Originally I had planned on replacing the blurry photo that is below, but I’ve sort of grown attached to it now so I just can’t do it. Instead, I’ll just post more photos! Great trade-off, right?

I also planned on posting the “rest of the story” last night, but there just wasn’t enough time. I still wanted to record it for posterity though, so here it goes…

Wednesday, New Year’s Eve, I had to work for a half day. I had a doctor’s appointment scheduled (no more tonsillitis! Yeah!) and lunch plans with Ash. Afterwards, I went to Foley’s to do some last minute shopping for shoes to wear to the New Year’s Eve parties we were going to later. Mike seemed a little frazzled when I said I was on my way home after that, but then said that it was ok. He told me that we would have to leave a little early for our dinner reservations at Josephine’s because he had promised to take Jason to Kaveh Kanes for hot chocolate. “What?!? If he wants hot chocolate like he had at Starbucks, just take him there now! I don’t want to leave early to go to Kaveh Kanes!” He really insisted that we had to go there because that was what he had promised, so I finally agreed.

I headed for home, got ready to go out, and two hours later I was heading back for downtown. Nothing like going in circles, is there? Traffic was a lot worse than we had anticipated, so we got in to downtown just in time for our dinner reservation. However, Mike was still heading for Kaveh Kanes. I was bewildered.

We arrived and he went to the counter to get hot chocolate for Jason and coffee for himself. Then he returned to the table with the drinks.

He turned to me and said how Kaveh Kanes was where we first met and how even at that very first meeting he had felt like he had always known me, and how we have always felt like old friends. He went on to say that he wanted to start the New Year’s off the same way he wanted to start all the other years off – with me. The best way to do that was to ask me to marry him – and then he went down on one knee, pulled out the box with the ring inside, told me that he loved me and asked me to marry him.

After a moment of stunned silence (and a quip about how I had to think about it), I said yes.

He went back to the counter and Greg handed him the four dozen roses that Jason & Mike had “stashed” there earlier in the day. It turns out that Jason was in on Mike’s “behind the scenes” planning and had kept it all a big secret. Afterwards, we headed off to Josephine’s for dinner, where they had a lovely table reserved for us – decorated with rose petals that Mike had brought by earlier in the day in the shape of a heart on the white table cloth with a huge candle in the center. We eat there often and it’s a small family-owned restaurant, so they were more than happy to coordinate with Mike, hold our table, and the owner even made a point of coming by to see the ring and congratulate us both. After that, it was off to the New Year’s Eve parties, calling friends along the way to share the big news.

I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect evening, and every New Year’s Eve we will celebrate the special day all over again!