Quarter 2, 2013: Part Two

We left the museums and drove back along main street, along the other side of the lake to Glimmerglass State Park. Last year, at graduation, my class and many of our parents had a barbecue there, and that shelter is where we headed. We pulled in to park, Mr. C mentioned I probably didn't need my purse, and then grabbed a backpack out of the trunk of the car.

We got out of the car and walked a bit around the side of the lake until we found a beautifully secluded spot with a picnic table and an amazing view of the lake. We sat down, and after a minute Mr. C reached down into his backpack and pulled out a scrapbook. To preface this, we have been together now for one year and seven months. His first message to me was on October 11th, and we became an "official" couple on November 5th. On November 20th, we took our first trip together down to Washington D.C. In February, we went down to New York City. While we were there we had a couple of glasses of wine and he, a bit tipsy, confessed that he knew then how he would propose to me.

Me, with what is now the most precious thing I have: The Scrapbook

It turns out that, beginning with that trip barely a month after we'd met for the first time, he began saving the evidence of our relationship; tickets, museum admission pins, receipts, menus, all sorts of things. Last summer, while I was in Nebraska, he convinced some of our friends to drive down to Cooperstown to take pictures to use in the scrapbook, that far in advance.

So that brings us to the present. He put all of these beautiful memories and mementos together into one book. Our first Valentine's Day I left him post-it notes all around his room telling him why I loved him, and he not only kept them and put them in the book, but wrote response notes and used them as the anchor throughout the book. I could go on and on and on in detail about every amazing page of this scrapbook, but I will instead show you a few of the highlights. 

Page one of the scrapbook, the transcript of our first conversation together. Reading this, and the other messages we sent at this stage, I am so happy with how genuinely "us" it all is. We were very much ourselves, right from the start. 

This is the page for the second half of our first date, when all of my classmates crashed our date :) The most wonderful piece here is the picture in the far left. It is a screenshot of our friend K's phone the night of our first date. It might be hard to read, but the text from Mr. C read's "Ok this girl is awesome." K got that text message and decided to save a screeshot of it. How wonderful is that?

Turning each of the pages was turning to another part of our relationship. Graduation, travel, all of the amazing things we've been able to do so far. I realized that we were near the end of the book, took a deep breath, and finally turned to the last page.

Mr. C untied the ring, set the book aside, and knelt down on one knee in front of me. He took my hand, and asked me to be his wife. I think I said something along the lines of "yes please" and we just stayed there, holding onto each other with our faces next to each other for awhile. I realized it probably wasn't super comfortable for his knee, so pulled him up onto the picnic table with me. That's when we walked through the book together, this time with him telling me the background and work he put into each one of the pages. Seriously, he put so much thought into it.

Once we'd pulled ourselves together a bit, we made sure to document the occasion properly.

Pardon the freckles, but I love this picture. You can see just how gorgeous the lake was, plus my amazing new ring :) And really I kind of love my freckles. When my grandpa saw my grandma across a room for the first time turned to his buddy, and said "I'll take the one with the freckles." 

Once we'd taken plenty of photos, we loaded back into the car and headed back home. We called my family and let them know the good news (which they all knew already, bah!) before we got home, vegged for a few minutes to take the edge off of a busy day in a lot of sun, and changed quickly for dinner. We headed to one of our favorite nice restaurants, Provence. Our dear friend Lady A had called them and ordered us a bottle of wine, which was waiting for us at the table. We had an amazingly delicious meal. If you're ever there, always always order the risotto. We've had a couple of the different ones, and have never been disappointed.

There was one more piece that all together made the day really one of the most perfect ones of my life. Mr. C has been saving a bottle of wine (a 1995 Bordeaux) for a few years, just for this occasion. We opened it, a bit apprehensively at first, but it was quite nice. Very leathery, with a very interesting mouth feel. It really was a wonderful way to cap off an amazing day, and the start of this next piece of our lives together.