Our first date was one Sunday afternoon watching a football game. It was filled with laughs like we were old friends and was instantly comfortable. We hit it off so well that we made dinner plans for later that night. After another awesome date we were pretty much inseparable and I already knew that we had to be meant for each other.

When I knew he was "the one" I started praying for him to surprise me with that little jewelry box while on one knee. We instead sat down and had a long talk about our goals. Mike is competing in Freestyle Wrestling and I am working toward becoming a Physician Assistant. In this talk, we decided that it was better to get our goals accomplished first and to put marriage on hold.

Fast forward a couple months and I am walking along the beach during a family vacation for a scavenger hunt holding his hand. He tells me this hunt was orchestrated by his mother and is a yearly tradition. Eventually we get to the last clue and we are walking toward a "glow" in the sand ahead of us. When we get there, I hear our song playing in the distance and see a huge blanket with roses made into an "X", a bottle of champagne and a small box in the middle. The small box holds a poem written by Mike and as he read it, I realized that I could never picture myself with anyone else but him. I struggled out a yes as the last line of his poem rhymed, "Cassandra Leigh Hirsbrunner will you marry me?"