did there?). But as we’ve matured, grown together, and figured out what’s important in life, we’ve always made each other a priority, and have learned that the strong relationships are the ones that take a lot of work. But the work is always worth it!

James are I both grew up in Milford. And, Milford being a small town, it’s hard to say when exactly we first met. It was kind of one of those things where you know the name, but don’t really know the person. We have a photo from the Milford newspaper of both of us at the Public Library as 2 year olds. He came with his best friend to my graduation party, where we were briefly introduced, but went on our separate ways. A couple years later he sent me a friend request on facebook, and that’s really where it started. We would message back and forth, mostly just joking about random things, and I’d ask him computer related questions (why he didn’t block me for that, I don’t know!). We exchanged phone numbers so that we could talk more (this was before we had facebook on our “dumb” cellphones), and began texting almost every day. June, 25th, 2011 we finally got to meet each other in person for the “first” time. We went to a party a mutual friend was having. Then we hung out the next day, and then the next weekend, and the next, and the one after that, and we’ve just kind of kept that up for 6 years now.