Our Story - Part II

Y'all ready for this? :) Good, cause I'm so giddily excited to tell you all the fabulous details of how and when I realized that I wanted to spend forever with James and, of course, the way he finally proposed :)

I remember, before James was even my boyfriend...I think we had only been out 3 or 4 times aka he wasn't "sold" on me yet, I was sitting in Sunday School and he was teaching.

First of all, let me premise this by saying that, my future husband is an awesome teacher. He's had lots of cool experiences and opportunities to be a teacher throughout the past 5 years and, thus, he's pretty impressive up in front of a group (see photo below...I rest my case ;)

So, there I am, sitting inconspicuously in his Sunday School class and, frankly, daydreaming about "us"...the not-yet-existent "us", that is ;) I remember looking around the room at all of these impressive and gorgeous women in my ward and then up at James in all of his spiritual-awesomeness and silently (and selfishly) praying,

"Heavenly Father, if, out of all of the amazing women in this ward, James chose to date only me, I would feel like the luckiest girl on the planet..."

Well, maybe Heavenly Father took that little pathetic plea into consideration, but...BEHOLD, it came to pass! And, truly, I AM the luckiest girl on the planet to have James...forever! :D

Well, fast forward to July 30th, the night, after much discussion, prayer, fasting and thought, that James and I decided to GET MARRIED! Oh yes, that was a good night! :) We also happened to bake a pizza that night :) See how happy we look! Not too mention, how cute is James in that sparkly cloud apron I made in Junior High?

And thus commenced the awesome adventure of wedding planning and ring shopping...and more ring shopping...and more...and more. PHEW! But it was all worth it :) James is a "deal hunter"...the best I've ever seen, I might add...so, I let him do his thing.

Alright, this next part is an important segue into the fabulous proposal.

K, so, I love my family! Like, so much so, that, you may have noticed, I tend to talk about them 24/7! So, suffice it to say that from very early on in our relationship, James has known the names of my whole family (like sibs-in-law, n&ns, everyone), even before meeting all of them.

Thus, James had a feeling that they must be pretty important to me. He's right, by the way ;) They are.

So, Friday night, September 9th. I was busy bustling around my apartment cleaning, packing for Michigan...frankly flustered about all the things I needed to get done. James arrives. He had planned this whole backyard movie for us and set to work setting up a screen and a projector while I finished up some things. I figured it was just something nice for us to do before I left for Michigan for a week...I wasn't completely wrong.

So, we set out some blankets, a bazillion pillows, a sheet duct-taped to the side of my neighbors garage and a table with a projector & computer. I was indifferent about the movie selection so James picked one that he had brought - Harry Potter 2...or so I thought.

As we were trying to sync the computers with the projectors, James accidentally forwarded to halfway through the movie and suddenly I saw my brother John's face appear on the screen...

"What...? What was that?"

James was silent and kept on in his technological efforts.

"Why was John on your computer? Do you have videos from John on your computer? What was that?"

After a moment, James responded,

"He and I are making a business plan together."

I took that absurd excuse as a clue to stop asking questions.

Finally, we got the projectors to work and we sat down to watch..."Harry Potter 2." I have to admit, I was just waiting for John's face to appear on the screen at any moment...but Harry Potter went on.

Suddenly the movie turned into an Emergency Broadcast System Alert screen... then it went fuzzy and made all sorts of loud staticy sounds. All the while James was saying things like, "What's going on?" "What happened to the movie?"

Then, suddenly, James appeared... like, on the screen.

I was silent.

Screen James, we'll call him, stood in his presentation stance (yes, he has a presentation stance) and said something like, "By now you may have noticed that I'm not Harry Potter...Lindsay, there are a lot of people in your life who love you, so, before I take my turn, I think your family has something to say..."

One by one, each of my 8 siblings, their fabulous spouses and their beautiful children (my n&ns) came on the screen, each sharing their own segment of "Why We Love Lindsay." Truly, folks, I cried through the whole thing. Tears of love (yes, there are such things as 'tears of love'). My heart literally swelled with each of their sweet sentiments of love and appreciation. Lastly, was my parents. Oh how I love them! I think for the first two months of their mission I cried every time I talked to them on the phone. I've really missed them. So you can imagine how sweet it was to see them on the screen expressing their love in their own sweet way.

Finally, Screen James appeared again and expressed his own love for me. He expressed how his love has grown and how I've truly become his ideal "companion." Then, Screen James turned the time over to Real James by saying, "I think the James sitting next to you has something to say..."

Real James took my hand and politely asked me to stand. I sniffled, kissed his cheek, beaming, and stood. Immediately he put his hand in his pocket, produced the ring and dropped to his knee. Suddenly, my favorite opera duet, AND the most beautiful love duet of all time, I might add - Puccini's "O Soave Fanciulla", began to play in the background.

The tears were uncontrollable by this point. I just stood their laughing and crying and smiling and sniffling. He knelt there for a moment and attempted to regain control of his own emotions...then he spoke. Unfortunately, I wish I could remember everything he said, word for word, but by this point my heart and my head were racing each other a billion miles a minute. I remember it was the sweetest and most poetic thing I've ever heard and by the time he finished he had asked me to marry him! We exchanged kisses and hugs and somewhere in there I let out an "Of course, I will!" and then he put the most gorgeous ring ever on my giddy finger.

After more hugs and kisses and laughter and awesomeness, we sat down again for a moment and watched James' bloopers from the movie, which, by the way, were adorable. A favorite of mine is the beginning one...James walks on screen nervously, stands there, looks at the camera and says, "...Welp...here we go..." and walks off. Haha! They reminded me of the teenage boy practicing his, "Hey, Lindsay!..."Yo, Lindsay! What's up?!... Oh, uh...hello there, Lindsay!" in the mirror before calling a girl up for a date. My heart melted at the sheer cuteness of him :)

We went inside and took this series of photos minutes after the proposal.

Red-eyes, happy faces :) Gotta love it.

Yeah, yeah! Ew, GROSS! ;) I say that for my n&ns...and some of my siblings who may gasp and/or blush at the sight of that last photo. Haha.

Truly, he put his whole heart and soul into every sweet second of the proposal and made it the most romantic and beautiful moment of my life...thus far. I wish I would've thought to applaud him afterwards. Honestly, best chick flick I've ever seen ;) And the amazing thing is, it was for ME! I've never been so humbled by love. And, oh, what a Love I have, too ;)

(James handing me a dead rose he found on the beach in L.A. Haha!)

Good heavens, James dear! I love you!

LET'S GET MARRIED!

And they lived happily ever after...

To be continued...

FOREVER! :D