An overdue announcement  

So, the way overdue announcement is that I'm engaged, but I assume any of you reading this probably already know that. And actually, at this point, Nick and I have been engaged almost 3 full months, and we only have three more to go before our wedding on March 26, 2011! BUT, I meant to post the story of how Nick actually proposed on the blog here and I kept forgetting. Well, actually, clearly I forgot to post a lot of things on here since my last post was about the SUMMER. Oops.

So, without further ado, here is our engagement story:

Nick had gone home for a couple of weeks in September, and so on Monday evening, September 27, I was supposed to be joining him for a Wolverton family vacation in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We were scheduled to have a day together on Tuesday before joining up with the fam that evening in the U.P., though I didn't know the "mystery"plans for the day. After hours of delayed flights on Monday evening, I finally got into Flint, MI at 2am (almost had to be delayed until the next day, which would have caused Nick GREAT problems) EARLY Tuesday morning. By 8:45am though, Nick and I were on the road to our “mystery” date that he had planned to celebrate our one year anniversary (just a little bit late). By the time I finally knew where we were going, we were buying our tickets to the Mackinac Island ferry in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We rode the 1:30pm ferry to the island and since there are no motor vehicles on the island, we promptly rented a tandem bike to ride together to explore.

After one full 8 mile loop of the island, we bought some fudge and then headed back to this certain spot that Nick really wanted to re-visit. It was some large rocks all along the shoreline of the lake in a spot that also had some beach area. Out of his rather full backpack (which I had questioned him about multiple times all day), he pulled a blanket, and spread it out on one of the flat rocks.


Once we got situated, he pulled out a present he said he had made me for our one year anniversary. I untied the ribbon from the box to find three separate pieces inside – labeled Part 1, 2, and 3.

Part 1 was for the past. It was a mostly empty mason jar of mustard seeds and in the attached note he spoke of how he had placed a mustard seed in it for every day that we had been dating (377). He also had written out two scriptures (Matt 13:31-32, Matt 17:20) about the concept of faith as big as a mustard seed.

Part 2 was for the present. It was a small hand towel. In the attached note, he spoke of sacrifice and service and the parallel of how a husband should love his wife as Christ loved the church. He then shared John 13:4-5, 14-17 and wrote that he wanted to love and serve me daily. He then pulled a bowl out of his backpack, filled it with water from the lake, added some hot water from a thermos he’d brought along, and washed my feet while talking about servanthood and how he wants to love me in that way daily.

Part 3 (a) was for the future, and the note was tied around a full jar of mustard seeds. His note talked about 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 and how love was all we needed. Then he said that since he hadn’t put the mustard seed in the jar yet for that day, he’d like us to do that together. Before we could pack everything up, he said that there was still a 3b section, and proceeded to fish in the mustard seed jar until he pulled on a little tab of paper that was tied to my RING. Then he got on one knee (kinda… we were on a rock and I was sitting) and asked me to marry him. Duh, I said yes! Then he sealed it with a kiss, which was monumental since that was the first time he had ever kissed me. Then we went to dinner at the Woods, a cute little Bavarian style wilderness lodge that had really yummy food. After dinner, we took a horse drawn carriage back to the ferry dock to catch the last ferry off the island.



When we got back to the car, I thought all surprises were over until I found in my seat a huge pile of letters from all of our closest friends and family. Because so much of Nick and I’s budding friendship had been through emails, we began to jokingly refer to each other as pen pals, so he thought letters were suited well to our relationship, and asked a lot of people to send letters to us so we could read them together. Perfect ending to a perfect day.

Even better was the fact that we then went on to spend about 4 uninteruppted days in the U.P. with NO cell phone service and barely any internet. Made it hard to fill people in on the big news, but kinda nice to be forced off the radar. That week, one of my "assignments" was to write this story down (this version and a longer version, which I've spared you from) so we would have it to keep for years to come. And to share with lovely people like you.



So that's that. We are in the thick of wedding plans, though currently, there is a bit of a lull which is nice for the holidays. I am loving it. We are getting married on March 26 in Titusville, Florida. From there, who knows... =)