Day 33 - Engageversary!

10 years ago today, this tall, lanky guy with a shaved head who was in the middle of airborne school asked me to marry him!

M2 is not a romantic! But on this occasion he did well! I was a freshman at Mississippi State University at the time. He called from Airborne school to tell me he was taking a pass for the weekend and driving up to see me. He was FRESH out of basic and just growing his hair back!

Here's some background! M2 and I had actually been "dating" for almost 2 years and had known each other for almost 5! The first time I met M2 we were competing against each other in a team triathlon. He was the last leg for his team and I was the last for mine, running up a KILLER hill to the finish line. My teammates had provided me with a decent start and then here comes along this long legged college kid zooming past me. I was furious. I didn't think he should have been able to compete because he was not even part of my school, but whatever they won. The worse part and what made me not able to stand him was that as I cleared the top of the hill and past the finish line there he was holding a "fakeraide" (Our school always had these fake gatorade drinks that I can not remember the name of and it is KILLING me! FC peeps help me out!) and he hands it to me and says something like, "You look like you could use one."! I felt like he was being a sore winner and rubbing it in! Now I know him and I know he can't pass up a chance at being nice. The poor guy. He was so nice that he has a long trail of girls who thought he liked them when in reality he was just being nice.

Years later we both worked a summer camp together and we would walk together in the mornings before breakfast. I was very young and insecure and never even imagined this guy would like me. But one morning, standing down by the back deck at camp, close to the chow bell, he asked me on a date. I said "yes" with the stipulation he ask my surrogate father, Mr. A. I was nervous from that moment on! Someone had just told me the day before that they thought M2 was madly in love with them?! (That was him being nice again getting in his way!) So, imagine my complete and utter shock when Mr. A asked him his intentions with me and he said without a pause, "To marry her". WHAT?! I said yes to a date I don't know what your talking about! My surrogate parents told me later he was a keeper and in my head I thought whatever - I just want to finally go on an unsupervised date! I was 17 and had yet to go on one! Of course M2 insisted it be a group thing because he's as smart as they come!

Obviously he was right because almost 2 years later he took me to that same spot on the grounds of that camp where he asked me on that date and (no not down on one knee) very slyly said, "A lot has changed since we were standing here last" (yes, the previous day a string of tornadoes had come through and destroyed the cabin I worked in and a lot of other things as well.) So, I agreed that lots had changed! That's when I turned to look at him instead of the devastation and saw the ring and heard "Will you be my wife?". It was perfect! (Well almost, he asked my friends to figure out my ring size and they had guessed it would be close enough to theirs - I have some of the chunkiest fingers out there so the size 6 took some forcing to get on ... i'm an 8!)

10 years later I would still say YES to that man! He has held my heart since the moment he told me I was going to be his wife - before we ever even went on a date! I would go through these deployments, the late hours, the moving, the years of crappy pay, the years of no pay while he was in school, the long training trips, the nights and weeks he would be gone in the field --- every bit of it I would do over again for him.

I love you, M2 and always will!