wedding week: our engagement

This week Al and I will celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary. And while I know we have many more years ahead of us, so many more great memories to make and a lot more to learn about each other, I thought this would be a great week for a wedding week. I’ve never really written about our wedding or our story on the blog before so here it is!

Our engagement…

We grew up in the same town and have known each other forever. Our younger siblings were friends, our parents knew each other…ya know that kind of story. Our engagement came at a time that I least expected it. Which I mean I know it’s supposed to be a surprise, but you get what I’m saying.

We’d spent the summer caring, visiting and spending time with Al’s mom who was terminally ill. She had passed in early September and Al’s birthday was the following week. All he really wanted to do for his birthday was go on a hike.  At the time I was training for a half marathon and had run 11 miles the day before. Hiking was not something I was looking forward to.

But he wanted to hike, so that we did!  I think I complained the entire way and he talked the ENTIRE way up that mountain. If you know Al he’s a social guy, but he’s not a chatterbox. On this day though, oh my. I remember thinking to myself that he’s had a hard week and this was his outlet so just keep hiking and listening to him talk.

When we finally got to the top we had some sandwiches and my body was so sore that I told him I needed to just rest for a few minutes. So I found a spot to just chill out for a minute. I had my arm over my eyes because it was so bright.

Well he mumbled something like “I want to tell you something” and I responded with a “HEY I need to rest for a few minutes, just give me a few minutes, please.” I’ll admit that I wasn’t being entirely nice. Well then he told me to look at him so I literally opened one eye, turned my head a little, while still having my arm over my face. Kid was down on one knee babbling about how he wanted to spend his life with me! So then of course, I said yes, but immediately I felt TERRIBLE because I had bitched the whole way up that mountain!

You can imagine that on the way down Al was back to his normal self, not talking a mile a minute and I wouldn’t shut up. I was so shocked and I love that this is the way our lives together started. It’s very us!