Engagement

To finish where I left off on Thursday I will tell the story of our engagement. These posts from the past will be longer, if you don't have time, stop now :)

As I mentioned earlier, we dated about a month and then we started talking about marriage. See, when you date in a prominantly LDS community marriage comes up really fast :) We also were able to spend time with each other every single day from our first date on...
I remember one night we were sitting on the lawn (I was still living at Hillcrest) looking at the stars and Jake starts asking questions that are "hypothetical" (yeah, right!?!!) I don't remember all the questions, but they were along the lines of "so, when you get married where do you see yourself getting married?" and "how many children do you want?" and "what's your dream wedding?" and so forth. The only answer I really remember is that I asked him right back how many children he wanted and he quickly answered "a baker's dozen"...I was not sure if it was a joke or if he was serious, so I didn't answer for a second waiting for a laugh or certain look, it never really came, so I just answered, "well, I've always thought around 8 would be good"-thinking well, I am definately not a candidate for him now...13 kids? no way!! then he laughed and said, "I can settle for 8, that sounds good". That is the first time he gave away the hypothetical situation...I knew he was discussing us and just didn't want to be bold :)
I remember after that that I asked him a few times if this meant that we were getting married. He said probably so, but he wanted to meet my family first. Yikes, he was going to base his decision off of that? Now, there is nothing to be ashamed of with my family, but he's marrying me, not them, right? It has taken me 7 years to realize that half of the things that he says are a joke and he doesn't give them away! I took/take things way too seriously and literally!
Well, we finally planned a trip home after I finished classes and could "graduate"-there was no ceremony in the summer, so I just got my diploma in the mail-kind of boring, but hey! it was real! I went home a few days before Jake arrived-I had to take my car home for the family to use and he brought his truck to take me and my stuff back to Rexburg.
I realized shortly before Jake arrived that he would probably ask my dad for permission-this was no ordinary trip home, this was one step closer to eternity we were talking about. My family had never met him, so it was a little strange to bring home my "almost" fiance, when to them he was a real-live boyfriend. Remember I said that I had dated about 5 times in the 2 years I had been at Rick's which means, I never had a boyfriend then or during high school, so this was all a little weird for my family to grasp :)
Jake will have to tell the story of asking dad's permission, but all I remember is that he finally asked dad at 6am when dad was leaving for work on the day we were leaving back to Rexburg...Jake, please fill in the enormous blank.
Apparantly dad gave permission because Jake wasn't as, shall we say, uptight as he was when he arrived. He is an easy going person, not much will deter him or frighten him, but I could tell he was a bit nervous the whole time he was there...who wouldn't be?
So, we went ring shopping shortly after arriving back to Rexburg and I found a few rings that I liked and told him the style I liked, but that I wanted to be surprised, I wanted him to pick it out. He wasn't so keen on that idea. So, from then on I was a little suspicious, but left it to him.
As I mentioned in the last post I worked on campus for dance security, well, this fall (I had moved back to Baronnessa) I was promoted to "Head" Security, so I was required to be at almost every dance to train and supervise the new hires. This particular Friday was the opening social dance the school put on and everyone was scheduled to work, mostly because it was the first dance of the semester and I really had to train and teach the newbees. It was held on the upper fields. A lot of people were there, so we had to be really focused on the job. I went to the training meeting of the newbees and remember specifically telling them that one of the most important rules was that they could not dance during work. If it was slow we could dance the last 15 minutes of the night, but never before! I showed them what their job entailed and to not use the walkie-talkie's for fun, they were strictly for work! During the last 15 minutes all us security were at the back of the crowd and I was standing with Jake and the band, it was a live band that night, asked some guy to come up on the stage and make an announcement...what he did was ask his girlfriend to come up and proposed to her right there in front of everyone, I immediately turned to Jake and told him there was no way I would say yes, if he ever did that-he just laughed. I hoped he understood I was serious!
A few weeks later Jake asked me to dinner before work, which wasn't too incredibly out of the ordinary, but kind of. He took me to Gringo's-I love mexican food (we usually got something more fast food :)). It was so yummy. I remember wondering why he was being so weird. It almost seemed like he was forcing himself to talk, but I didn't think much of it. I just ate and talked and actually had food in my stomach before work. He dropped me off at work and said he would try to come back later if he could get the projects done that his mom wanted-that was not a normal response at all, but again I didn't catch it. I went to a work meeting and again reminded the workers that they could not dance until the end of the night (we were having a problem with this).
After the night started and we got the crowds in I remember asking if I could leave early that night. I had finally realized there was something weird going on with Jake and I wanted to make sure he was okay. I was given permission to leave early and so I called Jake. He told me that I should just stay at work because he wasn't even home and wouldn't be until after he picked me up for the night, so I was stuck and not sure why I was feeling a little blue. Well, I went back to work and just enjoyed the night-it was always interesting to watch how people danced and especially how/who would be dancing and who wouldn't. We assisted the ticket ladies as part of the job and since I had worked over a year as dance security I had become really good friends with some of them and that night my favorite lady was there; we called her Grandma Karen, we knew very few of the last names of these ladies.
She loved Jake and kept asking when he was coming, I told her not at all-he had some work to do, but if she stayed til the end she would see him. She could tell I was a little down that night and encouraged me to spend some time in the actual ball room and get into the music a little. I tried but the music was irritating that night, so I spent more time chatting with her-she could always make me laugh! I think about an hour passed-it felt like five! and I was talking to Grandma Karen when someone put their hands over my eyes and whispered in my ear to guess who it was. I was a little frightened to just guess so I turned around and there was Jake all freshly showered and looking so handsome. I was so excited to see him the night totally changed.
Jake had spent a lot of time at work with me so he knew a lot of the ticket ladies and DJ's and even some co-workers that he left me with Grandma Karen and went and chatted with all the ones that he knew and shortly came back, nothing odd. We went into the ballroom-it was time to trade with one of the newbees and he tries to dance with me-he knew the rules too and never really tried to push it, but this night he was! I finally went to talk to Grandma Karen and she suggested that I just have one dance. I told her I would love to, but I had just laid reminded the newbees that it was totally forbidded and that would be totally wrong! She said she'd take care of them-and she would too ;)
I told Jake there was no way I would dance until the end of the night and he would just have to wait another hour and a half! He would not take no for an answer. I went back into the ballroom to do my rounds and all of a sudden our song comes on, "you'll be in my heart" from Tarzan. They never played that song, weird. Then Jake comes and gets me to dance, I resist, but he whispers that he talked to my boss (who I thought was in his office, he usually was at this time) and that he agreed I could dance this song if we danced in the middle of the dance floor with the spotlight-okay, something fishy going on, but I agreed. We dance, he sings in my ear and I start to notice that the crowd has stopped dancing and that they are circling around us watching, I even noticed the ticket ladies at the doorways (they never did that) and all the security people standing there as well-Jake seems oblivious to this, so I just brush it aside as my imagination.
All of a sudden he tells me that I have a call on his cell phone-what? who would call me on his phone on a Friday? I try to answer, but no one is there. He tells me to look on the back and make sure the battery didn't fall out or something. (I was not familiar with cell phones at all, I had no idea where to look plus it was in a case, so how could the battery fall out anyway?) I didn't see anything and gave the phone back-he hands it back and tells me something is stuck to the clip and that I needed to get it off for him. I look down and there is a sparkly ring attached to the clip. I look at it, look at him, notice the crowd and the next thing I know he has the phone in his hand, ring in his fingers and he's on one knee in the middle of the dance floor and everyone is watching us. I do not remember the words he said, but I do remember him asking me to marry him and I remember shaking so badly he couldn't put the ring on I had to do it just to steady my hands and that I whispered yes and someone from the crowd yelled that they didn't hear an answer. He stands up, picks me up in a huge hug, twirls me around and yells, "she said YES!" they all cheered and I don't remember much else except taking his phone and calling my parents and telling them that he just proposed and I had a ring on my finger. I remember leaving work early because my boss looked at me and said "I see you are not going to be able to focus on much, get out of here." I remember going to his house where his parents and siblings are all waiting to see how it went, of course they knew it was happening and I finally realize why he was acting weird all night!
Oh man, it really happened and I was engaged to the most handsome, sought after guy in the ward! I never thought I would ever have a boyfriend, let alone get married this early-I was barely 20. I remember shaking the whole night and asking if it really happened and then looking at my hand and seeing a shiny sparkly ring, that I had picked out and he had gotten by himself!
I was on cloud 9 and completely in love! I couldn't wait to tell everyone I knew!