Tara

How Love Works How we met: Duan and I met at work about 6 years ago in April.  I just finished training for my position and Duan was assigned to me as a "Buddy" to assist me with any questions I had.  We sat in the same aisle, 2 desks away from each other. At first we were both shy towards each other.  Duan stayed to himself, as did I.  After a while,  we would spark up small conversation at my desk when I would call him over to ask questions.   Little by little we started learning more about each other and would  laugh and joke around.  At this point we started driving our coworkers insane.  I began calling him over to my desk to ask questions that I already knew the answer to  just so we could have a chance to talk with each other.  It was clear that we really liked each other.  It was like something you would see in middle school. Constant flirting back and forth but neither of us had enough guts to make the first move to exchange phone numbers.  We both had silly reservations as to why we didn't think the other would be interested.  His friends were trying to get him to talk to me and my friends were doing the same.  Every time I would even think about sliding him my phone number I would get nervous with butterflies in my stomach.  He would even trip over his words sometimes when he would talk to me.  You would think we were two young teenagers who were new to the dating game.   By August it wasn't out of the norm to hear "I wish you guys would just get together already" ...I even had a friend say she would stop being my friend if I didn't just give him my phone number.  Finally one Friday in August I decided I would slip him my phone number and hope that he would call.  I wrote on yellow post-it my phone number and the words "call me",  called him over as if I was asking him a question, and just slid it over to the side of my desk.  He displayed the biggest smile on his face and I did the same.  A week later we went on a date and from then on it has been nothing but fire works. From dating to moving in: After our first date we were always together.  If I wasn't at his place hanging out with him, he was at my place hanging out with me.  We finally made things official November 1, 2006. We were dating for a year and got a place with each other.  We traveled together, we expereinced new things together,  we grew together. After years went by we began thinking about the next level and if it was right for us...  How I almost missed his proposal Finally  on the evening of January 7, 2011at my mother's house Duan got down on one knee and proposed but I almost missed it because I didn't catch onto what was going on....     He came to talk to me while I was at my mother's house.  Before I came downstairs into the living room, he placed the ring on Tippen's ( my mother's maltese) dog collar; a collar that he does not normally wear. Did I question why he had the collar on...YES...did I notice there was a ring dangling from it...NO.  Silly silly silly.  As we were sitting on the couch he kept trying to get me to hold the dog and to check his collar but I was not catching on.  I heard a jingling noise on his collar, but I thought it was his dog tags and not the engagement ring clanging against the dog tags.  I couldn't understand why he was acting so nervous and why my mother kept walking back and forth in the hallway and trying to get me to hold the dog. I kept asking them, why they were acting so weird. My mother told me to grab the dog and take him downstairs and for Duan and I to finish hanging out downstairs and again I could see my mom was walking back and forth like a crazy woman.  Duan was speaking to me and talking very seriously about why he loves me so much and why he felt I was the one he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.  He began sweating and everything and  I still did not catch onto what was going on.   Then my mom yelled down the stairs to take the dog collar off the dog and bring it to her.  As I did that the ring came off and dropped into my lap. I looked at it and said "whose is this". I looked up and Duan was on his knee and as the question "Will you marry me".  My heart stopped and I said YES!    Our Wedding Day!: The significance of our wedding date, August 18, 2012.  6 years to the day that we first exchanged phone numbers with each other, we will be exchanging our vows to each other and entering into the Holy covenent of God as one with our family and closest friends as witnesses.