How He Proposed
 

September 24, 2004 was a beautiful, blue skied Friday. I came "home" to Jeff's house after work (ironically, I was in a week long search and rescue training course-see the story of how we met!) to find that Jeff had already made dinner. This was a nice relief for me, but wasn't out of the ordinary, as he is a wonderful man who does cook! I didn't really notice that the dinner he made was Enchiladas, which happened to be the first dinner he ever cooked for me. I changed out of my NPS uniform and into a T-shirt and "comfy" pants and headed out to the deck to enjoy the evening air.

We ate dinner outside, (and I didn't realize until after the proposal, that Jeff must have asked me 5 times if I was finished eating dinner yet.) Apparently, I was eating too slowly and "holding up the show" that was about to happen. After he was done with his food, Jeff got up to clear his dishes and went inside the house. He came back in a few minutes with a big box.

 Photo taken right after the proposal,
notice there was still food on my plate!

Background Note: With the advent of our 1 year anniversary on Sept 14, we had been talking about the idea of me selling my house and moving into his. We'd been cleaning out some of his closets to make room for my belongings.

So as Jeff began pulling items out of this box, I thought he was just sharing some of the mementos of our relationship that he had found while cleaning up.

There were all sorts of mementos, all in chronological order beginning with a print out of the web page of the Brew Pub where we had our first date. This was followed by other items, like a picture of the sour cream heart we found on the lid of the container one of the first times he made me dinner. (I know, we can be VERY cheesy!) But come on, it was a perfect heart!

A sign of things to come?!
Photo taken in Oct. 2004

There were lots of other items in the box, such as a package of gauze to represent the head injury I sustained on our second date.(another story to ask for sometime!) A Lowe's advertisement was in there, because shortly after we started dating, we ended up spending most of our weekends doing home improvement projects at either my house or his. As Jeff pulled out each object, we would reminisce about what it meant and sometimes laugh or smile about the story it told.

Eventually, he pulled out a piece of paper that was a print out of the website from the restaurant where we went on our 2nd date, the "Depot Grill" in Staunton.

Background Note: The Depot Grill has paper tablecloths on the tables and boxes of crayons for guests of all ages to doodle while they wait for food to arrive. On our 2nd date, Jeff and I had met for breakfast and spent the entire day together, by the time evening rolled around, we had plenty of "flirty" notes to write to each other while we waited for our dinner.

As Jeff presented me with that piece of paper, he said "Oops, sorry, this one's out of order". I laughed and attempted to rifle through the pile and put it close to the beginning where it should have been.
 
As I did that Jeff said "Wait, turn it over first". There, looking like something that could have been written on the paper tablecloth on our 2nd date, he had written in crayons:  
  
                      "Our 2nd Date,
                      I really like this girl. 
                      I wonder if she likes me.   
                      I wonder if one day she will..."

When I got to that point in the note, I looked up and saw Jeff beaming as he asked "Do you want me to finish that sentence?!"  I squealed and somehow said "Yes". He's holding an open ring box and asks "Will you marry me?".

I squealed and hugged him for what seemed like eternity before Jeff couldn't take it anymore and said "So....is that a yes?". "YES YES YES", I said!

And there we were, engaged and sitting on the deck under a beautiful late September sky; the kind of perfect day we are hoping to have this September with all of our friends and family.

 (Yes, you can pull out the wine and crackers now that you've had so much cheese!)