The All Important Question

March 20th is Proposal Day. To celebrate I am sharing my proposal story. SPOILER ALERT: I said yes!

I met my husband through my sister a little over 5 years ago. Her family was taking Brazilian Jiu Jitsu classes from him. Eventually, my sister invited him over to hang out and watch football (and to meet her sister - she just didn't tell him that part). I knew what she was up to, but I will be honest, I never thought he would be interested in me. I saw him as the super athletic martial arts instructor...pretty much the opposite of me.

For a shy person I am still stunned that I technically asked him out first. We had gone to a school play with my sister's family (but not "together"). Then about a week later I went to watch one the Jiu Jitsu classes (and the cute instructor). It was the most beautiful of fall days and I wanted to go hiking at the state park. My sister's family was busy...sooo...I said "hey, what are you doing this afternoon?"  He said he was going to go by his parents' house and help his dad clean out a shed (or something like that). I must not have been listening too closely because the next thing out of my mouth was "do you want to go hiking at the park?"  Awkward pause...and then he said "sure". It turned out to be the most memorable date of my life :)

I have mentioned before on my blog that I waited a long time to find "the one".  I was 40 years old when I met my now husband. He is about 5 years younger than I am. I was a little self-conscious about my age and it was never brought up. He had gone to school with my sister and she is the same age as he is. I don't really know if he knew I was the older sister or not. I just never brought it up. I remember one day he was with me in the car when I stopped to pick up a prescription. The first question out of the clerk's mouth was "what is your date of birth?" WHAT??  You want me to tell you my age in front of my boyfriend??  Either he didn't do the math or he didn't care.  Most importantly he didn't run away :)

We dated for about a year and he had "made it clear" that he was not interested in getting married again. So based on that I was not expecting him to propose, but there were a couple of times it crossed my mind. One time I remember being in the car and him holding my hand. There was a moment I caught him looking at my hand with an odd expression. I just felt like he was checking out my finger to maybe determine my ring size. It was a fleeting thought.

On Christmas Eve we had spent the evening at my sister's house and then came back to my house to exchange Christmas presents to each other. He had put my present under my tree almost a week before Christmas. It was the size of a shoebox, but much too heavy to be shoes. Finally it was time to open my present. It was in fact a shoebox - filled with a bunch of junk - including his funky old tennis shoes. I still didn't really know what was going on, but I played along like I was super interested in the junk. Or maybe I was hunting around in the box for the "real" present. Then he tells me to stop and put the box down. I look up and he is on one knee next to the couch, ring in hand, "will you marry me?"

The pictures in this post are our engagement pictures taken by our friend, Amy, at my inlaws' farm. She has since started her own photography business. You can check out more of her pictures at Look Closely Photography. You can see pictures from our wedding in this anniversary post. Amy wasn't doing wedding pictures yet. I didn't love our photographer so he doesn't get a shout out (but I won't publicly bash him either).

I love hearing people's love stories...please leave a comment with your proposal story.