The Proposal

So as most people who might possibly be reading this, I got engaged a couple weeks ago! Hooray!!! Now I know, people want to know the story, so here goes:

Let me first say, I HAD NO IDEA this was gonna happen. I already knew that this was the guy I wanted to marry, but I figured it was gonna be at some point in the future. I knew it was a big decision and a big commitment to move across the country with him, but I knew it was something I was ready to do. So we began our journey out of the state of California on April 1st, and ended our roadtrip here in Colorado on the 10th. It was on the 9th of April, 2010, that my dear took the giant leap and proposed.

On this particular day, we were going to pass through Arches National Park and I know I was very excited to see this National Park. As it turns out, although we got to see quite a few really cool arches, we couldn’t take a hike through the one area of the park that contained most of the more spectacular arches because dogs weren’t allowed on the trails. So, instead we decided to do a little off-roading down a gravel road within the park to, what we thought, might be a less visited arch, where we could “break the rules” and take the kids with us on a hike. Unfortunately, when we got there, there were quite a few other people there as well, so we didn’t get our hike.

As we left the park, the mister seemed a little dejected, and I thought it was because we couldn’t take the kids with us on a hike and they had been hanging out in the car for most of the day so far. Since our route was taking us alongside the Colorado River towards the border of Colorado and Utah, we figured we’d try to find ourselves a spot along the river to let the kids out of the car and run around some. Little did I know that he had other plans in mind! So we finally found ourselves a spot alongside the river (we had to climb through some bushes to get there, but at least we could see our car parked on the side of the road), and we let the kids loose. They started running up and down the riverbank, chasing sticks and just having a grand old time.

At this point, the mister turned to me and started to get all serious, so I thought something was wrong. He was like “so I figured, you know, that this a huge step that the four of us are making, and I wanted to make sure you know how much it means to me and how much you mean to me…”. I was slightly distracted at this point (and yes, I feel HORRIBLE about it), because I was trying to pay attention to what the brat was doing in the water. He then was like, “so I have a question for you…” at which point he reached into his pocket and started to drop to the ground. I immediately started paying attention and said something along the lines of “uh…what the hell are you doing?!” as I started to back away. He pulled the ring out of his pocket and asked if I would marry him. I think it took me a few to comprehend what was going on, but I eventually said absolutely positively YES! I eventually learned that he had wanted to propose to me at Arches, but since we couldn’t go on a hike, and it was pretty crowded, he was starting to sweat it (which was why I thought he was a lil dejected). He really started to panic when we couldn’t find a good, secluded spot along the river, but luckily it worked out for us.

As it turned out, he knew my aversion to jewelry, especially anything fancy, etc, and because he couldn’t find something he liked and thought I’d like from the traditional jewelry store, he decided that he’d only propose if he could find a ring he liked while we were on our roadtrip. And he thought that’d be pretty cool too since it would symbolize the journey we were taking. So he found himself a ring made by an Indian woman in Arizona. It contains turquoise, and onyx, along with some other stones that I don’t know what they are, as well as has three bears which symbolize strength and endurance. I LOVE IT! We might eventually opt for something more traditional when it comes to actually getting married, but in the meantime, this will do just fine for me.

So that was our story! Neither of us are in any rush to actually get married and/or plan the wedding, so it’ll probably be a minute before it actually happens (not till next year at the earliest I think), but at the same time, it’s kinda fun to say I’m engaged!!! Now if I can just get used to wearing a ring all the time…