a birthday proposal

This week's Show Us Your Life is about proposal stories. Chris and I dated for four years before we got married. During that time I proposed to him at least twice, but he didn't take me seriously. That whole girl waits patiently for a guy to come along, decide to get married, and propose on one knee thing was pretty deeply ingrained in his head. Apparently if a woman proposes to a man, it's not to be taken seriously. Anyway, when he actually did propose I could not have been more surprised.

It was summer, and we were living in a temporary apartment while waiting for our condo to be built. The condo was in a new area for us, so Chris suggested we spend a long weekend there for my birthday to explore. We like to go camping and there are a lot of state parks and places to camp in that area. So, the Thursday afternoon before my birthday we drove out to the campground. It looked nice enough as we drove in, but as we drove through to our camp site I realized that this was not a nice place. The bathrooms were so disgusting that I wouldn't use them for any purpose. Our site was way up in the woods, which made trekking to the bathroom impossible anyway. It was also obvious that the campground was a place where people were actually living, not a place to vacation. Everything was grimy and unkempt, there was trash... Anyway, you get the picture. It was not nice.

That night I still wasn't happy about where we were staying. We were supposed to stay there for three nights! I am by no means high maintenance and I do enjoy camping, but was not willing to go three nights with no usable sink, toilet or shower. Especially on my birthday. I was really unhappy, so before we went to bed Chris surprised me by saying that he had gotten us reservations for Saturday night at an inn in the town our new condo was in! We decided to try to get the room a day early, so we didn't have to stay at the campground for another night. I was much happier after that. Until it started raining. That night, it poured. I couldn't sleep because of the noise. Oh, and there were really bad thunderstorms. I  ended up spending half the night in the car. Miserable.

Friday was my birthday. It started off wet and cold, and I was tired. We changed our inn reservation and then explored the area for the morning. We visited our condo and saw that the foundation had been put in, so that was exciting. The inn we were staying at is on our town common (pictured in this post). We headed there after lunch. Chris talked me into walking around on the common before we checked into our room. At this point I was dragging. I was tired and cranky, and just wanted to take a shower and put on dry clothes. Somehow Chris talked me into going into the gazebo. And then he started saying all kinds of sappy things about how great the time had been that we'd spent together. I had no idea what was going on, and was totally not in the mood! I thought he was just being cheesy and I wanted a hot shower. Suddenly he was on one knee with a ring, asking me to marry him!

We checked into our room, called our families, had our much needed hot showers, and went out to dinner. We spent the rest of the weekend exploring the area and took a tour of a local winery. What I had thought was the worst birthday ever had turned into the best.

One year later, this painting was on the gift table at our wedding:

My brother (who's an artist) had been hiding behind a tree, taking pictures so he could paint the scene of Chris proposing to me. I had no idea. That was the best wedding gift we received; a lasting representation of us agreeing to marry each other, at the center of the town in which we'd start our married life.

Can't wait to read everyone's stories!