Jan. 2019

I've been meaning to write a little update since our little homeless bit back in October, but by the time we were no longer homeless, it was Thanksgiving which soon became Christmas and now here we are. 

But! we are no longer homeless! October/ November proved to be just as crazy as you would expect for two people who lived par time in a sketchy hotel in one city and part time in an abandoned house in another. So to catch you up, we had some VERY kind friends who happened to live 6 blocks over from our hotel who let us use their kitchen and basically their whole house, which, is how we ate our meals when we didn't have leftover's or dinner plans with other friends.

The most stressful parts were packing up every Wednesday night and Sunday Afternoon. We somehow managed and I only left Shane's kindle behind at the hotel ONE time. And at that the hotel people knew us well enough to tell us, " BTW, Shane's kindle is in our hotel safe."

After Thanksgiving, Shane and I caravanned ourselves the 4 hours from my parents on back to our new place. Which, we discovered was still a lot like a construction site even though it was complete. Due to the amount of dust and cleaning it needed, we opted to stay a couple days at his parent's and clean it in our spare time.

However, Shane's mom is a saint and ended up giving the place a thorough cleaning while we were at work which helped us move in faster. On top of that, she came over the first evening or two to help us haul box after box out of storage in the basement. 

It was a lot of work. And slow... still to this day we will wonder where something is and then venture down to the basement to see if we might find the box it's in.. I usually give up before Shane does. 

Anyways, we will hopefully be officially closing on this house by the end of the month.(We're crossing our fingers). In the meantime.. the good ol' township of Wellman has yet to let us have a mailbox. That's a long story. That is on our list of battles to keep battling.

December came upon us all rather quickly. My grandfather, Dr. Robert Kohl, went to be with the Lord and Shane and I drove the 7 hours to South Dakota to be with family for the funeral. Lots of tears were shed along with fond memories shared. It was nice to see all the cousins and aunts and uncles, especially with it being so close to Christmas. It has been so many years since we were all converged in the same spot close to the holidays and we counted it a blessing. 

Although Shane and I had thought our life of long weekend trips were behind us, the weekend following our South Dakota trip we returned home to my parent's house for family Christmas, which was only 4 hours instead of 7. We spent the week of Christmas with Shane's family back in Kalona and then went another weekend to my parent's to see some Florida cousins. We figure another 8 hours in the car is worth it when they had traveled 100s of miles more. 

After THREE consecutive weekends of driving a total of 30 hours, Shane and I finally spent a weekend in our little new town. Three of my siblings came to visit and we loved showing them the rolling hills and the bald eagles and deer and buggies and all the native things. 

It's funny to think how different the opposite sides of the state can be. Where I come from, Iowa is flat and you can see the lights of town 30 miles away just by standing out on a porch or a deck. There's only fields and little patches of trees where a house or farm might be and all the roads are almost perfectly North/South East/West, sectioning off the fields in square miles.
Over in my new neck of the woods, there are hills and trees and roads that curve and don't connect or make much sense. But it is beautiful all the same. 

So now we are to January. My new year's goals are:

1) To put things on my walls.. pictures, clocks...anything to make it look like we actually LIVE here. 

2) To buy this house. Which Shane's parent's have let us squat in since we arrived in town. 

3) Sort my socks

4) Paint some of our furniture to give it an update. 

5) Write more letters. 

---I'll probably come up with more goals throughout the year, but, I like feeling good about myself with I do all I resolved to do. 😊

The Graber Update

When one has spent the last three years with the steadiest 8-5 job/ routine one can imagine, quitting one's job takes some getting used to. 

Shane and I moved to Wellman (Kalona area).  However, we had some last minute changes to our game plan. 

It goes like this: Last January (Ten Months ago!) Shane and I were asking ourselves what it would look like to stay in the Des Moines area for another year or two. We thought about it, we prayed about it, and we came to the conclusion that April was too soon for us to move, but a year from April was too long for us to stay. We had to re-sign our lease if we were going to stay, but we didn't know how long we were actually going to stay. 

In February we settled on 6 months more, and turned in our new lease that would expire on 10/31/2018. So, we've known this was coming for a long long while. We spent some of our spring time looking for houses and figuring out finances. After checking out a lot of houses and finding nothing in our price range that didn't need major fixing upping, we decided we would purchase half of a duplex Shane's parents were building as a rental. It was in our price range and wouldn't need any fixing. 

Shane began working for a new HVAC company in June as a "Part-time" employee.. meaning, they needed him for summer help but knew he'd be leaving in October. 

Just after I turned in my official end date at my job, Shane's job asked what it would take to get him to stay to December. Our duplex isn't done being built so we talked, we discussed and Shane chose to extend his contract with his Des Moines company out to Thanksgiving in November, with the exception that he will work Fridays at Graber Heating and Air in Kalona. 

So, this past Saturday we moved all but some of our belongings to our new, unfinished house and returned ourselves to Des Moines. Shane continues to work while I alternate cleaning and scrubbing down our empty little apartment and reading a book while sprawled out on the carpet in the living room. Even now as I lean against the wall, sitting on the floor, I wish we had a chair or a couch or something, but it's not a bad gig. 

This weekend Shane and I will move the remaining items (Like the coffee pot and the folding chairs)  to our new place and next Wednesday will start our great adventure of living in a hotel and traveling back and forth to Kalona. We will live in a hotel from Sunday nights to Thursday mornings while Shane works in Des Moines and then we will work our Fridays and Saturdays in Kalona. 

After having traveled most weekends since before we got married, we thought that October would be our great month of settling down and not spending all of our money on gas tanks. As it turns out it is totally the opposite. We're not sad about it, though. If ever there was a time to have your company put you in a hotel for a month, it would be now, while we have no children and have more than enough experience living out of a suitcase.  

Obviously the meals part will be the trickiest thing. We will be bring our Instant-pot with us and mastering all the things. We also will be saying yes to any one who would want to take us in and feed us supper in the Des Moines area during that time. We will have our breakfast provided but no kitchenette or anything.. so it will be an adventure. 

On the weekends we will be staying at my sister's house in North Liberty that is in the process of being sold.. so we're not actually sure if we will be staying very many weekends there, but that's our current plan, basically. 

We will officially be in the Kalona area during the week times by the end of November. We are hoping our new place is finished being built by then. :)

So, If you're in the Iowa City/ North Liberty/ Kalona area, hit us up on the weekends. If you're in the Des Moines, Ames, Ankeny area during the week day, have us over for supper, we would not complain. :) 

The Beach Ball That Couldn't Stay Under

I slowed down blogging two years ago when I started dating my now husband just because I wasn't about to just blog about this guy I was dating because that would be weird. Somethings just shouldn't go on social media.. ya know? And then of course, we got engaged we got married, we moved to a new place and never got internet. So that was my main thing. But also, some really awful hurtful things happened/ were said to us shortly before we got married and that's something something to blog about either so that just created writer's block altogether. Like.. what do you even write about? Your day-to-day routine?

Since it all happened amidst the whirlwind of wedding things and big life happenings, rather then sit down and process what was said and what happened, it was easiest/ seemed best at the time to just shove it in a box and pack it all away in a closet, much like some of our beautiful wedding gifts that we will get to take out when we buy a house. Shoved to the bottomest, darkest corner of my mangled, gutted heart. I'd like to clarify that Shane was zero part of the hurt, at least he did not inflict it or cause it or provoke it. Although, him trying to see the very best in all humans including the ones who had done the hurting DID lead to SOME little marital conflicts about taking sides.

Let me tell you kids, if you get the opportunity to start your marriage without some horrible ugly flesh wound in your heart, do that thing. Because, it wasn't something that my husband could just make better. He tried. He's good at fixing things. Let me tell you, the knob on our closet door was loose when we moved in and since he didn't have a washer to put behind the bolt he drilled a hole in a nickle and that fixed it pretty good. He has re-installed and re-wired THREE of the light switches in our apartment and is on such good terms with our apartment handy-man that Brian (We're on first name basis with him now) is perfectly happy if Shane just waltzes into his shops and snatches up the part or lightbulb or whatever he needs to fix the next thing.

Anyways, good all fix-it Shane couldn't fix the fact that someone I had once counted as a friend had damaged and mangled me so completely. Which, also, love your friends guys.. but if you get some sort of warning sign that one of them might be going feral.. you should probably cut them off the two years before that happens...back when they were showing the signs and not the two years later after they say and do the awful things that are the very worst last memory of them.

So, here we are 14 months later. That's an awfully long time to go as a broken person who has to keep shoving it deep down just because you haven't had the time or know how to deal with that. Like, I've realized, there are some things in life that take very intentional moments to dig out and get rid of but, when you're first married, you just want to soak in every moment of the happy stuff.

Still not good right. While I would say that Shane and had a very blissful first year of marriage, we had never, and I mean NEVER had a single conflict in our relationship prior to that whole "whatever you would call the whole thing that transpired over the course of a couple weeks with the former friend." Literally never. We had been REALLLLLLY good friends for the 3 years before we started dating and we almost didn't date because it was too perfect and we didn't want to ruin it. And our dating relationship was perfect. Again, not a single disagreement, not even on where to eat for supper. But then, the thorn in our side showed up and stuck a wedge between us.

Our blissful first year of marriage has been 99% conflict free. Just like the diamond I wear on my finger. The tiny 1% of any conflict has been 100% related to the THING. Because I was hurt and Shane was hurt and Shane dealt with it because he's perfect and I didn't because I felt a little bit like God had something to do with it. And that sucked.

In an effort to resolve the thing, Shane and I sought some wisdom from some people we trusted and we prayed about it and then we met up with the offending party to resolve the thing and it got worse. I felt a little left out to dry after that whole thing. Half of me felt like God had to have been there because I said none of the cuss words that I had in mind the previous day, but the rest of me felt like God wasn't there at all and I had been completely left to the wolves.

So that's a hard place to be. I suddenly got a good glimpse/taste of how people can come to a KEY stake-in-the-ground moment to say, "This is where God left me and I that was it." And I'm not about to say that I gave up Christianity or my relationship with the Lord, but I put a lot less effort into the whole thing, that's for sure. I mean, Shane and I have read a chapter of the Bible together every day since we started dating. SOME DAYS.. we haven't, but over all.. we still do. We've read almost the entire Bible together.

I used to prayer journal, though, but I have temporarily retired that. Shane and I pray together every night, which has been mostly me listening to him pray and chipping in on "amen." It wasn't until this past February that Shane surrendered to the fact that he wouldn't be able to fix anything and made me start praying for the offending party myself. It tasted like vomit in my mouth, asking the Lord to look after them and bless them. It was like a punishment, my husband waiting until I had muttered out some sort of pray for OP before he would pray something more substantial.

But it worked, or is working. Little by little I've given a little bit more to the Lord and I've hated OP a little bit less. My heart is becoming less and less likely to irrupt in anger and bitterness and depression if the topic is broached somehow.

My dear, sweet mother-in-law recently did a thing I have not managed in 14 years. It was 14 years ago that I was in a car accident that mangled half my face. While they stitched me back up they managed to stitch in tiny shards of glass in the process of re-attaching my ear where it had become detached. I picked glass out of my face for a couple years until all that was left was deep in my ear. And there it has been.  I got my ears pierced like every other normal girl with normal ears does. My one ear could never hold an earring more than a day or two. The glass would always click again the earrings and get infected instantly. Plus, my ear is mostly swollen scar tissue anyways and an earring can barely hold the back on it without it falling off. Anyways, Recently, within the last couple weeks, I decided to start wearing earrings, just for fun.

The normal thing that always happens and has happened the last 12 years is that after a day or two, my ear swelled past its normal swollen self and became its infected self since the glass inside was all irritated. BUT, this time, I could tell.. it was surfacing! Shane's mother (I was at her house at the time) got out a needle and a light and successfully extracted 3 pieces of glass. TINY.. TEENY TEENY TINY pieces of glass. You could only see if the light caught it just light to make it glimmer. After letting the infection heal and my ear go back to normal size, I put earring in again and for the first time in all the years I've had earrings, my ear did not swell, it did not bleed, it did not hurt. I can currently squeeze my earlobe and there's not pain. Literally, I have lived more years of my life WITH glass in my ear than I have lived without. What a feeling!!

Anyways.. all that is to say, I'm working on getting out the shards of glass from when my heart was mangled by snow globe full of good memories shattering into a million pieces when my no longer friend decided to be a no longer friend. I've been letting the Lord have the deep dark corner of my bitter little heart and it's making a world of difference.
I think I've held on a little bit hoping that my former friend would magically snap out of the feral, totally-not-themselves state they're in and be the person I wanted to be friends with 5 years ago. But that's just not a realistic expectation. So there's a point where you just kind of have to lay them to rest with the good memories and hope to see their good side on the other side of eternity.

So that's where I'm at. I was a bottled up broken person trying to hold all of my honest broken feelings under the surface like a beach ball and that wasn't working out. Now, I'm on the mend and I'm ready to tell the world all about all of my feelings again.

Draft 156

Being a country girl at heart, there are few things I find more peaceful and relaxing than a windless sunset and the smell of fresh cut grass and wild flowers while listening to the gentle chirp of little bugs and birds. Being a  current city girl, I have come to find the woosh of vehicles passing by and distant lawn mowers buzzing down grass it's own sort of peaceful. Mostly because it is 3:30 on a sunny afternoon and I am outside on my balcony over looking my uneven parking lot and the office building across the way and not sitting in my office and I rarely do get to see the sun much between the hours of 8 and 5.

There were times in college when I'd get out of class at 2pm and the weather would be just warm and sunny enough that I'd fall asleep on the hill on the side of the Pentacrest while watching the CamBuses drive their routes. I don't miss the stress of finals and papers, but I miss the summers, for sure.

Anyways, getting older is a funny thing. I have two wrinkles forming in my forehead between my eyes from furrowing my brow at my computer and squinting in the sun these past couple years. I never considered Botox in my youth, but I can't say it doesn't cross my mind now. I've also got circles under my eyes that no amount of sleep seems to take care of.. so I wear make up now. I mean, I wore eye liner and mascara before, but now! Now I have to put on some primer and foundation and then coverup and blush  and things like that. My husband is constantly telling me, "Honey, you look fine as you are, " Which I believe him for the most part, but we're in a social media world these days, gotta fake it to make it, right?

On top of that, I've ceased plucking my gray hairs, since I'm facing balding as the alternative to gray, and my swim suit has long sleeves and a turtle neck lest my arms freckle any more. Not that I intended to rant about how vain and shallow and self absorbed I am.. I don't care ALL that much, but I am realizing that there is a BIG difference in my now self and my young teen self that started this whole blog.

There's kind of a moment where you wake up one day and realized, "Woah.. I'm a real live adult now." My Husband and I get to pick out insurance plans together and shop for houses and research mechanics and dream of owning a yard so we can push a mower and own a grill. I'm very content with this stage of life. It's predictable and quiet and fairly care-free.

In the 155 drafts that sit in the "Probably will never get posted" section of my blog life, I've done a lot of thinking about life navigating and growing up and being mature.  My heart seemed to bounce back quicker in college. I mean, You meet a lot of people in college that you can be your best friend for the tiniest amount of time and then they turn out to be awful people that you wouldn't be friends with now if someone paid you. 

In college it's easy to brush off someone being rude or unkind because you're young and you haven't built your street cred yet and they haven't learned how not be rude and unkind. Now if I meet someone who is rude I just assume they're an awful person in general because we're all at a point in our life where if you're having a bad day, you don't get to be rude to people. If you have any ounce of maturity you put on your big boy pants and make sure no one else has the day you're having.

But there's a lot of really immature people in the world I've found. 

But, I get it, too. Life is full of snow globe moments.. the really wonderful, beautiful happy moments that a picture couldn't even capture so you put it in a snow globe in your heart and sometimes you get it out, shake it up and remember how magical it was. And sometimes the snow globe falls off the shelf and shatters into a million pieces. Out of nowhere someone attacks you with every kind of insult and put down and every good moment you remember with them is just a million shards of glass ripping your heart to pieces. And every good moment you'd imagined your friendship would hold in the future are just snow globes that will sit empty for the rest of your life. 

That's the stage of adulthood I'm in. Draft 156 because in drafts 140-155, I wanted to be transparent and say "Life is really hard and people can be really mean" but you don't get to write a detailed blog about the day the snow globe fell off the shelf.

The glass in my earlobe from a car accident a few years back has recently started to work its way out.  

The tiniest pieces of glass take the longest time to surface and broken snow globes take a lot of recovery time. 

The good news is that there are moments when you stop and listen to the cars and the lawnmowers and birds and the maintenance man on his golf cart and you can breath in the warm, asphalty air and realize it's been over a year and the Lord is still good, and the blessings out number the brokens and for all the snow globes that fell off the shelf, there have been a million and one better ones to take their place.

A Kind Of Christmas Letter/ Life Update thing.

I realized, recently, that I started this blog in 2010 when I was a sophomore in college... and I should probably just let this thing go.. lay it to rest or something. BUT, at the same time.. idk.. it's a nice little 'share-my-thoughts' avenue without a facebook post.

Anyways.. quick touch in since the last little blog diddy: Shane and I got married! Like.. almost 6 months ago.. but woot! ...woot? Do people even say that any more? I dk. 

I'm at this odd place in my life where I'm probably supposed to be a refined adult. Most people my age have a few kids under their belt and a house and things like that.

I have gray hair. Three of of them.. three hairs. I've given up pulling them out when I find them because I'm also somewhat suspecting I may be going bald.

Anyways.. marriage. Marriage is good! I recommend it to everyone. Weddings are also very fun!!! People should have more weddings. Not that the months leading up to our wedding didn't come with their fair share of trials and difficulties.. they surely did with a few things out of left field that left us baffled and bewildered. We survived, however, and spent a lovely week on a cruise ship in the Bahamas

We made friends with a dolphin. Dolphins are nice. We like dolphins. 

People should go on cruises. They're great! I super recommend cruises. Anyways.. That was months ago. Now is now! We live in Des Moines and find life to be an absolute thrill. We enjoy times we get to sneak out of Des Moines and see the stars and the sunset. When we stay in Des Moines we enjoy watching the sunset reflected off the office building across the parking lot from us. We watch people work late from our living room window and they watch us back. Usually if I see them look back, I close the shades. 

Shane does HVAC here in Des Moines and has grown his knowledge on installation. If you need any duct work or plenum or G20s installed.. he knows how. I'm not saying he has time.. but he knows how. He also, occasionally, will go back to help good ol' Graber Heating & Air so they don't forget he exists. (That's not true.. they probably won't forget he exists, but it sounds funnier that way). 

I continue to work at good ol' MetLife Investors in West Des Moines. At just over 2 yrs, its the most consistent life I've had since I was 17. It's something, for sure. It's a real gear shift to go from moving and changing schedules every year to doing the same thing every year. I was pleasantly surprised to find I've actually grown in my knowledge of state forms and requirements and rules and things. A broker challenged me on a thing and I knew enough to push her back and demand she follow the rules... in a nice way. I try to be nice on the phone, usually. You know? But! I've learned that the investment world is where people get pushed around and you want to be the one who does the first pushing. 

Besides that, Shane and I are figuring out our lives together. We were told that the first year is the hardest. We have so far had one disagreement on when is proper to show up for a basket ball game when warm ups are involved and also a disagreement on appropriate "lounge about the house when there are house guests" attire. While I will admit that both discussions lasted entirely too long (probably at least 15 minutes) I wouldn't consider them to have been especially difficult, so I haven't yet come to believe that the first year should be especially hard. However, we are only 6 months in and maybe all the trials are in the second half. 

We have fallen into a steady routine with our chores and responsibilities. The most wonderful surprise I had when we got married was that all of the sudden, my laundry basket would magically become clean and all the things hung up and put away. When things I needed would go missing, it generally meant they were just put where they belong.

When I was 13, I went through a brief phase of keeping my room clean and my laundry done every week on the button. It was.. short lived at best. My sweet, sweet husband, however, is very keen on making life easier by doing things right away (What a novel idea), and thus, before I even notice there is laundry to be done, it is already cleaned and put away.

No worries, though, I will resume the laundry thing when I have become a mother who stays home all day and delights in laundry and cleaning things. (Actually, I'm quite worried for motherhood some days as I'm hardly able to keep my OWN life in order, I shall be very curious to see if I could manage some other little life on the side). 

Anyways, in the theme of learning to be an adult, Shane and I did an adult thing and bought a new car! Well.. kind of a car. 

I'm not entirely sure what it is.. it has as many seats as a car but it looks like a van. 

But! It's all-wheel drive and it makes me feel very at ease when it comes to all the snow and slush on the roads these days. Shane's faithful Dodge Intrepid with just over 225000 miles on it is for sale on Craigslist.. You may buy it if you want. It has a little hole where a buck shoved its antlers into the hood and a little crack in the coolant pump.. but it's a good little car.  It has a 100% rate for attracting a permanent spouse if you need one. Not that I was attracted to his car first.. but I'm a Dodge kinda girl, I didn't mind that the man had an intrepid. Anyways.. So it was natural we got a Dodge Journey. 

That brings us all to now. It is January and usually sub zero. It is during this part of the year that I have to remind myself that not all of life is dismal and depressing. I usually come to this time of year wondering if I'm behind in my whole life or not. Wondering if I should be living where I live and working where I work and all the things. Of course, this year I have a kind husband who listens to me question all the things and encourages me to hang in there, maybe take up painting again or learn a new hobby.

In the meanwhile, We look forward to going on a grand adventure at the end of the month. We are going to Oregon to get better acquainted with the 10 nieces and nephews I inherited along with Shane's sisters and brothers in- law while we put reality on hold for a little.

We have short list of mansions and museums and things by the coast to do, but we will be rather content to just sip warm things and make pleasant conversation from the comfort of their homes. A little break from the everything in life will be rather a delight, I'm sure. 

 

. 

100 Days to Go

It's the 20th!! Shane and I have enjoyed a full month of being engaged and have somehow managed to tackle all the main details and only have "What-shade-of-gray-pants-do-we-make-our-groomsmen-wear" left... we think. Hopefully we haven't missed something huge, but I think most things are squared away. 

For sure we have the main things like the Bride/Groom/ Pastor figured out, which is basically all you need at the end of the day, right? 

Shane and I found ourselves in the court house for the county in which our wedding will take place and I had forgotten to put my ring back on after my morning shower and we brought my baby sister along as our witness. Shane nearly almost married Eva instead as the sweet county notary person passed all of the paperwork over to her to sign as the bride. She just turned 17 so she legally can be married in state of Iowa, BUT that would have been a disaster, so I very quickly stole that paperwork away from her and only let her sign on the witness line. *phew*. I mean, I know Shane has a baby face, but c'mon... 

Anyways, we have 100 days to go, which seems like a lot now that we have everything figured out, but everyone has advised that we enjoy being engaged for a bit. I don't mind that. We originally tried to figure everything out in the first 2 weeks of being engaged, and we ALMOST did it.. but then our we felt a little smothered and wanted more to ask about each other's days than, "Have you thought about what color unity sand?" or "what size of envelopes do we want?" or "What TEXTURE of paper do we want for our invites?" "What type of cupcake paper do we want?"  ...... Let me roll my eyes dramatically for a second. 
Okay, for real though, wedding planning.. it's a beautiful thing. It's not my forte or most favorite thing and I'm thankful I'll only have to do it one time in my whole life.

All Wedding planning aside, I move this weekend!! Out of my home of 2 years. TWO YEARS! This is the longest I've lived anywhere since I graduated high school and moved away from my parent's house. I would honestly love to throw out 80% of my wardrobe and have an excuse to update my professional wear and all that, but some how between wrapping dishes and crock pots and listening to music files for wedding stuff, I lose all motivation to pick up every article of clothing and make a decision. It's not that I don't have time... the motivation thing is my big killer there.

Speaking of Motivation... I think I suddenly got way older somehow as I'm literally FEELING every night that I get less than 8 hours of sleep. I'm sure all moms out there are chuckling and saying, "Oh honey.. JUST YOU WAIT.. you don't even KNOW what tired is yet." That's fair. But, this year, the New Years Resolution that has stuck so far has been to spend more intentional time in The Word and sitting still before the Lord. I go to bed at 10, I wake up at 6 and I spend an hour of quiet waking up with coffee. However, sometimes I dont get to bed until 10:30 and I cannot get myself to get up before 6:30. Maybe I need to program a coffee pot by my bed or something.

Minor things, minor things. Last night my friend helped me move some of my stuff over to my new apartment and things felt a little more real. I forgot how much I hate moving. And as an extrovert, I'm more anxious than ever about living alone. Even just having someone in my living room with me without talking is better than nothing.
Anyways, that all I got. 

The Proposal: How it happened

Here it is! The whole story:

Shane and I have spent our entire relationship taking turns making the 2 hour drive back and forth to each other's resident cities, with Shane being extra sacrificial and making the 5 hours drive back to my Parents' farm in Storm Lake.

Our weekends are typically scheduled MONTHS out and filled with MULTIPLE things. Which, for the weekend Shane had our engagement in mind, it was technically his turn to come to Des Moines and we didn't even really have that much of plans. Shane just told me there were some hiking trails he wanted to show me with some geocaches along the way.

I had a particularly AWFUL week between work and some other things and had cried basically every day that week. I was exhausted, I was emotionally spent and was easily convinced that a 2 hour drive with Des Moines in my rear view mirror would be worth it either way. By the time Friday rolled around, I didn't much care that we basically had no plans.

My sweet sister, Pearl, and her gracious husband have been my sweet hosts when I come into town to visit Shane. On this particular weekend, they were out of town but still allowed me to sleep in their basement and make myself at home. I arrived to their home around 7pm and Shane had prepared a candle-lit dinner which he had made himself and presented me a box of chocolates as a "sorry you had a rough week" thing. I briefly thought "THIS MIGHT BE THE NIGHT AND I"M TOTALLY NOT DRESSED CUTE FOR IT." But we just had an easy conversation and he easily made me laugh and the rough week was soon forgotten. After dinner we sat by the fireplace and talked a little about our summer plans and future plans and at 10pm, Shane said goodnight and I went to sleep and he locked the door on his way out.

Shane showed back up at 7:30 and we helped ourselves to Pearl and Jeff's espresso machine and sat by their fireplace while we tried to wake up a little better. (I guess Shane had gotten up at 6am but I had no idea). It was a cold and cloudy morning and I would have been content to just spend the morning by the fire with our coffee. BUT, Shane kept insisting we aughta go on a hike and work up an appetite for lunch, and the geocaches would be a fun adventure. He made me breakfast while I stuck in my contacts and put a little makeup on my face. Honestly... it was one of those mornings that the last thing I wanted to do was attempt to look cute or go out in public. BUT, my little sister had recently told me that I was probably at a point in my relationship with Shane where it wouldn't hurt to try and look a little bit nice all the time.. just in case.

I noticed Shane didn't want any breakfast.. which isn't completely unusual, but a little odd since he's been more into eating breakfast lately. I wasn't aware of how cold the weekend was supposed to be and had only brought along a light, peacoat.. which was hardly appropriate for hiking in 36F weather. BUT, off we went and when we arrived at the bottom of this wooded, hill area I was convinced in my mind that we weren't getting engaged since Shane was acting completely relaxed and casual and we were.. hiking.

We got out of the car and I immediately almost froze to death and questioned Shane if we were actually going to be doing this when it's this cold. He said, "uhm.... well, if it really is too cold we can go back to Peff's if you like." (We combine Pearl and Jeff and just say 'Peff) I had no idea he'd gotten up at 6am to set up his little proposal spot and he gambled quite a bit offering to turn back before we got going, but! I'm a determined kinda girl, and we'd driven all the way out to the hiking spot, I decided we may as well.. as long as we got walking real fast to warm up.

We use and app on Shane's phone to find our geocache location and he was the one navigating when we got ourselves into the woods. He kept making weird turns that weren't very direct towards the closest cache and when he decided to skip one that was 20 feet off the path I thought he was being a little ridiculous so I took his phone and decided to lead the way myself. And he found it first.

In my mind I didn't think it was fair the Shane usually always finds the things first and thus I kept his phone and was determined to find the NEXT one first. Shane kept trying to tell me that getting on the path would be way more efficient and we'd get there a lot faster, but, it was way more direct to just plow through the sticks and fallen logs and not use the path.

What a patient man, guys. He let me plow through the bush, down into ravines, up onto hill crests, over 3 fences and up a tree to find this other geocache that was some 300 yards off of his target location. Fortunately for him he had taken back his phone along the way, before his friend Taylor texted him to ask if he'd proposed yet.

After finding the second geocache and getting my hair stuck in the branches of a tree and being completely numb and frozen from over an hour of hiking through this Indian Burial Mound forest, Shane was able to convince me to get back on the path and finish up the day.

We rounded a bend while coming down the path and there was a wooden overlook and I noticed immediately that there were roses set up on it. My initial thought was that someone was supposed to be getting engaged there and we were about to crash it.

I hesitated and told Shane we aughta go a different way so as not to interrupt the happy couple that were supposed to be getting engaged.
He just looked at me with a twinkle in his eye and suggested we take a closer look.

And I realized it was us.

I was in complete shock as Shane led me out to the middle this dock where he had set up roses in the shape of a heart with roses on every post and lining the walk way. He had me step into the giant heart with him and told me that the last 8 months of dating had been the best of his life and he would be very honored if I would spend the rest of my life with him. And he got down on one knee and presented a beautiful wooden box.. that he claims he opened right away, but in my memory I just remember there was writing on the wooden box.
BUT, I was more focused on his face and giving him a hug and the ring part was completely forgotten. I do remember him showing it to me and thinking it was beautiful and saying "yes" and being so completely shocked and feeling like the world had stopped moving and that I was suddenly the smallest creature on earth.

At some point Shane slipped the beautiful ring onto my finger and then we gathered the roses and took our freezing cold, numb and shaking selves down the hill to the car and started calling all of our friends and family.

And that's literally how we spent the rest of the day. Sitting in front of the fire place calling people, telling the story over and over. Between his 6 siblings and their spouses and my 9 siblings and their spouses and all of our grandparents and friends.. it took hours. And before we knew it, it was time to make some strawberry shortcake to take over to his parent's for supper.

I would say it was one of the most magical moments of our relationship, but there have been a lot of magical moments. More than we can count.