For Adriane...
(Because we can't have her throwing a fit.)

First, I was not expecting the proposal. It was a beautiful, sunny, mild day. Our dinner reservations were for after 9:00, so we had an entire afternoon and evening at our disposal, most of which we had spent sitting around, doing nothing. He suggested that we should take advantage of the waning sunlight and maybe work in a walk. We headed over to Foster Park and strolled along beside the river for a while. I told him I wanted to show him my favorite old sycamore tree before we left, so we looped around and made that our last stop on the way to the car. When we got over to the tree, he stopped, took my hands, and told me that he had been making a lot of plans recently and that I featured in all of them. (There was some other stuff too, but as soon as I figured out what was going on, my mind went kind of blurry and I don't remember much of it very clearly.) He got down on one knee, right there in the snow, pulled out the ring, and asked me to marry him. Again, I'm sort of fuzzy on what exactly happened next. He tells me I said, "Oh, absolutely!" All I remember it that poked myself with my sunglasses, forgot what finger the ring was supposed to go on, and accidentally kissed him on the nose. Yeah, I'm a spaz.

The ring is an antique pearl, for which we're going to design a new setting.