My birthday was Sat., Sept. 16. For the past month Doug has been bugging me almost daily to open my gifts, which is pretty typical of his behavior every holiday. He gets so excited that the anticipation nearly kills him. Every day I said with increasingly more irritation, "No. I wanna wait for my birthday." He finally wore me down the day before my birthday with the argument that he had activities in mind for Saturday and we'd be too rushed to do gifts that day too. So I acquiesced. The big gift .... an IPod inscribed "Play It Again, Sam" and loaded with all 203 Depeche Mode songs in my CD collection. Part of the reason he was so excited was because he had bought one for himself too but didn't want to use it until I had mine. I, of course, was thrilled and thought that was it.
On Saturday we hit the road early to destination unknown. It turned out we were headed to Gloucester to go on a whale watch, which I had never done and always wanted to do. We were out on the boat for four hours and saw five or six humpback whales. It was really cool and exciting to see the whales' tails come up out of the water and hear them "trumpet" when they got excited. The whole time Doug was kind of freaking out about his bag being beneath the bench while we were moving around the boat for optimal whale viewing. I kept assuring him, "No one is going to take your backpack." Now I know why he was so nervous. (The ring was inside.)
After the whale watch he said he had one more surprise, and we hit the road again, this time headed toward Rockport. At this point we both really had to pee, so the first order of business was to find a bathroom. We stopped at an information booth and the door was locked. So we drove downtown, parked and wandered around trying to find the facilities. Doug dragged me along while I tried to stop and look in windows and commented on how I wished we could go shopping.
After relieving our bladders, we hit the road again, eventually parking on a familiar street in Rockport that Doug had taken me to when we were first courting. He instructed me to stay in the car cause he had another surprise. He opened up the trunk and rustled around. Finally I was given permission to get out of the car and was greeted with beautiful fall-colored flowers, including orangey-peach roses and these cool puffy red things. We walked up the path next to the road, which leads out onto the rocks overlooking the ocean. I sat down on a bench to watch the sunset. Doug hunkered down in front of the bench and read a poem that he had written for me. It was very sweet and made references to the various adventures we have shared. (He even managed to get "tofu" in there somehow.) The poem ended with the big question. I, of course, said yes, and burst into tears when he took the ring out of his pocket. I never saw it coming!!!
So, onto the ring. It is platinum and has a beautiful round colorless diamond surrounded by a sapphire on either side (my birthstone) and then diamonds on either side of the sapphires. (So it is D-S-BIG D-S-D.) It is absolutely gorgeous and perfect!!!!
No plans yet, but we suspect the wedding will be in about a year. We both like fall weddings.
So that's the scoop! I am soooooooooo excited!!!!
-Heather
