The Beginning
On July 12th, 2007 we "technically" met in the driveway of Ellen's house. Ellen and her friend Erica had been planning a trip to Six Flags when Kyle, (a friend of mine) decided he wanted to go whether they liked it or not. To avoid an awkward three person trip, Kyle was told to invite a friend, and it's a good thing he picked me!
The next day, I was thrilled to find a facebook message from Ellen, wanting to get together and do something again. We met up for our first date of ice cream and a movie (I can still remember every detail from that day, from the movie we saw, and flavor of ice cream I got, down to how foolish I was not to hold her hand)
After waiting too long, we finally kissed, and saw fireworks. No, I'm not trying to be corny to earn extra points, but the neighbors literally lit off fireworks. If that's not a sign I had found the right girl, I don't know what is!
When I finally gathered the courage to ask her out officially (which admittedly I should have done sooner) I told Ellen I had been doing some thinking. Very sincerely, she looked at me and asked me "Oh no, did it hurt?" Yet another sign she was my kind of girl.
Since that day, we've spent the past three years growing in our relationship together every day, trying to learn everything we can about each other. I feel like the luckiest guy day in and day out to know that I get to have Ellen as my teammate for the rest of my life.
The Proposal
For our three year anniversary, after toying with many options, we finally settled on a trip to Chicago together. We wanted to see Navy Pier, eat some good food, and get in some good shopping for Ellen. Little did she know, I was plotting something much much bigger.
We got down to Navy Pier early Saturday morning on the 7th, and spent some time walking around and finding some good food. After a few hours of sightseeing, it was time to check into the hotel. Since the plan was to go back down to Navy Pier at night for fireworks, Ellen wanted to make sure I secured us a taxi after we checked in, to take us down later that night. So I went ahead "got us a taxi."
We were finally ready to head out for the night and waited in the lobby for our ride. "Is that one ours?" I was asked numerous times as taxi after taxi went by. Sadly, the most creative answer I could come up with at the time was "No. Ours is a different color." After waiting (im)patiently, I went out to check on the situation, and finally found our ride. I led Ellen outside and she started heading towards one of the taxis, but I had to inform her yet again, that was not our ride. With a girl now smiling from cheek to cheek at the beautiful white limo waiting for us, we hopped in and rode down to the pier.
After a delicious italian dinner, and a small box burning a massive hole in my pocket, we headed down to the pier for the fireworks. Apparently time goes exponentially slower when you are about to ask the love of your life to marry you because it seemed like we were standing there for hours and hours before the fireworks started. After a few big booms, just to confuse her a little more, I asked her if she would mind following me. Very confused, she agreed, wondering where on earth we were going. We walked up some stairs to a private balcony where even with thousands of people there, it felt like we were the only ones.
With Ellen in my arms and the sky lit up behind us with beautiful fireworks over the lake, I got on one knee and asked Ellen to marry me and spend the rest of our lives together. After regaining her breath, she finally let out a huge yes and put the ring on that was glistening from the fireworks. Still in shock and practically paralyzed with happiness, we got back in a limo to take us back to the hotel where a bottle of wine I had sneakishly placed waited for us to celebrate our night :)
