a valentines day story.

As I sit down to write this, I cannot believe that it has been a year since our engagement. It's crazy how quickly time flies by. In a little over three months I will be marrying my best friend. I will not be a girlfriend or a fiancee - but someone's wife. Woah.

Before I get to the events of the evening I need to preface the story with a few notes:
a - yt is in his last year of med school. we had of course discussed our engagement and marriage but had always agreed it would happen after his med school graduation.
b - yt had told me for years that "he knew exactly how he wanted to propose". turns out that was a lie.
c - yt is a good liar and really sneaky. this worries me a little.
d - this is a really long post. sorry.

Okay so here it goes...
It was Valentines Day {2.14.11}. yt told me that we were going out to dinner to celebrate the holiday, reservations were at 6pm, and the location was a surprise. I got stuck at work and called yt frantically:
me: "There's no way we're going to make it to dinner by 6pm"
him: "No worries, I'll call and push back the reservation. Take your time and I'll see you soon."
I didn't think twice that it was Valentine's Day and changing any reservation was probably virtually impossible {foreshadowing of events to come}.

I came home to change for dinner and to my surprise, yt had been cooking up a storm. Apparently the location of our dinner was our apartment. yt NEVER cooks. I do not use the term "never" lightly. He had literally never cooked dinner - and since this day, has not cooked once. This was a special and welcomed gesture! He had printed out a dinner menu, set our table with candles, and purchased our favorite wine.

Our bedroom door was closed and yt told me that I couldn't go in there because my Valentine's day present was in there. I was so excited to see what it was.

We sat down for dinner and began talking about our days.. normal chit chat. Then this happened:
me: "Samie {one of my good friends} thinks we're going to get engaged tonight. I told her she's crazy."
yt: "Lara, stop. We've talked about this. It's not going to happen for a while babe."
me: "I know! I wouldn't want to get engaged on Valentine's Day anyway. That is so cliche and you would just be killing two birds with one stone. When you decide to do it, definitely don't do it on Valentine's Day, okay?"
yt: "Sure, Lara."

.... I am such a huge asshole.

Anyway.. we move on from this conversation and finish up dinner. Then it's present time! yt makes me face away from our living room and close my eyes. I hear a lot of commotion and then he says that I can turn around and open my eyes. There is a huge wrapped box before me {images for reference below}. He tells me to open it. At this point I start thinking about what could be in this huge box. [I had mentioned wanting weights for working out... did he get me weights for Valentine's Day!? I'll kill him. Nah he wouldn't do that.. bar stools maybe? We do need those but that's not very romantic..]

I open one side of the box and realize that it's empty.
me: "it's empty"
yt: "well you have to go inside of it to get your present"
me: "you want me to crawl in this box... you've got to be kidding me."
yt: "well if you want your present you have to"

So I proceed to get on all fours and crawl into this box, which upon entering I realize has been fitted with a light fixture on top. At this point I'm thinking [when the hell did he do all of this!?]. On the far end of the box there is a door and a note that reads "open this door your destiny awaits you."

WTF is going on.

So I open the door and there is yt. on one knee. ring in hand.

The poor guy didn't get to utter a word before the screams ensued and I fell to the floor. Finally after a few minutes of screaming (and rolling around on the floor like a crazy person) yt said "do you want to say yes?" "do you want to see the ring?" It was the best surprise ever.

Needless to say, if yt had done this on a random day, I would have absolutely known that something was up. Valentine's Day was the perfect distraction. I later asked yt if after my dinner time asshole comments, he had thought about not asking me. He said that he had come too far to turn back now. It's funny how nervous he was even knowing I was going to say yes!

Some closing comments:
a - I am so happy we were in the privacy of our apartment when this happened. My reaction was not appropriate for the public.
b - Looking back, Valentine's Day is a wonderful time to get engaged (especially if it's unexpected).
c - I'm so lucky yt still loves me. I can't make anything easy for him.
d - Please don't judge the below photos too harshly. This is the first time they are being shown to anyone.

{this is the most attractive picture I have from the night... awesome}

{"mom, are you kidding, you knew all about this?}

{the infamous box that makes telling this story so very confusing}

{the bling}

the end.