Ryan and I were engaged on July 28, 2006. Almost 4 years ago. It was such a wonderful time in my life! It involved early, long, tiring days at hair school and late nights with my sweetheart. Good thing we didn't date for very long, because who knows how long I would have been able to keep up the whole get up super early for school then stay up super late to be with Ryan routine :) My typical habit was to stay late at school to make up for my missed hours (since I was nearing graduation and didn't want to have overtime fees), put a few dollars in my gas tank with my tips from the day and drive to Erda as fast as I could (literally)! We watched movies, sat on the porch, talked. Makes me smile just thinking about it.
We had planned a weekend trip to Ryan's family's property at Bear Lake in late July. We were going to leave on Friday after I got done with school and stay until Monday. I called Ryan on Thursday night to see if our plans were still the same, and he was quite short with me on the phone. I thought for sure he was going to break up with me (Keep in mind that at this point we had been dating for only 2 months). I found out later that the reason he was so impatient on the phone was that he had been talking to his dad about asking me to marry him and didn't have much time to talk at that point.
I woke up with a terrible headache on Friday morning and decided not to go to school. And since I wasn't going to school, why not just go to the lake early? So we did (Ok, maybe my headache wasn't THAT bad). Only problem was that Ryan had arranged to pick up my engagement ring that afternoon before we were supposed to leave. And since I was with him and we were leaving early, he couldn't very well do that! So he had to make secret arrangements for his mom to pick it up. When we met his mom up at the lake, Ryan handed me some meat and asked me if I would go put it in the freezer. I thought it was a little weird, but I did as I was told (They had to get rid of me so that they could do the ring hand-off!).
I don't really remember the rest of the day, but that evening we decided to go down to the lake. Only you're not suppsosed to be on the beach after dark. Rules? What rules? So we started up the four-wheeler to head down the road. But this bike wasn't just any four-wheeler. It was a special bike that had to be jump started every time you wanted to go somewhere, and couldn't be turned off until you made it back home. We made it down to the beach on the noisy beast and left it running while we went for a quick little walk. We looked at the stars. Ryan said something that made me cry. And then he pulled a diamond ring out of his pants pocket. With the four-wheeler humming in the background, he asked me to marry him. :)
