18 Marvelous Months of Marriage

A year and a half ago on this day, in a beautiful temple surrounded by rustic turkey farms, Blake and I called it good. I think I can speak for both of us when I say that it’s been an incredibly happy, decidedly adventurous eighteen months.

But that’s not what I want to write about today. Instead, let’s chat about the other milestone we reached exactly one week ago: The Second Anniversary of the Day of Proposal. On October 16, 2004, Blake asked me to marry him, thus strongly encouraging the fact that we can celebrate those eighteen months of marriage today.

The whole proposal is actually a pretty funny story (or at least I think it’s funny, and if you don’t think it’s funny, why, then you can just let someone else ask you to marry him. Which, now that I think about it, you probably should do anyway because Blake’s mine. So there.). It was funny because I was dense, and it was funny because Blake was surprisingly good at telling half-truths, and it was funny because of circumstances that were completely out of our control.

It started early on the morning of October 16^th. Blake came to my apartment to pick me up for a breakfast date in Provo Canyon, followed by a train ride on the Heber Creeper. My first clue should have been the fact that he arrived at my place carrying two dozen red roses in a huge vase. (Actually, there were many clues that should have been my firsts, but we’ll not get into that here because I can only handle so much self-inflicted embarrassment.) When he arrived at my door and handed me the roses, I muttered through my teeth to him something along the lines of, “Wow, thanks Blake, but everyone here is going to think I’m going to come home engaged!” If only I could have figured out then how prophetic that statement turned out to be. (Actually, forget the “if only’s”…my dense-ness made the whole thing much more entertaining.) I think Blake replied with something like, “Uh, yeah…..” before he quickly changed the subject.

We went to this little park whose name I don’t think I ever knew, up the Southfork road just beyond Vivian Park. We set up the picnic breakfast that Blake had so carefully prepared: sausage, egg, and cheese English muffin sandwiches, sliced fruit, and sparkling cider (which, yes, should have been my second clue). We ate and we talked and enjoyed the sunny-but-brisk October weather. And we tried our very hardest to ignore the fact that the grenade-throwing practice routines the Utah National Guard were engaging in on the other side of the park had slowly moved to just a few feet from where we were sitting. I suggested to Blake that we just go down to catch the train, but he insisted that we stay in the park a little longer (the third clue). So we moved our picnic basket and blanket to a small hill out the of way of our neighbors in camouflage.

Once we’d gotten settled in our new location, Blake said he had to use the restroom. Now, I didn’t realize this at the time, but Blake was not going to the restroom. Rather, he was headed to the car (strategically, not conveniently, parked right next to the bathroom, a long, long way from where we were sitting) to strip off a layer of clothing. You see, underneath Blake’s button-up shirt, throw-over sweater, and blue jeans, he was wearing an entire tuxedo. (!!!) (How he managed to completely hide this from me, I still don’t know!) He took off the top layer of clothing, grabbed the jacket from the trunk, along with one more red rose, and began the long, long walk back to where I was.

When I saw him walking back towards me in a tuxedo and holding another rose, I was finally able to figure out what was up. And I had a long, long time to digest it (because, did I mention that the restroom was a long, long way from where we’d set up camp? It was). So when he finally arrived back, I was already crying. I stood up and hugged him and kept crying. (He likes to harp on me now that I really shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions or anything because, after all, he hadn’t even asked me yet. To that I say, oh, come on!) He took me to the other side of the hill (out of the view of the National Guard), got down on two knees (because I’m a special girl who gets two knees rather than just one), offered me the most lovely diamond ring, and asked me to marry him. I said, “Of course.”

After we’d had enough time to let the eternal commitment we’d just made to each other sink in, we gathered up our picnic supplies and headed down to the train. On the train ride he filled me in on all the half-truths he’d been telling in order to keep this proposal a surprise. My absolute favorite of these half-truths was what he told his roommates the night before after he’d come home with 25 red roses. He simply told them that if he was going to propose to me, he’d offer more than just 2 dozen roses (which he did…2 dozen initially, plus one more in the tux. Only his roommates didn’t realize that he had more than 2 dozen with him that night), and that he was just taking me to Homecoming the next night. Only he told them that I didn’t know I was going to Homecoming; it was a surprise, so could they please not say anything to me. His roommates, certain that they’d caught him in the middle of a grand lie, asked him, “So what about her dress? How will Lindsay know to prepare for Homecoming if she doesn’t have a dress?” To which Blake cleverly said, “Her mom’s in on this and has her dress ready.” They totally bought it.

So anyway, that’s that. Thanks for tuning in to someone else’s sappy proposal story. You all deserve a gold star for sticking it out all the way to the end of this post. But I don’t have any gold stars on me at the moment, so your reward will have to remain figurative for the time being.