And it begins...

After almost exactly 6 1/2 years of dating, Josh and I are engaged.  It has been a long, fun, and sometimes bumpy road.  But we made it here together.

Saturday, September 10th started like any other day.  Josh and I made plans to meet for dinner like we had been doing for the past couple of weekends.  In the weeks leading up to this date, I had been taking extra time before seeing Josh doing my hair and makeup, trying to pick out the cutest outfit.  What if today is the day?  You would think I was a boyscout, since I had no real reason to expect anything.  But I was ALWAYS prepared.

On this day, I just threw on an outfit, patted on a little powder, and headed to my aunt's for lunch to celebrate my cousin being in town and my grandpa's birthday.  We had fun (despite the lack of blazing inferno cake we had the year before... I guess we learned our lesson!), and I was off. 35E was under construction so I decided to just head to Josh's place so we could go to dinner form there.  I called him on my way home to inform him of my plan, he was a little awkward, but I thought he just needed more time to arrange his apartment.  I offered to give him more time but he said to just come over.

When I got there, he had gone to the farmer's market and bought a giant bouquet of flowers.  They were gorgeous, but I didn't think much of it since I am one of lucky few women who actually get flowers for no reason on occasion (I know, I know, but I saw him first!).

On our way to the mall, he asked where I wanted to go to dinner.  I thought that P.F. Chang's sounded good and we hadn't been there in awhile.  He agreed, because he later told me that he wanted to go to a nice restaurant but not too nice or I would get suspicious.  Dinner was delicious, but I kept getting awkward looks from Josh because I kept saying things like "this is just the kind of place that feels fancy because you don't come here very often."  At one point he even grabbed my hand across the table and I remember thinking "well this is awkward, people watching this probably think he's about to propose... yeah right!"  Little did I know...

When we got back to his apartment, he asked me to bring the left overs to the fridge so he could bring our shopping bags into his room.  When I came back into the living room, he grabbed my hands and got down on one knee.  I was so excited that I jumped up to hug him.  After a few minutes he set me down and asked if I wanted to see the ring... minor detail :)

It turns out, like every other time Josh has tried to surprise me with something, I had ruined his plans.  He had really wanted to propose at my apartment because it has so much meaning to us, being my first place on my own and where our future home will be.

Our engagement story is probably not one for the record books, but I really don't care.  It is so us.  It fits our relationship.  And to be honest, I am just really excited to start officially spending my life with my best friend.