Now that I’ve been able to speak to most of my family and close friends, I’m able to share our wonderful proposal story!  It was an absolute blast of a weekend, and I was surprised every step of the way!

It all began, from my point of view, back in February.  Ray had booked a room for my birthday at a great hotel in Breckenridge where I was able to spend that weekend with great friends!  The following week, Ray had mentioned that he got a discount on the hotel for an off season weekend in the Summer because he wrote a great Yelp review.  So we’ve had this weekend planned for a significant period of time.  I then decided that I wanted to do a fourteener, thus the preparations began.  New hiking boots and a few 5+ hour hikes later and we were off to the races!

Friday night, we got to Breckenridge and had an early, relaxing dinner at a restaurant named Twist.  The restaurant had incredibly unique dishes and a fantastic view of the mountains.  Little did I know that our friends were having dinner two blocks away

Early the next morning, we were off on our hike!  Ray normally does the directions for our hikes, so I didn’t even bother looking to see where we were supposed to be beginning the hike.  We were actually 9 miles away from where the hike was supposed to start!  But, that being said, it started off beautifully!

Five minutes later, the friends that Ray had invited into town were following our exact path!

Ray and I passed the location that he was intending to propose because he decided that the view wasn’t what he was hoping for with the proposal.  Which is when the hike went awry!  I continued to follow Ray… as he led me on a hike UP SKI SLOPES.  The hills were incredibly intense from my point of view and I had to take several breaks.  I kept telling Ray that I thought we were going the wrong way, but he seemed incredibly confident, so I let it go on for a while.  After ~20 minutes of what I thought was an incredibly intense hike, I was full on whining, telling Ray that he had no idea where he was going because this had to be incorrect.  So I sat down to eat some of the trail mix I made at home, drink some of my water, and toss on more SPF 30 while I also looked up trail maps on my phone.  Ray is lucky that I wasn’t getting service!  He kept telling me that I should stand up because I was going to get dizzy.  So I stood up slowly and turned around to tell him I was ready to keep going… but he was sitting there on one knee asking me to spend the rest of his life with him!!  Of course I start ugly crying and respond, “Shut the f*** up!”  Yes, really.  I said a swear word in my acceptance.  Please don’t spread the word!  But at least it shows I was really surprised, right?

When I said that I wished somebody was there to take our picture, he told me that our photographers were at the base of the mountain!  So, of course, after actually putting on the SPF 30, I start running down the hill to see who was there!

He had told a huge group of our best friends about the engagement months earlier!  Our friends flew across the nation from Chicago and Buffalo to surprise me on this incredibly special day!  I obviously made them stop for a picture where Ray had originally planned to propose. 🙂

Afterwards, we went to our favorite low-key bar called Jake’s Dive Bar for a celebratory beverage.  Jake’s is full of dollar bills with notes written on them, so I posted one up that said “Miami Love” with the date (6/20/15) included.

Afterwards we headed to a restaurant called The Dredge, that’s on an old barge in the middle of the river.  Ray and I decided to take the crew there because it has a fantastic view of mountains in the middle of the gorgeous town.

Yes, every single chica bought a Breckenridge sweatshirt… the guys did not.

By the next morning, almost everyone had left.  To be fair, many had been in town since Thursday.  Ray had even had lunch with several of them while I was working from home on Friday!  But it was great to be able to spend even a little time catching up with two of my best friends while meandering around one of my favorite mountain towns.

And thus, this became one of the best, most exciting weekends of my life.  THANK YOU for everyone that celebrated with us either in-person or through your kind notes, calls, emails, and text.  We are over the moon and can’t wait to continue celebrating all year long!

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