How We Met
I made a last ditch effort and tried what was known as the app just for hookups, Tinder. I couldn’t believe it had come to this, but it did. And I’m so glad that it did.
I eventually received a match named Kelly. He looked cute, seemed smart, and matched with me despite the fact that the first line of my profile read “not here for hookups”. So we messaged back and forth for a hot second and then he asked me to meet up for drinks. Jeeze, that was fast – but ok, I guess. So we arranged to meet at a restaurant called ‘Smith’ that was up the street from my house.
I made sure to get to the restaurant first and waited patiently. Finally, I saw him – but pretended that I didn’t. He was so tall and handsome and had the sweetest eyes. We had a drink and talked for a couple of hours and he was great. I don’t remember much besides that he told me where he worked and that he was going to go to Africa in a couple of months to study giraffes. But he was nice.
After the first date, we texted a bit and he asked me out on a second date. I agreed and as the date grew closer I wasn’t sure that I wanted another date. He was awesome – but I was tired. I was emotionally drained from dating so much – I didn’t want to tell one more person about myself – the same stupid conversations and the same stupid stories. I just was done. I called my sister to talk to her about the whole thing. She said I couldn’t do it. It was too late to cancel and that would be horribly mean to do to him – and really, he was nice, so why not go on just one more date? So I got the energy from somewhere and took a drive down to the water where he lived.
Oh my gosh, I am so happy that I rallied that night. When I got to Kelly’s house, he took me out to the dock and had a whole picnic set up for us. There were all kinds of snacks and some amazing wine. It was so romantic. The feeling that I had that night was exactly what I had always dreamed of and I couldn’t believe that my dream was becoming a reality.
how they asked
I had been complaining to Kelly that we never went on dates anymore, so one day he told me he’d plan something great and he put it on the calendar. I looked at the calendar and it said ‘Run!’. ….run?! A run for a date?! A run is not a date! The day came for the “run” and I told him that we were actually going to go out to dinner for a friend’s birthday. He was frustrated with me, but we went to dinner anyway and we skipped the run.
Then he put the run on the calendar for the next week. I was so annoyed with him. It was August and it was hot! Why would we run after work when it’s so hot out? Why not just get up and run while it’s still bearable? But he told be that it would be worth it – that there would be a surprise at the end. Awesome, so we were running to dinner – or so I guessed. I took the bribe and went on the run. We ran along the water towards a little area of Seattle called Leschi. As we got to the restaurant that I assumed he was taking me to, he continued on running. Whoa – what?! No dinner?! You’ve got to be kidding me! But I followed. We ran past the restaurants and he stopped at his old condo. Weird.
Then he told me that we were going to grab happy hour with Paul. Paul is Kelly’s old neighbor from the condo in Leschi that we had been meaning to meet up with. I was still kind of annoyed about dinner, but was excited to grab drinks with Paul. When Paul came down and met us at the front door, Kelly asked him if he could let us on to the condo’s dock that was key only access. Weird, but ok – it was a beautiful night! So Paul let us onto the dock and we agreed to let him know when we were ready for happy hour.
We walked down the dock and took a seat on the end. We made some small talk and looked over at Mt. Rainier, which was incredible that night.
Then Kelly started talking about how this dock was where we had our first real date, where we had our first kiss, and that I probably knew what was coming next. OH NO WAY. Oh my gosh. What?!
Seriously? Kelly is almost never serious, so I thought that he might be kidding.
But no, got up from the dock and got onto one knee and he kept on going. He started talking about our life together so far and what our life together would be like in the future. I figured at that point that I should probably stand up, because he was most likely serious.
He said something about having two kids together and I made sure to stop him and let him know that it would not be two, but three, and then let him continue. He finally told me that he was ready to spend the rest of his life with me and asked me if I would marry him. Obviously. Duh. Yes.
Absolutely!!! I couldn’t believe it! This is the one place that I had hoped he would propose to me, but I had never told anyone – including him. He told me that he had a candy ring and that he hoped that would be ok. But then he quickly told me he was kidding and let me know that he had a real ring in his pocket. So THAT was what he was grabbing at during our run! I had noticed while we were running that he kept grabbing his back pocket.
But then I started to panic. I was going to have the ‘I hate the ring talk’. I don’t say that just because I’m ridiculously picky, but also because we had “the ring talk” quite a few times and it always ended with Kelly saying that rings are stupid and that it shouldn’t matter what it looks like, what the quality is, etc. Boy was I wrong. We didn’t have to have the talk, and I absolutely LOVED the ring.
After he put the ring on my finger and I tried to contain my joy, I noticed that one of his friends had been in a kayak the entire time shooting photos from the water! The one thing that I had told Kelly was that I really wanted photos taken when he proposed to me.
I am SO thankful that Kelly coordinated with Cisco and to shoot pictures that will last a lifetime and I’m even more thankful that I get to spend a lifetime with Kelly.
