I’m pretty sure that anyone that reads this is on facebook and knows that I am engaged… but hey! I got engaged on Saturday!
Here’s the story
First off, it wasn’t a complete surprise to me although Tom did an admirable job in hiding his activities. He told me that the ring has been in the works for 2 months, its custom made! So he had to show them the design he wanted and choose the main gem (Tsavorite which is green garnet, more rare than emerald and better in many ways; great deep color (at least mine is), less defects that could make it break, less defects also means prettier and garnets have an intrinsic super shiny quality) and there are 10 small diamonds flanking it. There was a whole process of modeling it and revisions and getting it approved before they cast it. I was unaware that this was happening since November, really I had no idea.
We had this date planned for Saturday of going to the St. Paul winter carnival. We went last year and it was super super cold but it was a lot warmer this year. I hear it got to 36 F and it was rainy all day – that sucked. Tom had been acting absurdly excited about this carnival date during the week and it started to be suspicious to me. He was also trying really hard to get me to dress up and I didn’t know why at first and then he said it was to celebrate passing his PhD Quals which he found out about a few days ago. We had already celebrated those after he took them so that was kind of suspect. On Friday I realized that he could be planning to propose. Eeeeee!!
On Saturday we started out by eating chocolate muffins, then headed to the fair grounds to look at snow sculptures. They were kind of sad since it was raining, some of them were under tarp tents. Tom had borrowed his brother’s camera and the battery died while taking pictures of snow sculptures. That was sad and Tom got all distressed and we drove off to find a new battery to buy or a charger or something. We ended up buying a charger at Best Buy, which I hope his brother reimburses him for, and went to Borders to charge it up. While waiting for it to charge, we looked at Caturday pictures on my iPod with Borders wifi, it was fun. Once the thing was charged we had lunch at Potbelly’s and went back to see the rest of the snow sculptures. I stepped in a huge puddle wearing suede boots, that was great. It’s ok though because they are old and already looked grungy. We went through the snow maze and then headed off to downtown St. Paul to watch the parade.
We like to watch the parade in a skyway because it’s warm there, and in the case of this year, dry. The parade was kind of meh but they have fun cars carrying hot air balloon baskets and the the hot air balloon flamethrowers that they shoot off into the air as they go. That is what we come to see! In the skyway I took at peek at Tom’s pockets and saw a squarish bulge in a coat pocket. Oh yes that had to be a ring.
Parade done we go to the ice sculptures. They were kind of meh too, there was a dragon thing and a mountain lion and bighorn sheep scene but nothing really that great that I remember. There is a stage thing made of ice and Tom made me go stand on it and he put the camera on a tripod and set it up to take a picture on timer. He comes running over and we pose for the picture and he asked me if I had fun today. I said yes and he said, forgive me if my memory isn’t perfect, it was like “I want to have fun with you for the rest of our lives with you as my fiancee” and then pulled out this huge wooden box, very solid looking and got down on the one knee and said will you marry me. I wanted to say yes I really did but I couldn’t talk, struck speechless so I just had to nod very excitedly and pull off my glove to put my hand out. There were some onlookers that were cheering quite loudly. Then he tells me that the camera was taking video and that we have a reservation at 5 for dinner. He has custody of the video right now and isn’t sure what he’s going to do with it but if it gets put online I’ll be sure that I’ll post it here and on facebook.
Getting off the stage those onlookers shook our hands and wished us luck in life. We walked around in a daze for a while, at least I was. But it was rainy and yucky so we ended up sitting around in the lobby of the science museum waiting for dinnertime. Hooray for science museum wifi! I IMed Amber a bit while we waited. We were parked in the science museum lot so we actually had separate outfits to change into for dinner that we went to get and change in the bathroom. It was nice to change into dry clothes I must admit.
DINNER WAS AMAZING!! I have never been to such a nice restaurant! It was in this great old building quite near the St. Paul downtown and it had all these fancy rooms and bottles of wine and champagne everywhere. There was also a big puddle going in and I was wearing expensive shoes so Tom lifted me up and carried me over the puddle!! After we were first seated, I was looking around and then everything finally hit me and sunk in and I cried a little bit, from happiness of course.
Our waitress was super excited to hear about the engagement and closed the doors to the room for a bit to look at the ring. She said that it’s a very European style, that they do a lot of rings with colored gems and diamond on the side and in gold. I didn’t know that, I have just always wanted a green stone ring since it’s more special to me than diamond and unique. The food was really really good, I got a salad and a chicken entree and Tom got steak. We also got glasses of wine with the waitress helping to decide which wines, they were white wines and mine was really good. Sweet and fruity. The chicken was the best chicken ever! It was all gourmet with “plating” like the sauces drizzled around the plate. It was like a breast and a leg and I usually don’t like picking chicken off of bones and it had skin which I also usually don’t like but with this the skin was good and crispy and the bones were a little cumbersome but it was good enough to not really care. It also had collard greens as a side which I’ve never had before but they were fine. I tasted a bit of Tom’s steak and it was good but I liked my chicken better. The staff was really great and they were always coming around to refill water and take away dirty dishes. We had a chocolate cake for dessert, it was still warm from the oven. Sooooo gooood. Coconut ice cream with actual coconut shavings in it, different kinds of chocolate drizzles.
I feel like I need to wrap this up. We’re so sosososososo happyyy! Even my parents were cool with it, I was really afraid that it would get ugly when I told them today but it was actually fine. I made my mom go speechless though haha. We are going to get married in a park/garden for sure, in the early summer. 2011 at the earliest, it depends on when I get a job and finances really. I have put on the picture of the ring I’m using right now until I have one of me wearing it and the snowmaze because it’s cool. THE END
. Later I’m going to have to do more work on my project report/presentation. Oh so awful. I wish I could just do fun things on my birthday. 