The Proposal!

Once upon a time, I met and fell in love with a wonderful man named Andrew Garrett. He proposed to me today and now I get to marry him on July 30, 2011. Two of the many things that I love about him are that he's romantic and creative. This included how he proposed to me and now I get to write about it.

About 1 month ago, he brought me a jar with hand-written puzzle pieces in it. He said he wasn't proposing in the puzzle, but that it had to do with us getting engaged. He did say that it included the reasons why he loves me and said that I was only allowed to put a few pieces of it together at a time. This was all very cryptic, but I followed his directions.

Cut to yesterday when he handed me a gift and a letter. He told me to open the letter this morning and said that I would need to wait until I saw him today to open any gifts that I had received. The first note included a clue to go to L'Etoile Day Spa. I got to have a manicure, pedicure, and facial while I was there and it was glorious! While I was at the spa, one of the employees handed me another gift and clue. This one told me to call Emmy, which I did, and she told me to come over to their apartment. Once I was there, I received a gift and another clue that told me to go to Andrew's for lunch.

He had cooked bacon-wrapped filet mignon, twice-baked potatoes, and bacon-wrapped asparagus, which were amazingly delicious (I'm also a very lucky girl because he's an excellent cook)! Once we had finished eating lunch, he told me that I could finish the puzzle and open the gifts that I had received today. I put the puzzle together and there were a few pieces missing. We were able to find a couple of them, but there were three missing in the middle. He had me open up the gifts that I had acquired throughout the day and in each box was a missing puzzle piece. I put them all together and it said, "I love you! Will you marry me?" Then he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him, which I said yes to!

I'm so thankful for this amazing man! He loves Jesus, he has strength of character, people respect him, and he treats me like a queen. I'm blessed beyond words and am so excited that I get to spend the rest of my life with him!

Miniature Rant

I've been going to the Virginia Beach Recreation Center for about 4 months now and it's been a unique gym-going experience. I originally joined because I needed to for Bollywood classes. I was okay with that, though, because I only had to pay $44 for 6 months and they have pretty nice equipment there. The only downfall of the Rec Center is that you have to sign up for the machines you want to use in advance and there's a 30 minute time limit for each one that you use. This caused a bit of embarrassment the first time I went in September because I didn't know about this rule and got on a treadmill that someone else had signed up for... that lady was fine with telling me (in the tone one would use while talking to a 4 year old) about signing up at the front desk.

Cut to this Monday when I signed up to get a treadmill at 2pm. I got into the gym around 1:45pm and decided to use the StairMaster while I waited for the guy on Treadmill #6 to finish his workout. He finished around 2:04pm and I went over as soon as he was off of it. I got on there and was feeling really good after my StairMaster warm-up, so I decided to go at a pace of 8.5 minutes per mile. After I was almost to mile 2, I was feeling REALLY good, so I decided to up my pace and try for 3 miles in 25 minutes. I was very proud of myself when I really did meet my goal!

About 1 minute after I had stopped running, the lady who was signed up for the next time slot came over to ask how much longer I would be. I told her it would probably be another minute. Then the lady on the treadmill next to mine told me to make sure that I get on to the machines when my time slot starts because people get upset when they have to wait.

Here are some of the things that irritated me about all of this:

1) The guy before me was running late, so I started as soon as I could after he was finished.

2) I was sweating A LOT and breathing heavily when the other lady came to ask whether I was done. Couldn't she have waited a little bit longer until I had actually cooled down?

3) The lady who was going on after me had a book in her hand. I'm assuming she was going to read it on the treadmill because she put it on the little shelf thing when she took her turn. I'm pretty sure she wasn't going to do any heavy exercise and could have just walked around the gym a couple of times while waiting for the person who was actually working out.

4) I'm pretty sure the book she was going to read was the Bible (it was small, thick, and leather-bound). Maybe she could have read about the fruits of the spirit while waiting... I think there's something about patience in there.
5) I was wearing my awesome-orange-tie-dyed-Scott-Appalachian-Ministries t-shirt and decided to keep all of these thoughts in my head because I didn't want to be a bad witness for Christ. Instead, I wrote them all on here, which is probably not what Jesus would do.