The Future is Here

Holy Cow! Things have changed so much since the last time I posted. I promise to keep things up to date (okay, that's probably not true, but I'll try) with my new life. I met someone! I love her! I'm going to marry her! We met on a blind date that we both felt was meh. However, the next day I asked her to go to lunch and she asked if I wanted to play some games with her friends. From then on our relationship just naturally grew. It's been crazy as things have progressed, but I've loved it!


Since then I've proposed and I wanted to type that up so everyone could hear the great story of what happened. So here it is. The story starts on Thursday, May 6, 2010.

Thursday, Decisions and Graduation (May 6,2010)

Thursday, I got an email from Eileen (the lady at SE Needhams) saying that the wax for the ring I had ordered was done. I went in and looked at the wax. It looked good, but not as great as I thought it would be. I wasn't sure if it was exactly what I wanted to get and I wasn't sure if it would be done before I wanted to propose. I had come up with an idea to propose on Mother's day because it would be something fun I could remember every year that we were married. Also, I can't think of a better day to honor the future mother of my children. So I wanted a ring for that weekend and didn't think I would be able to get it done before that weekend. So I went over and started looking at promise rings that I could use to propose with, then I could give her the real ring later. Well, Eileen worked some magic and told me if I ordered the ring right then, they would have it done by the time I left on Saturday. They would cast the ring Thursday night, pour the gold Friday morning, put the side diamonds in Friday night, set the center diamond Saturday morning and have it ready for me after graduation. It freaked me out that everything was happening so fast, but it sounded perfect. So I ordered the ring. Friday was pretty uneventful as far as I can remember. I just remember going to the temple and feeling at peace.

Saturday morning I was not so peaceful. I woke up and realized that I had no idea when I would be able to get away from Melissa to get the ring. She had to move out of her apartment on Friday so she was staying at her aunt's house and I was her only ride. She decided not to come to the University commencement, just my college graduation. The university commencement ended at 11 and the college one started at noon. About halfway through the university commencement, I got an email saying that the ring was done. So as soon as that was over I rushed over to SE Needham's and picked up the ring. At the same time, my parents were picking up Melissa from her aunt's house and bringing her up to campus. I was so nervous that I would be seen or they would get back before I did and I wouldn't be able to get the ring in my house without her seeing it. Luckily, I beat them back and was able to get the ring upstairs without anyone seeing it, although I probably looked like a moron (which is common for me) running upstairs and tossing the ring behind my chair so my roommate didn't see it. After graduation, I packed up and we headed down to Payson. That night we went to a couple wedding receptions and then had a talk that started to stress Melissa out. She felt like I was pushing her about somethings. Luckily we ended the night on a good note. As we were saying good night, she told me that she was starting to get impatient about a ring. I told her I knew that she was and that it might take a few weeks because we had to custom make it. It was perfect because she had no idea that the ring was already made, sitting in the room we were talking in.

Sunday morning I woke up and tried to start figuring out how I was going to do it. We went to church and came home and I still had no plan but I knew I wanted to get away from her house. It just didn't seem like the best place to propose. Well, I ran into a bit of a problem. Melissa was feeling sickly all day. She didn't want to go out at all. So after dinner we sat on her couch and she slept while I tried to figure out a good plan. After three hours of her napping, we had to leave so we could go up to my house for dinner. I had wanted to stop by a park or something on the way and do it there, but we didn't have enough time. So we got to my house, ate dinner. At this point I was super anxious to try and get away to propose but there was always something else we were supposed to do. After dinner we looked at pictures from my parent's cruise, then we played canasta,  then we sat in the hot tub. By the time we were in the hot tub, it was 9:30 pm. I was determined not to wait another day so after about 15 minutes, I said I was ready to get out. Melissa asked if I was serious and I said yeah. So we got out. 


After we got dressed, we drove down to a reception center near the Mt. Timp temple that I had talked about using for our reception. It was late and dark so there wasn't much to see, but it was a good excuse to get out. We then drove to the temple. It was really weird because the bottom half of the temple wasn't lit, but the spire was lit up just fine. Melissa and I parked there and talked for a while. Finally the conversation kind of died and I realized it was either time to do it or go home. I told her I had a surprise for her but she had to close her eyes. She asked me if she really wanted to close her eyes, and I told her yes. She closed her eyes and I realized I couldn't just give it to her then. I needed to play with her a little bit first. So I leaned in and gave her an awkward kiss. (I couldn't reach her face very well because I was still buckled up.) She opened her eyes and kind of laughed like "Ha ha, very funny surprise." I told her that wasn't the surprise, so she had to close her eyes again. Once again, I kissed her, but on the cheek this time. I did that twice more, each time trying to get the ring box a little more out and open so it didn't take forever while she had her eyes closed. After the four kisses, I told her I really did have a surprise and she had to close her eyes. I opened up the ring box and told her to open her eyes. I asked her, "Will you marry me?" She had a perplexed look on her face and said, "Yeah, but what's that?" I asked her what she meant and she told me, "There's no ring." I looked and, panicking as I saw that there was no ring in the ring box, exclaimed, "Oh no!!" The next few minutes, I hurriedly looked around on the floor and in my lap trying to find the ring. I'm sure Melissa was just laughing thinking it was a big joke or that I was a moron. Apparently it had fallen out of the ring box as I opened it and it was sitting on the floor of my car. I grabbed it, put it in the ring box and showed it to her again. After she said yes, I put it on her finger and we sat and laughed about the whole thing. It was pretty funny and will be a great story to tell our kids someday. We drove back to my house calling people and telling them the good news (mostly family since it was 10:30 pm). Now I'm engaged to the most amazing girl in the world!

So that's that! The big day is July 16th. We just took engagement pictures on Saturday but we're taking more this weekend. I'll probably have something more to post after that (along with pictures). That's all for now!