It started at Hot Shots. We were playing volleyball against each other, and we noticed each other right away. That was about as far as it went at first. Then we started talking, and about a month later we went on our first date.
Eventually, we started playing on the same side of the net. It turned out we made a pretty good team.
The following spring, we bought a house and moved in that summer. It has been home ever since.
Sheldon had the ring for almost two months, trying to work out the perfect plan. Then he realized he couldn’t wait any longer, and that the proposal didn’t need to be staged. It simply needed to be the right moment, at home with the kids included, private enough to feel like us and unexpected enough to still be a surprise.
On Wednesday, August 6, 2025, the kids were on the couch, and we were on the floor playing Scrabble. Sheldon had been squirreling away tiles. Then he laid them down.
Danielle said yes.
Then, without missing a beat, she pointed out that he had played MARRY off the Y in KINDLY. “Kindly marry me?” she joked.
We got engaged on the sixth of August. We’ll marry on the sixth of February, eighteen months to the day. Chapter three begins there.