The Engagement

Merry Day after Christmas! I'm back at work and back on the blog!

As promised, here is the story of our engagement.

My birthday started out well, as a coworker surprised co-birthday girl Julie (the stylista) and me with multiple cakes. I was wearing a sparkly shirt and skirt all day in hopes that I would get to spend the evening with John watching the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at Aronoff. (I'd not-so-subtly asked for tickets for my birthday.) I kept saying my theme for my birthday was sparkly, having no clue what my words were actually foretelling.

After work, John picked me up and we went to dinner downtown before heading to the Aronoff, where I thoroughly enjoyed the show. (Dinner was not so spectacular, but John promised ice cream after the show to make up for it.)

Since I still had my car parked at work, he dropped me off at it after the show, and he said he was going to the store to buy ice cream. I went home and did the usual mail opening, email checking, whatever, until he arrived with bags of banana-split making items. He made me a banana split with candles in it and sang happy birthday. I ate the deliciously chocolatey ice cream dish and was still sitting on the couch. John kept sort of looking at me funny and it was getting unnerving, so I said "It's 11:30, we could turn on Jay (Leno)." He then said to hold on a second, he had something for me. Then he got down on one knee, pulled a ring out of his pocket and proposed. I said yes and was sort of shaking and a little teary. We just sat there talking non-stop with excitement (surrounded by a bunch of clean laundry that I hadn't had a chance to fold yet!)

Eventually we set up my camera to take a few pictures to capture the moment, and agreed that we would not tell anyone the next day (which was the day before Thanksgiving) until we could tell our parents in person. So I spent all day at work literally ready to bust out the news - but I couldn't. It was a little difficult to concentrate that day too, and I had the hardest time editing the following week's Christmas events cover story. I hightailed it out of work as soon as I could, and met John (he works in West Chester) on the way to Middletown. We surprised my parents with the news (unfortunately they were in the midst of a plumbing disaster with a non-working drain while trying to make Thanksgiving dinner for 9 people). After getting their blessing (and calling my sister to tell her) we headed back to Cincinnati to share our news with John's parents and siblings. They were equally excited as we started talking about plans and what dates already had conflicting events.

About 24 hours after I got the ring, we finished the rounds and were ready to celebrate Thanksgiving!

The following Monday we told our coworkers and many other friends. I was not the only person in the office with a new ring - a staffer in our magazine division had gotten engaged over the weekend as well - which is pretty crazy considering there are only about 30 people who work in this division.

I'll post one of the pictures of John with a VERY sparkly me later:). I forgot the camera at home. Whoops.