Making Our Mark

I am not really sure when Michael carved this into the concrete in our road, but he showed it to me on 9/1/08. We have had roadwork surrounding our house for over a month and they just repoured concrete to fill the holes back in the last week of August.

After going on a picnic with Beth, we were riding the motorcycle home and Michael slowed down on the road and asked if I saw that. I didn't know what he was talking about. After we pulled into the driveway and he parked, he led me back down the road a little to show me what he saw in the road. I thought he was crazy because I did not see anything. . .so he positioned me where he wanted he to stand and then said, "now turn around and look down". Then I saw this announcement carved in the middle of the road. Awww. LP loves MH too!!

The Next Step

Our life together started approximately 4 years and a month before the proposal, but that is where this blog is going to start.

Michael asked me to marry him on July 19, 2008 and obviously I said yes!.

He took me to Living Memorial Park in Springfield and had pretty roses for me. It was raining that day. We sat in the car and ate takeout from our favorite Chinese place, Shanghai Inn. While we were sitting there eating I had a suspicion of what might be coming, but I was trying to convince myself otherwise. At some point while we were eating the rain stopped and the sun came out a litte. Michael finished eating and took the roses and his guitar down to the bottom of the amphitheater at the park. When I finished eating I got out of the car and he yelled at me to come down. I walked down the steps now fully convinced of what was about to happen. He had me sit down while he sang/played two songs on the guitar. He did not have the music fully memorized, but I didn't care! The songs that he sang were Hallelujah and Question. The song Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley is just a very pretty song that I love and I have it playing on my blog playlist. You can hear Question here off of You Tube. (Update 10/4: Question is now on my blog playlist also) I had never heard the song before and when I asked him about it afterwards he said he first heard the song while he was in Baghdad on his first deployment and knew then that he wanted to use that song. After he sang the two songs he grabbed the ring and my hands and asked me if I would marry him. It was so sweet and of course I got teary. I was (and still am) so excited. It was nice to be able to officially start planning!! This is my ring, which I absolutely love! Isn't it gorgeous!

After he asked we took the pictures (his idea, which is good because my brain was not functioning properly). Then he let me take the time to go get my nails done so I had nice pretty nails when we showed everyone. We announced it to Beth, my parents, my grandparents, Becky and Hugh, and Laura and Shawn on Saturday. We announced it to everyone at church on Sunday and then went and saw his parents and told them.

These are just some other pictures we took that day after he asked.

Hugs,

The future Mrs. H!!