I'm engaged!

Well, I suppose there are a lot of you who would like to know more about how I came to be engaged and to who I'm engaged. You will have to bear with me as I really dislike writing and am not very good at it! :) Please disregard any grammatical errors and such.

So I was having dinner one night with my dear friends Allison and Christin, when Christin mentioned eHarmony and was suggesting that I join. I have ALWAYS said that I would NEVER do the online dating thing! There are way too many freaks out there and I have heard way too many scary stories about crazy things that have happened to people! But for some reason, when Christin brought it up that evening, I was open to the idea. I told her that I would be willing to do it if she would come over to my house and help me fill out all of the information.

Christin came over on Saturday (06/23/07) and we filled out the pages and pages of personality information and set up my profile. The eHarmony process actually felt very safe to me. You don't give out personal information and there are several stages of communication that are guided so you are able to pick multiple choice answers which made me feel more comfortable. There were a few people that I made it through the first couple rounds of communication with, but no one that I made it to "open communication" (which means that you can email messages back and forth on the eHarmony website) with.

Christin and I went to dinner on Thursday (06/28/07) and when I got home that evening, I had my first piece of communication from Tim. We quickly made it through the first few rounds of communication and by Friday night, we were in "open communication". We started an email correspondence and emailed a LOT! :) We learned quite a bit about each other through all of the emails and decided that we wanted to talk. So we scheduled a phone date for 07/21/07 and ended up talking that night for 8 hours!

We decided to meet the following weekend in Montgomery. So our first date was on 07/28/07. I was very concerned about being uncomfortable or feeling awkward, but after the first 30 minutes, I felt quite relaxed and comfortable with Tim. He ended up coming to Mobile the following weekend and then I went to see him in Atlanta the weekend after that. Since then, we have seen each other every couple of weeks. I went with him to visit his family in Maryland for Thanksgiving and he, of course, met my parents in Mobile several times.

This was the first time Tim came to Mobile.

This was the first time I went to Atlanta.

Tim (of course!) is an absolutely wonderful man! I'm sure you probably already knew that or I wouldn't have agreed to marry him! He grew up in Maryland and went to Virginia Tech where he studied music and many different kinds of engineering. He's very musical! He sings, plays drums, guitar, piano, and many other instruments a little bit! Musically, I think I'm most impressed with his ability to write songs and his ability to harmonize. He can be hearing a song for the first time and start singing a harmony along with the song! I cannot write songs at all and I have to know a song pretty well before I can begin making up other parts! Tim is also very intelligent. I can't keep track of his degrees or what exactly they are all in, but I know that he's a smarty! :) He's very fun to be with and is also funny! He's sweet without being TOO sweet and he's very thoughtful and considerate. He makes me smile, laugh, and feel good about myself. He and I are very similar in many ways but we also have areas where we really complement each other very nicely! He is a very patient man and puts up with all of my flaws! It's very obvious how much he loves his family and likes to take care of them. His father passed away when he was in his early 20s so he makes it a priority to look after his mother and make sure that she is doing all right. He also looks after his sister and her family. I can tell by how he is with his niece and nephew (ages 14 and 13) that he is going to be a good daddy one day! He lives in Atlanta so I will be moving there once we get married. I'm very excited about this change in my life since I have been in Mobile for QUITE a while now!

At the wedding of my dear friend, Amy.

Being silly with his niece over Thanksgiving.

So anyway! Tim and I are big fans of "The Office". For those of you unfamiliar with the sitcom, there are these two characters, Jim and Pam, who have been really good friends since the beginning of the show. He pretty much has always been in love with her even when she was engaged to be married to another guy (who was pretty much a jerk). Well, after 3 seasons they finally end up getting together! After they've been together for a while, Jim starts teasing Pam about getting married. For instance, one day they were walking down the street and he gets down on one knee and looks up at her. You can see on her face that she is thinking he might be about to propose to her. He says "Pam?.....Will you....wait for me while I tie my shoe?!" Then she playfully hits him and says "I hate you!" (in a loving manner, of course!) It was really cute. I remember calling Tim after that episode and telling him how cute I thought it was. Tim said "I wish I could tease you like that! I'm afraid it would invoke tears!" I told him that I'm sure it probably would! He didn't need to be teasing me like that when we live so far apart and it is already so hard for me to be so far away from him.

A couple of weeks later, I went to Atlanta to celebrate Tim's birthday. I took him to dinner and then we went and had dessert somewhere else and then we went back to his townhouse. He had saved one of my birthday presents to him to open close to midnight. So he opened the present and then told me that he liked the present but really what would be the best present would be for me to spend all his birthdays with him. And then he said "Will you ma....?" and then stopped. At this point, I knew that he was kidding around with me. I said "That's not funny!" and we kind of laughed about it a little bit. Then he said "You know if I was going to propose to you I'd get down on one knee," and then he got down on one knee, "and tell you that you're the love of my life". At this point I'm thinking "This is NOT funny anymore!" and I started telling him to stop and told him to get up and I was just basically talking over him. And then he kept going "and I'd have a ring" and he pulled out a ring and then my eyes got really big and I stopped talking. I think he said "So listen to what I'm saying" or something like that. He got a little choked up too. So then he repeated himself and said "You're the love of my life, so will you do me the honor of marrying me and spending your life with me?" I just hugged him and cried and laughed. He had to ask me if I was laughing or crying and I told him that I was doing both!

So anyway! That was at the end of April. Now we are just trying to figure out when exactly we are going to get married. We’re going to have a VERY small, family only ceremony. I’m very excited about marrying my best friend and the love of my life!