our romantic night

Here's my not-so-short story!

We started by going out on a date that he 'planned'--I use that term loosely because nothing worked out right. He was actually trying to recreate the date when we got engaged! Such a sweet thought. At that time 9 yrs ago, we had KFC over candlelight up at Phoenix North Mountain Park, Martinelli's cider in champagne glasses, the works! It was a total surprise and so was the ring. (I thought he was going to propose on Christmas Eve, but he couldn't wait!)

So last night, we drive to the metro area looking for a KFC, could not find one anywhere, the phone book was no help, and the KFCs I called were no help! As it got later and later, it got darker and windier and we realized, even if we found the place, eating outside was not going to be pleasant. So we ditched that idea and headed back to Surprise. At that point I'm thinking "holy crap, we just wasted almost 2 hours of babysitting time!" and wishing he'd planned better, we could have done yadda yadda, ate at home while watching a movie, etc etc, but I knew he felt bad so I just gave him the ol' "As long as I'm with you, I'm happy" speech... LOL!

We get to KFC in the Surprise area (this is where it gets good!) and we're sitting there eating and he's telling me about the frustrations of the evening and how he wanted it to be so romantic and then he goes into this pretty great speech that I need to write down because it totally touched me. Then, he plops a ring on the table!! It was actually the solitaire diamond that he proposed with 9+ years ago. Over time, the prongs had broken about half a dozen times, we'd gotten the thing sauldered (sp?) and unsauldered and the initial ring was a wreck and sitting in my jewelry box. (So about 4 years ago I got an 'upgrade' wedding ring as a gift when I lost all my weight...that's another romantic story!) I'd always kept my engagement ring, wanting to fix the prongs or get a 6-prong setting because it is dear to me. Unbeknown to me, he had this done about two months ago and had been saving it for this night. Can you believe that? And I never noticed my ring was gone from my jewelry box.

I actually cried I was so surprised! Sooo sweet! Then we got some ice cream at Cold Stone and we both got something DIFFERENT which we always say we'll do but never do. How can you go wrong at Cold Stone, right? We brought the ice cream back, picked up the kids, put them to bed, and enjoyed some more "Smallville" together. (We're pretty addicted)

And this morning there was a dozen roses on my treadmill. What a guy! =)