The Story of Us.

While some couples have the awesome ability of calling each other “high school sweethearts”, I get to call my fiancé the even cooler, much less common “middle school sweetheart”. Truthfully, this phrase is inaccurate because it assumes that we’ve been together for the past 13 years. This is not the case (and thankfully so). While I would have loved to spend high school and college with my favorite person ever, gaining valuable lessons and life experiences from other relationships and experiences has been beneficial for both of us in so many ways.

Call it fate, call it whatever you like, but Matt just so happened to move to my town in the beginning of the 7^th grade, and just so happened to find his niche with my large group of friends. I’d like to think I would have friended him eventually, but because we shared friends, we ended up clicking during the first month of school.

Throughout middle school we, for lack of a better term, “dated”. I spent many a weekend night at Matt’s grandmother’s house playing MarioKart on Nintendo 64 and sneaking pecks on the cheek from him. Matt spent many a summer evening swimming in my parent’s above ground pool. Our fondest memories of middle school were with each other. Whether we were catching a Friday night movie and a pepperoni pizza at our local pizza joint with Matt’s Dad, or kissing at the stroke of midnight on the year 2000 in my living room, our friendship that bloomed during our middle school days has continued for more than 12 years.

And just as fate so happened to bring us together in 7th grade, it happened to bring us back together right after graduating college. After almost 10 years of distant friendship, we reconnected again as if we had never left one another. Yes, sappy, I know! But honestly, we find ourselves finishing each other’s sentences constantly. One word for our relationship has always been “natural”.

While we have different hobbies and interests, you'll often find us either doing these things together or talking about these things:

Hiking. The summer after getting back together Matt hiked more than 1000 miles and 3 months on the Appalachian Trail. I was able to join him for 3 weeks. It was the most amazing experience with changing scenery every day, sleeping in shelters every night and getting away from the world for a while. Since then, we've taken it upon ourselves to hike as much as possible, whether it's in Korea, Malaysia, Mongolia or Maine.

In our spare time we are always hiking.

 Traveling. While I have always been known as a big dreamer with big travel plans, Matt was a newbie. But like most addictions, it only takes one or two experiences to get hooked. His first time actually leaving the USA (besides Canada, because, c'mon, that doesn't count) was to move to Korea! Since our big move we have enjoyed traveling to China, Mongolia and Malaysia. In just 2 months we'll be off again to Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia!

Because every Great Wall deserves a dance.

Besides hiking and traveling, you'll find us often curled up in a corner of a coffee shop filling notebooks with wedding plans, travel plans, lesson plans, all kinds of plans.