Nathan and Jen...after nearly 4 years!

Every year when I get done with school, and I come home it's usually only the first day of finals at Armstrong, where Nathan goes to school. So like my first week or so home is boring waiting on him to take finals, and having to let him study which usually means he's out at Armstrong. He gets the bright idea to take me out and try to make our first day after he finished his finals special. Ok, I thought nothing of it. I knew he had talked to my dad the friday before to ask his permission to marry me. (He only told me so he could get me out of the room...lol). He told me that he wanted to talk to his grandmother that day, "because he didn't want to run around at the last minute telling everyone," which I understood and was fine. So he went to his grandparent's to eat lunch with her, and that didn't go great-they didn't even eat! lol.

So, he picks me up and we're hanging out in the mall and his boss calls him, I think for a total of 3 times. Every time is "have you done it yet?" "have you given her the ring yet?" Nathan's phone is loud enough I can hear the person on the other end of the line-even in the mall. Normally, I'm tryin to listen in when he's on the phone with his boss to make sure he's not trying to get him to work that day or something stupid. This time, I just happened to tune him out every single time. lol. We had to go by my house for somethin, when Nathan gets a call from his grandfather that he's just gotten home, heard what Nathan wanted to do...and that he wanted to have a talk with him first. OH BOY...so Nathan tries calling him but he refuses to talk to him over the phone. So he goes over there, having to push our dinner plans back to talk to him. (The converstation was trying to get him to wait longer...)

When he finally gets back, we go to dinner, and it wasn't great. :( He kept apologizing that it was so bad...I told him that it was fine, but all he wanted was to make that day special. After dinner, we drove out to the beach where we walked and talked about anything else we needed to know about each other before we got married. It was fun and sweet. Then we finally sit on one of the swings looking at the stars and talking. It was sweet-he was holding me, trying to keep me warm since I was in a tank top...I was just enjoying the moment...kinda staring off in space when I felt him moving around, trying to get the ring out of his pocket.

So I look at him, he opens the box and asks me to marry him. I said, "Yes, of course!" When I tried to take the other ring off my finger so he could put my engagement ring on my finger, I was so nervous I dropped it in the sand! lol but we found it real quick, and just sat there for a few more minutes.

We finally head home, and as soon as we got on the road to head back Nathan gets a text from his brother wanting to know where we were. When he texted back that we were on the way home, he got a text from his mom saying, 'well'. We laughed and he simply sent back 'what?' The whole way back I couldn't stop smiling or giggling...he said somethin to me at one point that I didn't hear or respond to, and he goes, "I know, I gave you something shiny." lol When we finally get to his house, everyone is WAITING. His mom is all funny, acting like she doesn't know what's going on. She was sitting in the doorway to the kitchen with their dog, so I say hey, and scratch the dog on the head with my LEFT hand to get her attention, so she grabs me and drags me into the kitchen to see it better. Then she hugs me and tells me congratulations, etc. I actually got the only hug in over 4 yrs from his brother, then his sister tells me to come sit on the couch with her, calling me her sister. lol. It made for a fun night....and a very exciting one! Then, I had to go home and show my dad who wasn't home...at midnight...cause he'd been called into work so we waited on him to show him. And that was the end of the night....

This was May 12, 2008. After he decided to do it on that day, he realized that it was the 12th, his favorite number (and his baseball number.) And it was the inverse of our anniversary. (May 21st) Isn't he smart? lol We're getting married on our 5th anniversary- May 21, 2009.