Wrangler Dani

I’m sure that most of you have heard The Proposal Story, and if you haven’t, you don’t want to because you’re either disenchanted with the whole “love” thing, totally happy single and thus unimpressed, or just getting along and doing your best to avoid bitter diatribes at “freaking save the date cards”.

(No offense, Annie, I’ve felt the same way in the past and thought it was too classic not to share. 🙂

Anyways. The point I’m trying to make is this – I realize that this post is probably completely unnecessary, but I’m going to write it anyway, if nothing else, so I won’t forget the little things that make it special.

So. The Friday of Memorial Day weekend, I was supposed to be working a half-day from home. It started out stormy, and the workday was matching the weather with all the gloomy-ness it could muster. It was going horribly and because of the storm, my internet kept cutting out. I’m getting more and more upset as I realize that, not only am I running late, I am running late for a CAMPING TRIP IN THE RAIN. I love camping and all that, but I am not a hard-core mountaineer. I am also very prone to being cold, and once I’m cold, I’m very prone to being miserable. So. Adam came over at the appropriate time, only to find me still hunched over my laptop, getting more miserable by the minute. Being the good sport that he is, he assured me it would be fine, let me finish my work and even bought me a latte on our way out of town – a sure bet to make me smile again.

So, we got up to Sequoia, and it was cold. But it was OK, we had a great dinner with the other early birds, hung out by the fire, and I was feeling pretty cheerful about the whole thing. The next day, I kept bugging Adam to go for a hike. He didn’t really seem like he wanted to, which was weird, but luckily for him, he was leading the camp-out, so that gave him an out. Later in the day, he mentioned that he wanted to go for a hike “just the two of us” on Sunday. I thought it was weird that he was planning something that he hadn’t wanted to do all of an hour earlier, but I just thought he was being weird.

Saturday night, our friends Phil and Kirsten and Nate and Lindsay showed up. Phil and Adam went off on a random hike and were gone FOREVER. Kirsten and I wondered what the deal was, but we didn’t think about it too much.

It started snowing that night. Lindsay, Kirst and I all snuggled in my itty-bitty backpacking tent and had girl-talk. They both are engaged, and hearing them talk about their plans with such assuredness made me wonder if Adam and I would have that someday.

(Also, Before we went to bed, Adam asked if I wanted to just wake up on my own or set an alarm. I thought that was weird, too, normally he’s so relaxed about that kind of thing.)

The next day (still snowing/raining) we hung out by the fire and had some coffee, than Adam came over to me sort of sneakily and asked if I was ready to go. As we left, I asked if we shouldn’t tell somebody where we were going. “I told Phil and Rocky last night,” Adam assured me. Again, weird. Also, why on earth was he carrying such a big backpack for a little hike? Where were we going, anyway?

He said it was just some breakfast stuff, and I believed him. Looking back, I just swallowed a lot of things that were definitely fishy.

We hiked for a while on this beautiful trail through the woods. I did turn around a time or two to see if Phil was following. I figured if Adam was proposing, Phil would be in on it with a camera… but he wasn’t, and Adam seemed nonchalant about looking around the forest, so I put it the proposal idea out of my head. The whole time it was sort of misting/snowing/raining, but we were working hard and didn’t mind. We got to some pretty deep snow and decided that our boots weren’t quite up to that (I’ve worn mine since high school) and we turned around and found a big stump in a pretty area to sit on.

Adam said he brought me out there to tell me all the reasons why he loved me. He pulled out a piece of notebook paper and started telling me all these things and read a scripture. It was very special, and I thought he was just being sweet for our one year anniversary. After he’d finished, we sat there for a minute, but I, being the practical girl that I am, suggested that we break open his backpack o’ breakfast.

“I have one question I have to ask you first,” he said, at which point it started hailing and I started hyperventilating, saying yes over and over, as he got down on one knee (in the snow!) and pulled out the ring. I teared up and said yes again.

He had packed a whopper of a celebratory breakfast, complete with prosciutto, cheese, fruit, yogurts, hummus, pita chips, crackers, bread, brie and champagne and OJ for mimosas. We made mimosas in our Nalgene, (in his hurry, Adam had forgotten the flutes, which we decided was sort of appropriate anyway) and had an AMAZING breakfast together, despite the cold.

We took some pictures and walked back to camp, where Phil happened to be waiting in the parking lot for us. He got Kirsten, Nate and Lindsay, and us girls did an awesome screaming engaged jumping dance.

All day was euphoric, and even though the weather got so bad that we had to pack up and head home that night, we still had the best engaged day ever, and tried our best to slip the word “fiance” into every possible sentence. Actually, I’m pretty sure we still do that. Or at least I do.

I love Adam because he’s my best friend as well as my love. He knew exactly what would make me happy in a proposal, and he did so fantastic at it.

Here’s us on our stump, just after he asked: