Proposal Anniversary

The hotel has been unusually busy lately. This past Friday night was crazy... I worked a nine hour shift. I prepared breakfast for over 125 guests... all by myself. There are usually only 25 guests per night so it was overwhelming to attempt to do breakfast for so many people. The girl who was working the second shift had to call Expedia to get them to stop reservations from being made. Every room was booked including the jacuzzi suites, and 2 rooms where the mechanical lock is perpetually broken. At least 10 people called and more than 15 people came in asking if we had vacancies. There was no parking available in the lot... I had to park on the street for a while. This next weekend should be very busy too. I'm glad to have a 2 day break starting tonight. (Unexpected, actually). I apparently wrote the schedule down wrong in my planner- that I had Wednesday nights and Thursdays night off when I actually have Tuesday night and Wednesday night off! This is "YAY" for many reasons.

The biggest reason is tonight is Jeff's and my "proposal anniversary"- Jeff asked me to marry him a year ago today! The 20th of July is also my maternal Grandparents' wedding anniversary which makes it extra special. It was not really a surprise that he would propose because we had talked extensively about our plans for a future together. We even went so far as to buy a book together with 500 questions about marital expectations and the like... We rediscovered while reading through the book that we are very compatible... But the parts that we weren't compatible on... well we decided we liked each other well enough that the compatibility significantly out weighed the slight incompatibility and thus we agreed; rather- promised each other, we would actively work on finding ways to negotiate through those issues when we came to them. He told me awhile before this trip down to California, "Sarah, this is the trip I'm going to ask your parents blessing for your hand in marriage and you should start looking at rings." To be honest I had trouble imagining little old me with an engagement ring on my finger. But now that I am wearing it, I wouldn't not change my ring for the world. The actual ring design is meaningful to us because it is a reminder of the day we discovered that we liked each other. That is a whole other story though which I won't get into at this time.

So, July 20, 2009, at some point that day, Jeff asked my parents for their blessing. I don't really remember the details of the day leading up to proposal - it is all kind of a blur to me now that I look back. I do remember however, that in the evening we were sitting on the couch in the family room watching the movie "He's just not that into you". Now that's a romantic movie title if I've ever heard one... Let me just say it was awkward for me to sit next to Jeff and watch Ben Affleck propose to whom ever it was he was proposing to thinking that Jeff was going to ask me to marry him some time in the next few days. After the movie we were in the mood for sushi, so we walked down the street the the local sushi and frozen yogurt shop only to find that it had closed for the evening. So we decided to continue on a walk together since we both love walking. The sky was especially beautiful that night- even with the orange glow of the street lamps, the stars were visible. We stopped on the first bridge over looking the canal. And Jeff started pointing out constellations, which I'm horrible at finding, by the way. I always think every cluster of stars is the big dipper... We took our time finding constellations together. While I was on the verge of finding the big dipper yet again, Jeff told me to look down. I was confused so I turned around to ask him where to look and he had gotten down on one knee. :0)