We're engaged!!!

Mike and I got engaged on July 1, 2008.

On June 26th Mike flew out to Virginia. I took him to the airport and we got in a fight on the way there. He left with a long list of apartments that I had called about in Winchester and a long face full of stress. He saw about a thousand apartments and after meeting one of the landlords that I had looked up on the internet, he talked his way into seeing an apartment that had just opened up and no one else knew about. He put money down for the deposit and called to tell me how excited he was about the place and how much our new landlord likes to talk about the Civil War. Hmmm... On Monday, the 30th I went wedding dress shopping with Rachel Francis, and we found the perfect dress, on sell at... where else?? The Perfect Dress, of course. Meanwhile, Mike snuck around asking my dad permission to steal away his daughter and arranging other necessities for the proposal. I like to remember the night of the 30th, Mike drove out to Riverton at, like, 9:30 -- which didn't make sense to me-- and kept trying to get me to go talk to him alone, or read with him, or something... but I was just too dense to get the picture -- so my picture perfect proposal had to wait until the next day!!! On Tuesday (the 1st!) he kept calling me to set up a lunch date in Provo (which, I kept telling him, seemed like a stupid idea since I was headed up to SLC a few hours later anyway!!). Finally, I agreed and he picked me up at the Talmage Building and took me to Kiwanis Park with some Cafe Rio take out. He brought me extra lids to use as a plate so we could share the salad (who can eat a whole salad, anyway???), had ice and cups and Diet Dr. Pepper. I was impressed at how well-thought-out the meal was, but still didn't really get what was going on. When we finished eating, Mike pulled out the book we had been reading together for the last month or so: Anne of Green Gables. He told me that it was my turn to read a chapter, and -- after describing to him all the work I needed to get done back at my office--- reluctantly agreed and started reading. About 5 minutes into the reading I turned the page to discover that each of the remaining pages had a small square cut out of the center, and that a beautiful, simple, and elegant diamond ring was double-stick taped right, smack in the middle of my favorite book!!! I love telling this story to people because they invariably have the same response: "Well! Did he buy you a new book?" And I laugh and tell them that he didn't. After hearing about several such exchanges Mike told me that I should just start telling people he did, but Jean put him in line by correcting him: "YOU should just buy her the book!!" Gotta love Jean!! Hours later we were crammed in the back of the Yukon with my family for our road trip to South Dakota.... TBC

(This very same day we got our letters from the temple-- gotta love Braden being as obnoxious as possible and Mike reading my letter, not his-- even though they're identical!!)