Snow Covered Engagement

Mr Camrah and I have known each other for over three years now, but neither one of us can pin point the exact date we met. We were both in the Greek system at the University of Washington and met through our houses. I lived in his fraternity for a summer, but we did not start dating until the following summer. Over a year later Mr. Camrah decided to plan a surprise proposal. He sneakily picked out the ring in October and suggested that we visit both of our families for Christmas. We organized our two week family-fun filled holiday. With this knowledge we decided to have a Christmas dinner for just the two of us before we left Seattle. Mr. Camrah suggested we go to the metropolitan grill (a fancy steak house in Seattle), and my one condition was that the dinner was to be my Christmas present. He claimed that he had to at least get me something small to open, or his family would get on his case about not getting me something to open.

Two days before Christmas eve, I was getting ready for our fancy dinner, and Mr. Camrah's sister called him. She wanted to organize their family presents. At the end of their phone conversation she slipped in a comment about us getting engaged. Apparently, Mr. Camrah's sister and mom were betting on when he would propose. Now up to this point we had kept talk about the M word to minimum. Mostly, probably, because I wasn't ready. I had been thinking that we were heading in that direction, but I was far too scared to verbalize it. After the phone call from his sister, Mr. Camrah told me about their wager, and I jokingly said, "Maybe its tonight!" I didn't know at the time, but he was dying of nerves at this point. I didn't really believe that it would be that night. All the signs were there, but I was way too far up "DeNile river" to see any of them. To be perfectly honest, I thought getting engaged would be another year or two off. I knew that we were heading in that direction; I just didn't think it would be that fast.

Before we went to the restaurant, we exchanged Christmas presents! I got the Mr. a dartboard, and I opened my small Christmas present...

It was a small glass seahorse (You probably all knew it wasn't the ring, but I like to think I'm sly). Then we went downtown to dinner. We had wine, potatoes, and steak which was presented to us at our table with a red wine sauce. YUM! Best Steak EVER! After dinner, I wanted to sit and relax before we went for a walk downtown. Mr. Camrah was nearly dying in his seat with nerves but he humored me. We then went to look at the downtown Christmas tree. Deciding the area was a little crowded, Mr. Camrah directed me to another smaller light display. He than gave me a note and told me to turn around when I was done reading it. When I was done reading and turned around, he was on one knee and had the ring in his hands. I gave him a kiss first then said yes. I was, however, in shock for the rest of the night. The next day as I started to tell people, I began to feel more comfortable and get excited about everything.

I'm sure you are all wondering why this was titled "snow covered". Well, this was all during a huge snow storm that happened in Seattle. Buses were unreliable and my work place was officially closed. The snow only interfered with our engagement night by making me very cold when we were waiting for our bus, but the next night was a different story.

My ring (which I showed pictures of in an earlier post) had to be re-sized so that it wouldn't fall off. I wanted to take it in before we left for our holiday trips, and we decided to bring it in the next night to be re-sized. We headed downtown after work to our jewelers E.E.Robins, but our progress was slow going. What was normally 15 minutes from the Jewelry store, our bus got stuck behind a bus that had jack-knifed while going up a hill. At this point it was 5:40, we called the store to see what time they were open til, and the manager said they would be closing an hour early at 6pm due to the weather. I was getting worried because I wanted to wear my ring when we told our families, and I didn't want to worry about it falling off while we were traveling. We walked down a block to catch a bus, but the second bus we got on was going really slow. We ended up getting off this bus after a few blocks. At this point we were about 15 blocks from the store, but it was already 5:55. Mr. Camrah called to ask them to stay open while we made the 15 block trek through the snow on foot. We got to the store around 6:12, and they were nice enough to stay open for us. Our train left at 2pm the next day, and we were able to pick up the ring without much problem on our way to the train station. We were on our way to tell our families the good news with the ring securely on my finger.

Did you have a surprise engagement? Did you have any troubles with the size of your ring and getting it changed?