How it all went down...

It's times like these when I realize just how clumsy and awkward words are at accurately and completely describing my emotions and how I feel. I can say that I'm happy, thrilled, excited beyond compare. I could say that life is bliss, that I'm floating on clouds, that I've had a huge silly grin glued on my face for the past few days. And I could even say that my immenent trip to France has been momentarily forgotten (which is a pretty big deal, which anyone who knows anything about me could testify to). These descriptions are all true, just, somehow it doesn't quite capture it all. I'm marrying my best friend, I'll get to be with him forever; how in the world can that be put into words?

Ok I admit. We actually had decided about 3 weeks ago that we were going to get married. So I totally knew it was coming. We had even started to plan some things for our wedding, all before we were officially engaged and the ring was on my finger (because I was going to be gone for most of the summer in France and we wanted to get married at the end of the summer) However, we didn't really want to tell people or have anyone know, and I tell you what, that was so hard. So, ok I may or may not have told some people. Possibly.

Matthew came up on Tuesday. I was so anxious for him to get here that for the last half hour to an hour before he got here I was just kinda sitting on my couch, maybe reading some stuff but mostly watching out the window for him. When I saw his car pull in, I ran out and probably would have tackled him if the car hadn't kept him up :)

That night, Matthew did "the talk." As in, the "ask the father if he can marry the daughter" talk.

(Matthew's on the right, dad's on the left)

Mom and I, like any self-respecting females, spied and tried to eavesdrop on their conversation. First we opened the bathroom window just a smidgen and tried to listen through the crack, however, the sound of water dripping on tarp outside the window really muffled any sound we may have been able to hear. So then we snuck into the garage and laid down next to the door to the backyard. We even brought the video camera and could hear pretty clearly. Unfortunately after all that effort, once we could actually hear them, I felt bad about eavesdropping and we went back inside. Mom, on the other hand, had no qualms whatsoever, and would've stayed out the entire time.

Wednesday I showed Matthew around the Mall of America, and we went through the amusement park there. (Although no rides. They were so dang expensive!) And after satisfying our Chinese cravings at Great Moon Buffet, we headed out to the Walker Sculpture Garden. These gardens feature some really cool abstract art-ish sculptures.
After walking around for a while, we crossed a pedestrian bridge to go to Loring Park, just on the other side of the street. There we found this pretty little circle area that was filled with trees and bushes and flowers and plants, and also some benches. So we sat down there, and just kinda basked in the pretty nature stuff around us. Now, about this time, I'm thinking that hm this spot is nice, I know Matthew's gonna propose sometime soon, but I wasn't really sure when it was gonna be. We were sitting at that bench for quite a while, and so I was pretty much thinking that he was going to wait until later. At one point, I told him I loved him, and he smiled and said good, and then got down on a knee, pulled out a box with a ring, and asked me to marry him! woot!

The bench

We're totally engaged!

The RING. I love it.

A close up. By the way, Matthew totally picked it out himself.

It's kinda funny that, even though we both knew and were planning for a few weeks to get married, him actually proposing and an actual ring on my finger just made me sooo happy, and physically incapable of getting that huge smile off my face for the rest of the evening.

It's 100% legit. We are so getting married.