The official proposal took a while longer however. In the mean time, we decided where we want to live so that I could find an internship out there, the idea being that it's a good idea to intern at a place you might actually like to stay. So, since we both had no long term plans of staying in Minnesota and we've both always been attracted to the west coast, I found an internship in Vancouver, WA. I called up the cardiac rehab center of one of the hospitals out there and talked to them about the possibility of doing an internship there this summer. Within a week they said they'd take me. I'm starting June 17. Joey is in early childhood education so, he can pretty much find a teaching job anywhere. Finally we decided to get married June 4 so that we could move to Vancouver together. We called the temple and set the date. However, he still hadn't proposed...
I knew that he would probably try to surprise me and that it would probably be on a weekend and that he had been looking at rings for a while and most likely had one. So after a couple of weekends passed and nothing happened, I thought he might do it on Valentines day. It started out like any other low-key, Sunday Valentines. We made breakfast in the morning and exchanged gifts. He got me this really cool halite lamp and a giftcard to a department store. I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed. We went to church, came home, made dinner and watched some Olympics. Later that evening as they announced more figure skating he said that he didn't want to watch it and suggested we watch some video he took of the preschoolers from his work on their favorite parts of the school musical they had just done. I said, "OK" knowing it would probably be just long enough to get past the figure skating to some other event that we both like. As we watched, I noticed that sometimes there wasn't a question asked at the beginning and I assumed that it was probably the same one as the previous child, however the answer didn't make sense. I disregarded this thinking that they're preschoolers and often give strange answers. Finally, at the end I heard the question. "Why should my girlfriend, Melissa marry me?" and the little girl answered, "because she likes people!" Before I had completely processed what was going on, Joey had slid off the couch and on to his knee holding out the ring. He asked me to marry him, and I said yes. He then he brought up some sparkling cider and chocolate dipped strawberries and bananas to top it all off. I thought it was a nice touch and on the whole really thoughtful and sweet. I feel lucky to have found someone willing to to go so much effort for me :) Here are some of our engagement pictures and of course--per request--a picture of the ring. Enjoy!
