She Said YES!!!

Just short of 7 years ago, Vicki was invited by a mutual friend of ours to a party that was going on in the house I was living in at the time. It was the first time I met Vicki, and I remember thinking at the time that she was cute. I never could have predicted the way the next 6+ years went, but I wouldn't change anything. This is our story. 

In May of 2004, I moved to Kansas City. A few days in, that same mutual friend called me and said that Vicki also lived in KC, and that we should get in touch. She gave me Vicki's number, and called Vicki to give her my number. I called her that day, and the thing I remember most was that my phone was being a piece of junk and kept losing signal. I think I had to call her back 4 or 5 times in order to finish our conversation. But finish we did, with an invitation to join her for a Happy Hour one day. 

One Happy Hour turned into a night out, and a minor league baseball game with the KC Iowa Alumni association, and a friendship was struck. I liked Vicki immediately, and after a while told her as much. Unfortunately, the timing was not right for either of us, and nothing came of it. 

Though we remained friends, each of us eventually started dating other people. In 2006 I moved to Phoenix, and though we didn't really lose touch, we didn't really keep in contact either. Then one day a trip back to Iowa City for an Iowa football game changed everything...

I was heading back to Iowa City in October of 2008 for the Iowa - Penn St. game, and I sent out a message on Facebook to see if anyone would be back. Vicki was one of the only people to respond, and though she couldn't make it back for the game (she was still in KC at the time), we started talking regularly again.

A few messages over Facebook turned into late night chats on Facebook, which turned into emails, which turned into IM's, which turned into phone calls, which turned into seemingly constant talking over all those mediums. After a few months, we both knew there was a mutual attraction there, but living so far apart it was hard to tell exactly what was there. So in January of 2009, Vicki made a long weekend visit to Phoenix to see where we stood. 

Where we stood was both of us wanting a relationship. A trip back to KC for me turned into another trip here for her, and soon we were flying back and forth every 3-4 weeks. In July of 2009 Vicki packed up and moved here, moving into my brother's house with me. We started looking for a house almost immediately (after she got a job, of course), and in December we moved into our new house. 

Since then it's been a matter of when, not if, I would propose to her. I liked her immediately, and 6+ years never changed that. This past weekend, in Philadelphia, I got the chance to propose. 

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The plan was thrown together quickly. I bought the ring a week before we went to Philadelphia. She was with me when I bought it, and helped picked it out, so she knew it was coming. But she didn't know when I would pick it up or propose, and I had to try to surprise her. I contacted Vicki's friend that lives in Philly and asked her to help me.

I asked her friend to invite Vicki and I to Love Park, to make it seem like her idea and not mine. Vicki took the bait, and though she suspected before we left that I might do it there, she had given that idea up. She didn't think I would haul the ring halfway across the country. Honestly, that was the only thing I was nervous about, but I did it successfully. 

So Vicki and I met her friend and her husband in Love Park, and after talking for a bit, it was Vicki's idea to get pictures in front of the sculpture. Perfect. The main reason I contacted her friend ahead of time was mostly because I wanted them to get pictures of the entire proposal. This is what they captured:

The obligatory picture. 

Let's do something a little different honey. 

I have one more idea for a pic honey... =)

She doesn't even know what hit her. She actually started to get down on a knee also because she thought that was the picture I was going for!

Ahh yeah...

Putting the ring on.

People in the park were clapping and cheering!

The kiss to seal the deal.

So I proposed. In Love Park. It may have been cheesy and obvious, but it was certainly effective. And now we're engaged, and I couldn't be happier =)