Enganged!

I wanted to take a brief moment and tell the story about how I asked the most amazing, beautiful, fun, outgoing, gorgeous woman to marry me. It goes like this....

Linds and I have been dating pretty seriously for about a year, and the subject of marriage had been brought up a few times and we figured we should get engaged soon, because you know, we are madly in love with each other. But the question was, when? When would be a good time, we knew we wanted an august wedding and so we wanted to plan it out around that time frame. Linds and I figured April would be a good month, its about 4 months from the time we wanted to get married, plenty of time to plan and organize what needed to be done to be married. Pretty much at that point she left it up to me to plan out when I could afford the ring, and try and surprise here. "TRY and surprise her?" you're probably saying right now, well let me explain. I cannot surprise lindsey, she either calls me out on it right before the surprise, or I get SO excited to tell her or show her that I spill the beans several days before the actual surprise. I have only been able to surprise her successfully on 2 occasions, the time I came down to St. George for her birthday, and asking her to marry me, which I am telling you about now. So back to my story, we had found the ring she wanted online a couple of months before, and had found the actual ring at zales in Salt Lake. I took my parents into the store here in orem on friday one week to kind of show them what linds and I were looking for and to work out financing the ring. As we got talking to one of the ladies in the store, she mentioned that we could have that ring shipped from Salt Lake down here to the orem store, so that is exactly what we did. The ring got there early and I was able to take my parents in to show them on monday the next week, and we actually got everything worked out to where the ring would be resized and done THAT WEEKEND!! Holy crap I was freaking out, I hadn't planned on getting the ring that early!!! In the meantime, Lindsey was coming up that weekend so that our parents could meet, so it worked out perfectly! I was going to pick up the ring on saturday when it was supposed to be done and propose later that night. Can you say excited?!! Now you see my predicament when I say that I can't keep surprises held in long. That was THE longest week of my life. Half way through the week I texted Lindsey's dad, asked him if I could come over wednesday night to talk to him about the engagement, and asking for his daughter's hand in marriage. I think I was more nervous about that than the actual engagement.  Wednesday came along and I arrived at their house, and I actually got to talk to both her dad and mom, it was very nice, we had a good talk, and the only demand her dad had was that I pay him 8 cows for his daughter... I am still in debt to him. After I got their permission, and I got even MORE excited to be asking the love of my life to marry me, the week dragged on even longer and I couldn't take it anymore, I wanted it to be Saturday already!! One part I skipped over, and this added to the surprise was on tuesday that week, the day after I had bought the ring, Lindsey texted me asking if it was a bad thing that the ring had been taken offline. I asked her what she meant and she said that she was looking at zales online and couldn't find the ring she wanted on there. I went on and looked for myself, and it was true, the ring was gone... I bought the LAST one!!!!!! Holy crap, I couldn't contain myself!!!! I was like, could this get anymore surprising for her?!!! I of course tried to play it off, like I was sad and that we would find another ring that she would love just as much, but she was SUPER sad that, that ring was gone. I did feel bad, but I just kept trying to picture her face when she saw that I had the ring she wanted. Ok, so its thursday now, and zales had said the ring would be done on saturday, but I called to see if it was going to be done early, and they said that it would actually be done on friday now!! In case you forgot, Lindsey was coming down on friday, I thought perfect, I can surprise her on friday now and not have to wait until saturday and we could be an engaged couple ALL weekend long. The funny thing is, is zales called 2 hours later saying that the ring was done and I could pick it up that night! I'm sure you can guess that I did just that! haha I got the ring on thursday and my excitement was unbearable! I had the ring in hand, but the only problem was, was I had no idea of how to ask Lindsey to marry me! I asked everyone I could, and that was the hardest thing to settle on, there were so many ideas!!!! And can you imagine, I could NOT sleep that night, I was so freakin excited!!!!!! Friday FINALLY came, and I had school, which took FOREVER, and all this time I'm trying to keep my cool while texting linds this whole week. She finally got here at about 6:30, and I finally got to see that gorgeous face! Again, back to me not being able to keep surprises a secret, I almost did it right as soon as I walked through the door, it took everything I had to hold back what I was about to do later that night. We both were hungry, so I took linds to her favorite place to eat... Cafe Rio. We had a marvelous dinner together, and after she thought we were just planning on going back to her place to watch a movie, but I insisted on taking her to this lookout that looked over the all of utah county. A little background on why I picked that lookout.... Over the summer and into the fall, linds and I regularly took sunday drives up to this lookout, where we would get a drink and go up there and talk. So that place was special to us. I started driving up there, and as soon as we got close she knew where we were going, but still she did not know what we were doing up there.... be proud of me. When we got up there, I had planned that there were going to be cars, so earlier that day I had gone up there and found this hill just off the road that had an even BETTER view of the valley. So it took SO much convincing to get her out of my truck, it was a little cold, but I promised it would be worth it.... I kept that promise. We started hiking up this hill, and the whole time all she could say was, "it's cold!" "I don't want to hike up there!" but I kept reassuring her that it would be worth it. Finally we got up there, and I started to hold her, the view was AMAZING! I started to tell her how much she meant to me, how much I loved her, and talked about other romantic things, all while she STILL had no idea what I had planned. I finally said I had a question for her, and I got down on one knee and proposed to Lindsey. Her face was priceless! All she could see was the ring sparkling in the moonlight, and she was of course VERY surprised. The only problem was, when I asked her, she backed up a bit so I couldn't put the ring on her finger when she said... YES! It was amazing, we hugged, we kissed, then we got out of the cold and started to spread the good news! Oh yes, did I mention that Lindsey's parents still thought I was proposing on saturday. haha so when we got to her house to tell them the good news, they were getting into bed, so linds ran into their room and from the closed door, all I could hear from Shonagh was, "BEN!!!!" Hahaha it was great. Such an amazing night, and moment. I could not be any happier to be engaged to Lindsey, she is the love of my life, she is my Best Friend, and she is my whole world!

-Ben