We're engaged!

We did it! And by that I mean, Oren did it.

It started with a little walk in the woods. In a religious sanctuary, to be exact. The Grotto is a sanctuary and botanical garden not far from our house. We'd never been, so it seemed like a perfectly nice idea for a little Saturday morning hike when he suggested it.

Since this is our blog and our story, we'll tell the whole thing without skipping the details. First of all, we've never been on a scheduled walk in our life, so after he suggested we go for a walk before lunch, I countered by saying we should head down to our local video store first and get a movie for later that weekend. So we moseyed down there and back, and in retrospect, O seemed a little distracted and actually hurried me along through the video store. (I should have guessed he was up to something when he said he'd be happy to watch whatever I wanted, even a romantic comedy! Hindsight is sharp.)

His phone buzzed with messages a few times between the video store and the park, but we had been planning to have lunch with friends later in the day, so that seemed pretty normal. On the way there, the car smelled like dog poo, and sure enough, when we got out I realized that somewhere outside our house I'd put the heel of my sneaker squarely in a pile. Blech. So I spent the first five minutes of our soon to be memorable morning scraping dog poop off my shoes on the cement edges of the parking lot of The National Sanctuary of Our Sorrowful Mother. Classy and romantic, no?

We headed into the first path and again, in retrospect, Oren seemed awfully decisive about which way to turn given we had never been to this particular park. 25 yards in, just after the first fork in the path, sat a small, gray vending machine just beside the walk.*


My first thought was "Really? They sell kitsch like this even in a religious sanctuary?" Not feeling as though I needed a plastic Mother Mary ring, I said something like "That's unbelievable" and started to walk by. Oren stopped, and I missed whatever flash of oops/panic might have gone across his face. He pulled me back and said something along the lines of, "Do you remember when you said if I ever gave you a ring it could be anything, even one out of a vending machine?" At this point I said "No!" (which was code for "yes, I think I remember that, but no way, you're about to propose?!?") And sure enough, he stuck a quarter into the middle slot and pulled out a magical ring that was absolutely not a plastic vending machine trinket. (He must not have been listening that day.)

Then he got down on his knee and we'll spare you the sweet details of what he actually said. Long story short, I surprised no one by saying yes. And now we're engaged!

The most amazing part to me (aside from the vending machine rental, time spent stuffing dozens of plastic bubbles with plastic rings, coordination of getting the machine to our friend Tim & Laura's house and convincing Tim he'd like to spend his morning lugging a vending machine into a park, setting it up with a ring inside, and then crouching behind a tree until we got there!) is that Oren designed the ring himself, and actually made it! He's going to object to me saying that, and of course the jeweler helped tremendously and apparently insisted on setting the stones himself, but Oren worked the metal and shaped it and spent who knows how many hours coordinating with my mom for one of the stones and his mom for another. (The middle is an Oregon sunstone.) I can't imagine a more meaningful ring or a nicer way to get it to me.

*The picture of the vending machine is an unapologetic recreation of the moment. We didn't have the camera with us at the time, so we took a little trip back the next day, vending machine and all.