I Wanna Grow Old With You

The day that Reese proposed I was supposed to meet my parents at an anniversary event for a church I had grown up in. Reese was supposed to go with me. But at the last minute he called and said that one of his nephews had gotten sick and both their parents were at other events, could he come over to help. I told him no big deal, this wasn’t that big of a thing, he could easily miss out and catch up with us afterwards for dinner. UNBEKNOWNST to me… he used his poor unsuspecting nephew as a scapegoat so he could execute his master plan. He was going to decorate the backyard of my house with lights and put up a hammock he had bought me to set the scene for him to ‘pop the question’. He convinced several of our closest friends and family to come help him transform the scene. They helped hang lights, put up tiki torches, scatter rose petals, and set up dinner for afterwards. Meanwhile I’m at this church function with my parents, catching up with old friends and having a great time. When it finishes up, we head back to my house to pick up the boys (Reese and my twin brother) for dinner.

Random sidenote: I had tried to put my hair up with bobby pins that day (which I should know by now will NEVER WORK ON MY HAIR, but I’m 29 and still don’t know this about my hair) and it had of course, fallen down, and didn’t look that great. As we are driving back to the house, my mom is scrambling to help me find a hair rubber band in my car. I keep plenty of them around, so its very rare not to be able to find one. I keep telling Mom it is no big deal, I’ll just run in and grab one when we get home, but she continues to look for one over my protests. As any good daughter would, I start to get annoyed that she is making this big of a deal out of NOTHING. We finally find a clip, and all is right in the world. Later I would understand her concern!

When I get to the house I walk up to the garage door and see a note on the door, its a poem that Reese has written me. And all of a sudden I know what is behind that door. I open it up to see the love of my life sitting at the end of a candlelit hallway, just patiently waiting for me.

He takes my hand and we walk to the backyard together where he gets down on one knee and asks me to marry him. He’d asked a friend to take pictures of the whole process and I am grateful to have these sweet pictures of that moment. He also wrote me a letter (its kinda his thing) which I read while sitting in the hammock he and our friends had assembled while I was away.

Afterwards we went inside and celebrated with a few friends and our families. How cute is this picture of how excited my dad is for us? My twin brother made my favorite dessert a chocolate meringue torte… delicious layers of chocolate meringue and chocolate mousse…mmmmmm.

And two of my favorite people, my mother and my best friend checking out the ring:

And a funny part of the story? He’d really planned on waiting another month or two to propose, but the jeweler had called to tell him the ring was ready and my parents were coming down for the weekend… so the ring was burning a hole in his pocket and he decided to jump right in with the backyard plan.

I love that every time I walk into our backyard I think about that moment and how happy we make each other and the lifelong journey we are going to have together!