Our very special day...

OK, so when I added the pics, it added them backwards (yep, I'm a sucky blogger!) so the story flows better if you start at the bottom!



The ring...
Getting the boat out of the water, loving bill sporting his rolled up suit pants!!!! :) My sweet man didn't want me to have to get wet, so he did it all!

Driving back from our little private spot on the lake...

The ring... WOW! It's perfect, he did SUCH a good job picking it out!!!!

Opps, we ate half of them before I thought to take a pic... hehehe!! they were YUMMY!

Beautiful sunset on the water, a perfect end to a perfect day!

I love you too baby!!

ummm, thanks...for an empty ring box! LOL!!! Couldn't have planned it to be funnier!!!

It's so not fair that we can both cry like babies, and I'm the only one who looks bad after! What an AMAZING day! <3>

YUM!! He thought of everything (well, almost!)

My baby meticulously setting everything up. So sweet!!!

Looking good! <3,>
You can only imagine the looks and comments we got on the lake dressed like this!

SO...I am one LUCKY, LUCKY girl. Anyone who has kept up with the Dales in any way over the last 9 months knows that we've had some trials to overcome. It's been a really long hard road, but has proven to be worth the wait. We are working together as a family to become strong and ensure that ours is a family forever. Things are going better than I could ever convey. Yesterday Bill and I had a very special date. He has been planning this date for about 7 weeks. He wanted to show me how special I am to him and he wanted me to know with no doubts how much he loves me and that he appreciates me. (Warning!! This is going to be an obnoxious bragging blog post...you've been warned!) So I've known that something was coming for a little while and he had asked me not to do alot of snooping around so that he could pull this off. He gave me very little information (nothing, in fact, except a date). Then on Friday night he told me that I should dress up and that we would be leaving around 2 on Saturday for our big date. Then, with him in a suit and me in a dress, he walked me downstairs and out the front door with my eyes closed. There sat the boat all hooked up and ready to go. I'll admit, I was a bit puzzled. Why are we both dressed up to go on the boat?? He just smiled and said to go with it, so off we went towards the lake. When we got there, he got the boat in the water and we set off to a location that he had scoped out the week before while I was on a cruise with a bunch of girlfriends. He took us to a secluded little island off the beaten path on the lake. We beached the boat in the sand and he set about unloading the stuff that he had prepared while I sat and waited (read: took pictures.) He sat up a table with a nice table cloth and some chairs, then brought out lobster, crab, and shrimp, a salad, and cheesecake. He also had a bottle of sparkling grape juice (If you don't know, we don't drink). He also set up some speakers and played a custom playlist for the occasion filled with wonderful songs that have had significant meaning for us through the years. We had a wonderful afternoon of eating and laughing and crying, and dancing. Bill then poured his heart out to me and thanked me for sticking by him through all of the crazy that has been going on this year. He was in tears and so was I. He brought out a small gift bag and gave it to me and said this was long over due. I opened the bag and found a tiny box inside. I pulled it out and opened the lid to find a small ring box inside. He took the ring box and got on one knee and was still saying some very beautiful things to me as he opened the box. We both looked down as he opened it. THE BOX WAS EMPTY!!!!! Knowing my hubby that way I do, I was like, "YOU ARE MESSING WITH ME!!!!!" He said, "No!! I'm not!!" and he jumped up and we both tore through the gift bag and he looked all in the larger bag that he had used to carry stuff in. Then he grabbed the phone and called his accomplice (Hannah) and asked her to check the other ring box and tell him what she saw. "The ring," was her reply. So what had happened? Well, he purchased the ring from a jeweler in the Diamond District in NYC and had it delivered here (to a friend's house so I would not know). So once it got here, even though it came with an appraisal, he took it for an independant appraisal b/c he wanted to make sure he had gotten what he thought he had gotten. (He had, BTW.) Anyway, when he took the ring in, they didn't want the box, but returned it in a box from that jeweler, SOOOO he had 2 boxes. Are you sensing where this is going? Yep, that's right, he had grabbed the wrong box when prepping to leave for the date!! To me this was PERFECT! We are just not super serious people, we laugh, ALOT. So we had a good long laugh over this- once we knew that the ring was safe and sound at home! It was some good comedic relief because as I said, we were both pretty choked up by this point. So once we had laughed ourselves silly, and i knew I had a ring waiting for me at home, we went back to our dinner and talked and danced some more. Then he said that he did have a consolation prize for me. So he pulls out a brochure from Princess Cruise lines with an itenerary for our cruise in November! 7 days, western carribean, visiting Grand Cayman, Roatan, Cozumel, and Princess's private island- Princess Cay. This is scuba paradise!!!! So I was pretty excited about that. It will be nice to be just the 2 of us for 7 days. And we have a balcony room, so we can hang out on our balcony and just watch the ocean roll by...heaven! So after dessert (btw, the playlist ended JUST as we were finishing dessert...pretty awesome timing even if it was coincidental!) we laid out a blanket under the trees and laid back and relaxed and cuddled. The whole afternoon was so amazing!!!! We loaded up and headed back just before dark. Once we stowed the boat and got home, Bill had arranged for Hannah to put an edible arrangements bouquet of chocolate covered strawberries (that looked like a box of roses) on our bed with the ring box opened up inside. So I obviously knew at this point that I was getting a ring, but HOLY CROW, I did not know I was getting a RING. It is gorgeous! And much bigger than I expected... (See this is where I am bragging obnoxiously...sorry!) It was an absolutely PERFECT day!!!! <3>