So rather than start this post with my excuses of why I haven't posted in a while, I think I'll just get down to the posting. We had an amazing Christmas holiday this year, topped off by an engagement on Christmas night.
Mike and I have talked a lot about getting married over the last few years. A lot of the talk was very general and there was always this unspoken knowledge that eventually it would happen. However, as laid back as I tried to be about it, after a few major events this summer (anniversaries, both of our birthdays, a long weekend in Cape May) my patience was starting to wear thin. This lead to some frustration and tears in the fall when I finally decided I would give it a few more months before we sat down to have the "what the heck is going on here, we own a house together, you're already stuck with me for 28 more years" conversation.
So when Christmas day rolled around, I jokingly made a comment about my ring being under the tree even though I knew that Mike is not the ring-under-the-tree kind of guys. I expected that it would be something more along the lines of sitting on the couch watching some ridiculous tv show. Christmas day went off perfectly, with snow covering the ground from a little Christmas Eve storm. We spend the morning at home before heading to my dads and then Mike's family dinner. We went back to my dads in the evening for a few more hours and Garrett decided to spend the night. Mike and I got home pretty late and I promptly went to bed while he took the dogs out. At least an hour later Mike came upstairs and asked me to come down and look at something for him. To say I'm grouchy when I'm tired is probably a big understatement. I told him to leave me alone and rolled back over. At this point, he bent over and tried to pick me up. My grumpy response to this was to make my body completely stiff and impossible to carry. At this point Mike was losing his patience with my antics and told me in no uncertain terms that he was picking me up and taking me downstairs whether I liked it or not. I believe he may have also made a frustrated comment about not letting me ruin this but in my 1/2 sleeping state, I didn't pick up on this at the time. He carried me downstairs, sat me on the ground and swung the door to our backyard open.
I froze instantly as I quickly connected the dots and realized what was going on. I believe the first words I uttered were "Oh my God, I'm such a jerk". Mike pushed me farther out the door where I could really see how much effort he had put into the set up. There were literally candles everywhere and a heart made out of candles in mason jars on top of the table with a little pouch in the middle. He ushered me to open the pouch and then got down on one knee. But before he could actually ask the question, I collapsed onto his knee kissing and crying with lots of "Oh my Gods" at which point Mike asked "is that a yes". There was one of my favorite wines and one of Mike's nice bottles of bourbon to help us celebrate and it easily goes down as one of my favorite days. And now the countdown begins to October when I will be lucky enough to marry my best friend and the most amazing step-parent I could have ever picked for Garrett. Speaking of Garrett, when we picked him up the next morning his response was "Oh my goodness Mike, that is just crazy".
