Engaged!

Yup, it finally happened!! I can't believe it! Most of you already know from facebook or my parents....or other crazy ways with this technologically advanced world, but I thought I'd blog about it and tell a few stories!

His name is Bryan McKinnon. He grew up in Moab, has two sisters and he's 7 months older than me. He graduated in Construction management from BYU after first going to Snow College (and yes, he can help build my sets!). He is the facilities manager of the Seven Peaks corporation which keeps him extremely busy all year....especially during the summer. I get a perk in that situation though! He's wonderful!Our first date was January 16, 2010 (day before my birthday) and it's the best first date story ever. He picked me up and in the car was listening to "Jekyll and Hyde" which he told me he loved AND that he knew all the songs to "Wicked". Are you kidding? Could he be perfect already? Well.... we were doubling with his friend, Justin and we were doing a taste comparison of Five Guys burgers and In and Out Burgers (Five Guys won... no contest). After the taste test we went to Classic Skating. Now, at this point I'm thinking "I hope I don't see any of my students there" because it's a teenage favorite and I hate being on dates and seeing the students. So when I get there I put on my student-scanner eyes and thought I was safe. We rented our skates and went to go sit down to put them on and all of a sudden, not one, not two, not three....but I think there were about 7 of my students that skated by. Not just students at the school, but MY students that were in my shows or classes and who know me well...all BOYS. One of them was so excited he pulled out his camera on his phone and took a picture with me. Awesome, I thought. Well, Bryan felt a little bad, but we kept going. Then we get up to start skating and they start the disco-skating portion of the evening with strobe lights. I kinda cringed and didn't know exactly what to do and Bryan looked at me and said "you don't have epilepsy or anything?" to which I sheepishly admitted that I did (he has a different view of this point in the story). He felt HORRIBLE! So after skating/sitting on the wall covering my eyes, he took me home thinking he had bombed. I thought it was funny and thought it'd be fun to go out again.Well, a lot of time passed in between that date and our next one due to other circumstances. But then, May 14, 2010 (date is significant), Bryan and a bunch our friends got together and went to Moab for a fun weekend and stayed at his families place. We had a blast. I then stayed one more night with a couple other people and went to his family ward down there.We played it up like we were dating and a bunch of people came and asked him about me. It was delightful....but it also got us thinking if it could be possible. So that started the next phase of our relationship. We dated off and on until it became more serious in November.

THEN: Come April, we started discussing the "M" word a little more seriously. Once we had really made the decision to go ahead (cause you can't really say it 100% and still expect to be surprised by a proposal, which is what I wanted) Bryan FLEW to Denver to have a certain "discussion" with my mom and dad. He flew over in the morning, spent 5 hours with my parents and then came back before I was home from work!

So I was starting to get antsy, really hoping for the proposal to come soon. I wanted to be engaged before the school year was over so I could tell my students about it and it was getting REALLY close to the end of the school year. We had a plan to see the National Touring Cast of "Wicked" in Boise the weekend of the 14th and I was really hoping he'd propose then. Well, as we were driving up he kept saying things like, "I haven't had a lot of time to go shopping" and "would you want just like a $10 Walmart ring" just to throw me off. By the time we got up to Boise to change for the show I was totally convinced it wasn't going to be that weekend. I even texted a friend saying it wasn't going to be then. So then we got into the car to go to dinner and decided to go to dinner at PF Changs for the atmosphere. After dinner was over we got our fortune cookies and (no joke, not planned) my fortune said "A small lucky package will shortly be coming your way" and HIS said "Your short term goal will soon be realized"!! We both chuckled a lot about it but I had no idea that my "small lucky package" was currently in his pocket! So we headed over to Boise State where the show was but we were about an hour and a half early for the show so we got out of the car and decided to walk around the campus a bit. Bryan, who was flying by the seat of his pants, discovered this cute little bench in a cute little grassy corner under a nice tree (which was nice since it had started raining). So we went over to sit on the bench and the minute he sat down he non-chalantly said, "Hey, I have a question for you?" and I just casually said, "k, what" and then he pulled out the ring out of his pocket and got down on his knee, told me he loved me and asked me to marry him. I WAS THRILLED!!!! It was so exciting. I love the ring so much and he picked it out all by himself! And then we were engaged!!

Fun story: Our story carries a lot of 14s. We held hands on November 14, kissed on Dec 14 (yes, I know it took a month), we got engaged on May 14 (one year after our first expedition to Moab) and because of all that we decided to keep the tradition going and get married July 14th! Isn't that fun. All of it was just coincidental...except for the wedding date. OH! And there are 14 little diamonds on my ring!
So now we're getting married and we're totally thrilled! Oh, and there's 14 days left!! ;)