See, I had an ulterior motive in asking you to share your proposal stories-today is my 15th Wedding Anniversary! That’s right, on June 19, 1993, after almost exactly eight years of dating, Chris and I finally stood up in front of our families and my parents’ minister and promised to, um, do something until death do us part. We were both so scared and nervous that neither of us remember actually saying anything. In fact, I could barely raise my voice loud enough to be heard, which for me is pretty rare

Some day, I’m going to post the entire timeline from 1984 to 1993, tell you the whole story of how Chris and I met, how we went from friends to being in love, and how my parents spent 8 years trying to keep us apart. It’s quite a story. The actual proposal though? Well, I kind of ruined it.

First of all, getting engaged was something the two of us discussed. I was a Sophomore in college in a town about 40 miles away, Chris was going to community college and working full time. Neither of us had any money at all. Chris’ Dad worked across the street from Dicker & Deal, a consignment store that bought mostly electronics, movies, and jewelry. Their jeweler bought pieces, took them apart, and reset the stones. Chris and I went in to look, and found a beautiful 1/3 carat diamond cushion cut ring, I believe the price was around $250.00. We pooled our money and bought it. Which brings us to our FIRST engagement.

At the time, Chris was working at Arby’s. I went there to see him, so it must have been a Saturday. I could drive from my college to his house in less than an hour, so I stayed with him almost every weekend. Anyway, I went to Arby’s to pay him a visit, asked him when he was going to put that ring on his finger, and I swear, we walked outside, sat down on a nearby park bench, and he “proposed”. I feel like I ruined his chance to surprise me with a real proposal, but I couldn’t wait to wear that ring!

I’ve had to keep editing this post because there is so much story to tell, so let me just be brief. Around the end of Junior Year of college (I had left the tiny college and was going to M.S.U.), pressure from my parents and I don’t even know what else finally got the best of me. I told Chris I needed to stop wearing the engagement ring because we obviously weren’t getting married any time soon. I was SO dependent on my parents for everything, it never even occurred to me to just MARRY him. We could have had a wedding at City Hall and told them after, but I so craved their approval, and had spent my whole lifetime doing exactly what they told me to do, that I let them talk me into “postponing” the engagement. I was such an idiot.

So at the end of Senior Year at M.S.U., my English Lit. professor handed me a brochure for the Overseas Study program in London. It was five weeks, two or three credits, and I would live in a dorm at a London college and M.S.U. professors would hold class two or three times a week. My parents agreed to pay for me to go. My Mother actually suggested that I might “meet someone” while I was there!

Chris and I had spent the entire time I was at the first college writing letters to each other. I got a letter from him in my mailbox almost every day. He used those writing tablets that are about half the size of a regular sheet of paper, and would fill up the front and back of three or four pieces of paper. I have the letters still, in a shoebox somewhere, and he has all the letters I sent him. When I went to London, we resumed our letter-writing. I told him everything I did and saw each day, he told me what was going on back home. It only took a few letters and a couple of very expensive trans-Atlantic phone calls for me to realize for certain that I never wanted to “meet someone” else, I wanted to be with Chris. It was what was right for me, in my heart, and nothing my parents could do could change that. I can’t remember if we actually discussed getting re-engaged in the letters or not.

The weekend after I got back from London, Chris asked me to go with him down to Fort Wayne Indiana to pay a visit to his biological father, who we had lived with in Lansing for a short time. I didn’t ask my parents’ permission, I just told them I was going. We went down on a Friday afternoon. The next night, Chris and I went out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant, just the two of us. We ate our dinner, talked about my trip to London. The waiter came and asked, “will there be anything else?”

Chris said something like “if you’ll come back in a few minutes, we aren’t quite finished”. I said “we aren’t?” He said no, “I need to ask you something”. And then he pulled out THE ORIGINAL ENGAGEMENT RING, slipped out of the booth, knelt down beside me, and asked me to marry him! It was perfect and romantic and FINALLY, we were going to get married no matter what.

I’m going to ask Chris to help me scan some of our wedding photos, I’ll try to find older photos but back then most people didn’t just carry cameras around, so we don’t have many photos from when we were dating. But I’ll scan in what I can find so you can see how beautiful our wedding was. It was just short of EIGHT YEARS from our first falling in love to our wedding day, and now here we are, 23 years together and 15 years married, with three terrific kids, still in love and still sure that getting married was what we were meant to do.

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Believe me, I know this is something that none of us parents even wants to think about, but what would you do if your child went missing? Almost one million children go missing each year in the United States alone. When law enforcement is called in, the faster they can get information they need about the child, the faster they can start looking for them. Data such as your child’s physical description, photos, emergency medical facts and emergency contacts can help the police right away, if they have it.

InstantAmber is a completely secure online “vault” where you store all the data on your child, only you can access it, and it works like this:

* Visit the InstantAmber site (www.instantamber.com) from anywhere in the world
* Enter your email address and choose a password to register for a personal InstantAmber vault
* Following the clear prompts, add your loved one’s information and photos
* When finished, simply logout of your personal InstantAmber vault
* In case of emergency, call 9-1-1
* Give the Officer your email address and personally-selected Law Enforcement Password
* Law enforcement can access the information and photos it needs instantly

It costs $29.95 per year per child (for a limited time the website says, I’m not sure when or if it will increase). Your InstantAmber vault’s storage capacity is unlimited, and will grow as you enroll additional family members. The vault is password protected, fully data-encrypted and independently monitored for security 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Your data stays safe and instantly accessible in the event that you should need it. Although I certainly hope that no one’s child ever goes missing, I am passing this on for your information. Only you can decide if you need to create an InstantAmber account, please take a minute to familiarize yourself with the site.

Read about the InstantAmber Safety System.
Educate your children about the 5 Steps to Prevent Child Abduction.

Disclosure: This post was written on the request of Jesse at InstantAmber. I received no compensation for this post, nor was I told in any way what to write.

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Isn’t that crazy? The last concert I went to was to see the Steve Miller Band play at Kalamazoo Arena in 1993! And then Chris and I got married and started working our jobs and then I got pregnant, and money for things like concerts was always on the bottom of the priority list. But when I saw the lineup for this summer’s Common Ground festival, which is held every year here in Lansing, I saw a show listed that I just had to buy tickets for, no matter what. No, not Madonna Tickets, she would never come to Lansing, Michigan! lol

We are going to see “Zappa Plays Zappa”. Chris has been a Frank Zappa fan since he was a Freshman in High School, he owns almost every FZ album which is a LOT, and now he has Ryan and Nathan listening to it as well. He went to three Zappa shows and still talks about how amazing they were. Frank passed away a few years ago, but his son Dweezil Zappa is touring now, playing his Dad’s songs. It was an opportunity that I just couldn’t pass up, I know how much the show will mean to Chris. Sometimes, you have to move things up to the top of the priority list because doing so will mean doing something really special for the person you love.

P.S. Don’t forget to check out my current giveaways by scrolling down the page!

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On Thursday October 12, 2006, Mimi Writes had an idea. What if on one day, bloggers joined together to post about peace, using an image of our beautiful Earth which she called The Peace Globe. She suggested we all title our posts “Dona Nobis Pacem”, which in a literal translation from Latin to English means Grant Us Peace. What if……

….. we added the power of the written word - and our blog names - to the face of our world? A world that we share with each other through our written words, A world that so many of us have already begun to realize is smaller than we ever imagined. From that came a project that I am so proud to be participating in today, The BlogBlast For Peace. This is my Peace Globe:

There was a time about two years ago when I came very close to quitting blogging. An anonymous commenter left me a horrible comment regarding my feelings for my mother in law who had just passed away, and there seemed to be this wave of hatred sweeping the blogosphere. It seemed like every day another blog in my blogroll was dealing with nasty commenters. It was then that I made a decision that has stayed with me to this day-

I will only use my blog for good. Never for Evil.

I also came up with what I think of, cheesy as it may sound, as my Golden Rule of Blogging:

Comment Unto Others As You Would Have Them Comment Unto You.

To this day, I have never left a nasty comment on a blog, and I don’t write posts saying nasty things about other bloggers. That is my way of contributing to Peace in the Blogosphere. It might not make this blog as popular as some, but it makes it a blog that I would read if I didn’t write it myself.

Please use your blogs for good. Please spread Peace around the blogosphere. Please blog for Peace.

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You guys. Seriously. Remember just before Memorial Day weekend when I blogged about my upcoming bathroom makeover? How I was painting the boring white walls, and trying to figure out how to make the small bathroom look more interesting? Well. Just wait until you see.

I have to backtrack a bit, not much, just enough to give you some background info on my husband. Regular readers know that my husband, in addition to being the best husband and Dad I could have ever imagined (I know, awwww), has this special talent. He builds furniture. Yes, furniture. Like, about six years ago, we needed a new coffee table really badly, so one Saturday morning he got up, sketched one out on a piece of paper, drove to Home Depot, came home, and in about five hours, we had a coffee table. The frame that our mattress and box springs sits on? Made by Chris in a couple of hours out in the driveway after another impromptu stop at Home Depot. My computer stand? Again, made by Chris. He just has this thing where he can see a piece of furniture in his head, and BUILD IT.

So, fast forward back to the bathroom makeover. The mirror in that bathroom is a huge square, and on the bottom edge, the reflective coating had worn off somehow leaving an ugly black slash. While discussing the bathroom decor, I lamented that I didn’t want to have to buy a new mirror when we had a perfectly good one, but that I hated that huge black scratch. Chris says, let me think about it.
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A few days later, we go to Home Depot. He says, I had an idea for the mirror. What if we bought some …and I…and then I…? How would that look? I say gee, I don’t know about that. So we went and looked at the…and found something really unique, and he said, I could… I said really? Go for it!
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It took him a few evenings and this past weekend to finish. See if you can guess based on this list of items that were involved:

• Two pieces of 1 1/2 inch wood trim
• A can of polyurethane wood stain
• A Miter saw
• A small paintbrush
• Acrylic paint in dark green and red

Have you guessed yet? Let me give you another hint:

When he showed me the final result, I was ABSOLUTELY BLOWN AWAY. I mean people, honestly. I challenge you to show me another person you know that has a bathroom mirror that looks like this:

Again, let me stress, made completely by hand by MY HUSBAND. He sat in the garage for hours dabbing paint onto those leaves and dotting each little depression in the wood with red paint. This man has MAD CRAFT SKILLZ, YO.

And I have the COOLEST BATHROOM MIRROR EVER.

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