I think many girls dream of having the man they love surprise them with a wonderfully romantic proposal... well, I don't really like surprises.
Scratch that.
I don't like when someone TELLS me they have a surprise for me and then torments me all day about their knowing and my not-knowing. I hate not knowing.
So that's just what my darling husband-to-be did. It was my birthday (September 17th) and he had spoiled me on the weekend prior, but had informed me the morning of that he had one final surprise for me - but I couldn't have it until after work (just fyi, we work shift, so I had to wait until 11:30pm). Thus with all the patience of a 5-year-old I pestered him all day about hints of what my surprise was, but the bugger was tight lipped.
After work he piled me into the car, didn't say a word of where we were going, and proceeded to drive me off into the darkness. Now I only recently moved to the St. Catharines/Niagara Falls region 5 years ago, so I still have tremendous difficulty navigating certain areas without a map. Needless to say my local-boy had me lost and all turned around in about 10 minutes flat. It wasn't until about the last quarter of our mystery journey that I had any inkling of where we were going.
He had brought me to Port Dalhousie (for those of you that aren't familiar with St. Catharines, this is one of the older communities right on Lake Ontario) to our favourite spot - The Tree With The Hole In It. Adam grew up in Port and this was one of his favourite spots. I fell in love with it when I saw the view of Toronto across the water and the giant mansion.
So we sat down on one of the town benches and looked across the dark water to the twinkling lights of Toronto - my hometown. It was terribly romantic and thoughtful of him, as he knows I'm always missing home and my family, and when he pulled out the most adorable miniature bottle of my favourite wine I thought it was a perfect birthday surprise.
How wrong I was about his motivations to get me alone in the dark. After sipping the wine (straight from the bottle, because he's classy and forgot glasses) and star gazing, Adam told me to stand up, hold out my hands, and close my eyes for my "final" surprise. I was a little dumbfounded and had no idea what else I could possibly be getting. Maybe some jewelry?! Well, I was half right.
When he told me to open my eyes, there he was on one knee.... and I was so shocked (good shocked, but shocked nonetheless) that I immediately started to cry. I'm pretty sure I cried for a good couple minutes before I realized I had neglected to give the poor guy an answer and he was still on one knee. So I giggle/snorted/cried out the words "yes, of course" and he was able to get up (much to his relief I'm sure) and put the beautiful ring on my finger.
How he picked out the ring is a story for another post.
