I met jennifer in 2021. Jennifer was referred to me by a mutual friend as a cleaner. She owned her own cleaning business. I’am always looking to support local businesses. I called her to come look at my moms house for a cleaning quote. When she arrived i was met with a bright light and an amazing soul. Just the sweetest person. Kind person. She gave me the quote and left. I hired her, of course. She had come to the house and did her first cleaning. We chatted a little while she cleaned. I got a chance to get to know her a little more. The following time she was supposed to be there to clean i was out of town. My mom wasn’t feeling well so she canceled. I called Jen and communicated how sorry I was and that I would make it up to her and she says, “When you get home you can take me to dinner”. I thought, huh, maybe she likes me. I came home and asked her to dinner. We seem to hit it off really well. We have similar upbringings which gave us a lot to talk about. It was very nice to have someone that was from a different generation have similar feelings and thoughts of life and living.

As we started seeing each other more things changed for me towards her. I am a working man. I have been most of my life. I invited jennifer to the local airport where i was putting up my aircraft hanger. I wanted to see if she would be interested in flying and living the flying life. I was pleasantly surprised, she got right in and was eagerly helping install girders and purlins, she even didn’t mind being up on a 24 foot man lift to do it. I knew at that moment that this was a very special person and that I might want to hang onto her. What sealed the deal for me was when I finally got my pilot’s license and with only about 160 hours she was willing to get into a plane with me and fly some 250 miles away. Now that was a huge deal. Now that we are a few years down the road she has embarked on getting her pilot’s license and absolutely loves flying. She’s  turning out to be an amazing pilot.

It was national cheeseburger day when I popped the question, i know, what a weird day for asking someone to marry you. I had purchased the engagement ring about a month or so ago. I had planned on asking her when we flew to Sedona Arizona.

We were preparing to leave on our flight to Arizona. This will be the longest flight that we have been on in our V tail bonanza. I’m not gonna lie, I was a bit nervous.

We were getting everything together for the flight, I could have sworn I pulled the ring from the safe. We made it safely to Arizona and as i was unpacking and to my surprise, i couldn’t find the ring anywhere. As I traced my thoughts from the day before I realized I had forgotten the ring, I never pulled it. Ugh.. I thought, well, i’ll just have to wait. We got home and another week had passed and I hadn’t made a plan to ask. I honestly didn’t realize how hard this would be. It was the weekend and I knew I needed to get this done. I decided I would take her out on the following Monday for dinner, I had no idea it was going to be National Cheeseburger Day that day. I told her to get ready and that I wanted to go to dinner to a local burger joint. At some point I realize that it was NCB day. The place I took her was a step below fine dining. I said lets go get a cheese burger, which was kinda odd that i would want to go to a nice restaurant for a cheese burger. I mean, I thought it was fine. While there I remember being so nervous. If you know me, you know that it takes a bit to get me rattled. I was rattled. This was nerve racking. As Jennifer will tell you, I was stumbling over my words and being a little weird. I think I handled it like a pro… haha, not….. I was going to ask her there at the table. You know, stand up, slide her chair out and get down on one knee, kind of asking. I just couldn’t do it. Shesha this was turning out to be a little bit of a debacle… As we were enjoying our cheese burgers Jennifer looks out down the river and sees the old time paddle river boat. She says, can we walk down there and see the boat. I’m like yes of course, seeing another opportunity to get this done…

We finish our meal and drive to the park where the boat is parked on the river bank. It’s a nice concrete area there. We walk down and sit on the retaining wall looking at the boat. We are just chatting away and I finally bring myself to do this. I get down on my knees in front of her and say something to the effect of, I know I may not be the best dude in the world but I know I love you, will you marry me. I was not expecting what she said, she said, what are you doing down there, wait what, what are you saying….. I would quote that but it was something like that. She didn’t believe me. I said, i want you to marry me and this time I pulled the ring out of my pocket. Once she saw that, she knew what was goin down… Of course she said yes. She’s made me a very happy man and i’m looking forward to doing this life with her. Oh, i did stipulate, she needs to finish her pilot’s license before we say i do.. Love you Jennifer.