Christmas Eve 2001 was one that I will NEVER forget.
Greg and I had been dating for almost 4 years. Now, I, myself, had known that I wanted to marry him within ONE MONTH of dating. It took him MUCH longer to decide that for himself. A lot of people asked me why I stuck around. I just KNEW he was THE ONE, so what would be the point of leaving and dating someone else? Even though he was constantly telling me that he was NEVER getting married, I patiently waited for the day that he would change his mind.
On December 24, 2001 I had to work in the morning. Greg came to pick me up when I was done for the day at 1:00. We headed to the Ice Skating rink to meet his sister, her husband and their 4-month-old son. My parents had come along to watch the baby so the rest of us could ice skate....turns out I am not made to ice skate. It was very frustrating watching Greg, Ben, and Brande frolicking around the ice. I told my mom that maybe Greg should find someone else since I wasn't able to do a lot of the fun things that he enjoyed doing.
We left the skating rink and parted ways with Ben and Brande. I had some last minute shopping to do before we were to head to my grandma's for Christmas Eve dinner. Greg was also insistent upon finding some hot chocolate for some odd reason. He went to the "K-Cafe" while I did my shopping. We left K-mart with a few gifts and two cups of hot cocoa and started to head to my grandma's house.
I was driving, and Greg mentioned that he would like to go see the lights at the park across from Cox South Hospital. I didn't feel like we had time, but he kept asking, so I turned toward the park where we found the trees all decked out in Christmas lights. He told me to park, so I did. Then, he told me that he wanted to get out and walk around. I wasn't so willing to do that! It was FREEZING cold and windy! We went back and forth until I finally agreed to get out and take a quick walk around the pond, we had hot chocolate after all. There is a little paved path that goes around the little lake. As we walked along we came to a bridge and on the bridge was positioned a single red rose. Greg handed it to me. I argued "Greg, you can't take that! Somebody obviously put that there for a reason. You can't just take it!" His reply was "Ah who cares? If they put it there then it's their fault for leaving it." We walked a little further and found a bunch of roses scattered on the ground. He began to gather those up as well. To me, it looked like someone had gotten mad and just thrown the roses on the ground, so I didn't argue with him about picking them up. He handed them to me and we continued our stroll. A little further around the bend he pointed up into a tree and said "Hey, look!" I turned around and saw a crystal figure of the Salt Lake LDS temple placed on a mirror in the tree. The Christmas lights bounced off the mirror and the temple looked absolutely stunning...and that's when I figured out that all of this had been set up for me. But, I still was not prepared for what happened next. As I turned back around, Greg was on one knee. He had a PERFECT engagement ring in hand and he uttered the most magnificent words I had ever heard. "Amber, I love you so much and I want to be with you forever... Will you marry me?" WOW, I still get all melty just thinking about it. I'm not sure if I even answered. We both knew what the answer was. Then low and behold, here come my parents, his parents, Ben and Brande and Carl and Willa. They had been watching from across a field. I was so happy that they were able to be there to share our excitement. They had all been in on the surprise. We took some pictures, but they were kind of blurry. When I get them put on disc, I'll share them just so you can see just how HAPPY we all were that day. I really had NO idea it was going to happen. I think that's what made it such an amazing experience...the element of surprise.
When we got home we started talking dates and finally decided it would be best to get married 6 weeks later when his brothers would be coming home (one from his mission, the other from Utah to visit). So we had an unusually long courtship (for being LDS) and an extremely short engagement. The last 9 years have been a roller coaster with mostly ups. I for one have no regrets and I hope that he doesn't either.
