I have been fielding many requests for the story of how I proposed, so I will retell it on here so everyone can feast on the romanticism.

Back story-I asked her dad permission and brought both moms with me to pick out the ring.I already knew what she wanted, so it was mainly for them to hang out aka “mom talk”.

In starting out, I originally anticipated on new years eve or thereabouts, but wasn’t really sure of a date/time. I had anticipated going with the moms before x-mas and them telling me they wouldn’t be able to get the ring ready until after x-mas – “oh, it can be ready by tomorrow if you’d like”. Kel’s mom let me use her dad’s moms engagement ring (several generations old and pretty-I looked at it under the scope). That is when the pandemic of excitement started in my brain. This could happen soon…

I started running idea’s out in my head and pretty much had it nailed down on the car ride home, although for reasons of security, and not wanting it to accidentally escape, I decided not to let anyone in on the plan. As part of being allowed to leave work and go participate in ring hunting, I had to bring back some form of sparkles for them to see; they got to see the ring right after I got it. The GM of the dealership walks in on show and tell and goes “whats this? For me?”, I get on my knee and do the first/only practice run. I almost shed a tear because the excitement at this point was epic. I got like 4 hours of sleep the night before.

The big day: Christmas Eve. I barely get two hours of sleep due to the level of excitement. By stroke of luck, she gets to leave work at like 1, so I go to pick her up and we decided to have lunch in Heather Farms Park; when we first started dating, we used to have lunch there quite a bit. They also have a large rose garden and nice area’s to sit. After we had lunch we decided to walk around a bit and gab about the next day.

We end up in the rose garden (i’m an excellent navigator) and on a bench near a little stream. We continued to talk a bit and I decided to give her, what she thought, was her early x-mas gift. It was a bag of coal… The bag was a felt bag, labeled coal. It looked quite nice. She takes it and there is nothing inside “whats this”? So she opens it up and there are little fortunes inside, terms of endearment. So she begins to take them out and read them. I only put like ten or fifteen inside and of course the most important one. As she is taking them out, she keeps getting all the others (excitement is overwhelming). I think to myself, “did it get left out?”.

The very last one she pulls is the one; “Will you merry me?!”-”whats this??!!” I get on my knee and bring out the box, formally ask, display ring. At that point it was outta my hand and on her finger faster than I could blink. Add some tears from her and the uncorked bottle of excitement from me and that is how I proposed. As we are driving back to her house, had dinner and went to mass with her parents, her mom calls…

Hi honey, how’s it going… (kel could have used the awkward button right here as the pause was long enough) Anything new?!?!?!