when:  September 17, 2002 

how it happened:  THIS was the wildest day of my entire life...I suppose I should have expected it to be so, as for my first birthday knowing him, and prior to us even dating, he and Serena and "da gang" surprised me with the WILDEST birthday scavenger chase I'd ever experienced. =)

See, Daddy could not have yet been consulted in person, and Robert being the traditionalist, I assumed it was my fate to wait until Thanksgiving or Christmas. However, somehow I guess Rob just couldn't hold off any longer, and so he asked me to go shoe shopping and eat out at El Rodeo.

So, shoe shopping it was, and the stroll in the evening was his suggestion on the way home around 8:00. It was a strange idea, since I was dressed up and Love Creek was kind of a forest path, but he smoothly convinced me without much fuss, and soon we were poking along Pokagon Rd.

We'd had a long walk in a cherry orchard on this road once upon a time, the day we'd begun dating...and as we neared it I saw lights flickering in one corner of the trees.

"Rob! Look! It must be a party!" I smiled with delight, utterly clueless. He drives closer, and, proceeding to turn off the road into the grass and toward the lights I grabbed his leg, "Rob! What are you doing?! You're going to disrupt someone's romantic party!"

He said nothing, and later told me he couldn't because he was sure I had already caught on. But it wasn't until after we had driven closer, and I'd seen the incredible set-up, and I'd exclaimed, "Rob! Someone is going to ask someone to marry them!", and he'd TURNED THE CAR OFF, that I realized it was me!

Begin the tears and the shaking and the shock and the "oh-my-goodness-this-isn't-happening-to-me".

We walk (well, I tremble) down a votive-lined, flickering grass path to an utterly surreal square of orchard bathed in tiny golden flames where a table and two chairs, roses, sparkling peach juice, a chocolate strawberry cake...I can't believe this is happening. To me. To us.

He asks me...I remember the words "through the seasons" and "will you marry me?"

30 seconds of saying to myself "you're dreaming" and "this can't be true" and finally I say YES!!!!!!!!!! And he yells to the world "SHE SAID YEEEESSSSS!!!!!!!" And then the fireworks go off. For some 10 minutes.

And as the surreality of that incredible, golden moment lowered in our hearts and stomachs, we laughed and I cried and we gasped and it was...indescribable.

We're getting married!!!!!!

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