Missing in action

Holly here. Remember me? Yeah, it's been a while. This next story will help explain why I've been M.I.A. for the last few months. In case you haven't heard my engagement story yet, here's a long, very detailed description of how it went down. I wish you the best in avoiding readers fatigue. If the task of reading this post seems daunting, feel free to skip to the paragraph in purple where you'll find the juice of the story.

I headed up to Salt Lake late on a Thursday night since I had work the next morning. On Friday, November 19, my brother-in-law texted me and said he had run into Troy on campus and wanted to invite us to a dessert and game night with Heather and him. I called Troy to ask if he’d like to go. He said yes, so I let Brad know we'd be coming over around 9. I knew Troy would be picking me up from work to take me out to dinner, but he surprised me by coming in early. After I got off work, he took me to Olive Garden. He acted perfectly normal to me, but I found out later that he was actually pretty nervous.

After we finished eating, he drove me back to work to pick up my car so we could go to my house and change before going to game night. While I was turning the heat on in my car and getting situated, I looked over at Troy, who was parked next to me, and watched as he gripped the steering wheel while mouthing words and what not. I thought it was a bit strange and it made me laugh. I rolled down my window to ask if he was ok and he said yes so I thought nothing of it. After I changed clothes, I ran upstairs to find some games to bring. My mom asked if I was going to bring a jacket and I told her no because I thought we were going to be inside the whole time. She asked if I was sure and I said yes. I was unaware that in about half an hour, I would be on the top of a mountain in the freezing, gusting wind.

We hopped in the car and Troy drove us to Heather and Brad's house. While pulling into their neighborhood, he didn’t see a speed bump coming so I warned him, but instead of pushing the breaks, he pushed the gas! I told him he needed to calm down or I was going to get car sick. Still, though, I didn't really suspecting anything because he had told me the week before that he still didn't have enough money to buy the ring. I honesty wasn’t expecting to get proposed to for a couple more weeks. We pulled up to their house and their car wasn’t there. Their lights weren’t on either. I thought that was really strange, but we went and knocked on the door anyway. No answer, as was the plan, but I found this very frustrating.

Troy called Brad who explained that they'd gone out to dinner downtown and the food had taken longer than expected so they wouldn’t be there for another 20 minutes or so. Troy and I were already 20 minutes late and now we were going to have to wait for another 20 for them to get there?! I expressed to Troy my frustration and told him that was very rude of them. He told me not to get too riled up about it because we had been late too, so we sat back in the car and after a few minutes, he suggested that we just go on a drive to kill some time and go to a lookout point in Draper where Heather and Brad had taken us to a few months before. I agreed. He asked me to help direct him there because he wasn’t sure if he remembered how to get there. What I didn’t know was that just a couple hours earlier, he'd driven up there to make sure he knew how to get there. For a while, I thought we were going to wrong way until I spotted a landmark I recognized.

We pulled into the lookout point and I wasn’t expecting to get out of the car since it was so blustery and cold and Troy knows how much I hate the wind. As I Ieaned over and laid my head on his arm, I could hear and feel his heart beating unusually fast. That’s when it hit me. I knew he was about to propose. He said he was going to get his jacket out of the trunk and grab a blanket for me. He had me stay in the car while he did that so I wouldn’t see him grab the ring as well. I was getting pretty excited at this point. He came and wrapped me in the blanket and took me out to get a better view of the city lights. He went on the explain how this was a central point in our dating life. We had memories in Provo, Salt Lake, Park City and Midway and these were the places where we had fallen in love. As he was talking to me, I heard him accidentally click the ring box. Apparently he was trying to find the hinge on the box so he wouldn’t open it the wrong way when he proposed. The suspense was building and he finally knelt down and asked me to marry him. I exclaimed, “Of course I’ll marry you!” and wrapped my arms around him before even looking at the ring. After we hugged (and maybe kissed), he asked if I would like to see the ring. I was so excited, I hadn't even looked at the ring yet! It's such a beautiful ring and it represents so much love, devotion and hard work on his part.

We got back into the warm car to take a better look at the ring. After laughing about how all of this had been set up and I had fallen for everything, I called Rose and I didn’t even have to tell her we had just gotten engaged, she could just tell in the way I said hello that something had happened and we laughed and squealed in celebration for about three minutes. I was so blissfully happy. I was going to marry my best friend who I was madly in love with. Life couldn’t have been any better. We went back to my house to celebrate with my family and I invited Rose over to join us.

I have now been engaged for 4 months and will be marrying this smokin young lad in exactly 38 days.