#3

Well, that was a much longer break than I intended! Life surprises you everyday, that's for damn sure. The past month has been such a frenzy of busy, it really doesn't feel like its been that long since I posted. Life is still crazy and about to get crazier (we're driving to southern California two weekends in a row - for weddings!) but I wanted to actually tell you guys how the proposal went down. It's pretty awesome.

It was Friday, April 10, 2009, and we were going to move the next day. Our apartment was a mess, we still had a whole lot of cleaning and packing to do, but around 4:00 Chris called me at work to let me know that he wanted to take me out to dinner when I got home. He lured me away from the packing and cleaning with a promise that our friends, Frank and Jodie, would be coming over afterwards to help us finish up. So I get home and Chris is getting ready to go, taking a shower, wearing a button up shirt and I was so tired from the day at work and getting ready to move that I didn't even try to make myself look better. I just wanted to eat and come back so that we could finish what we had to do before the U-Haul showed up the next morning. We went to Jupiter, a place I really like pretty close to wear we lived at the time. We got a great table upstairs next to the window, I got to watch Critical Mass gather and start, and someone was playing a saxophone outside the BART station. The food was great, the atmosphere was awesome. All in all it was a great dining experience.

Dinner is wrapping up and Chris convinces me to put off the packing and cleaning a little longer so we can go check out our new house we had just gotten the keys to. As we're driving over Chris says that he thinks we should go in through the back door that way tomorrow when we move in its like starting new, crossing the threshold of this next chapter. That kind of surprised me but I'm a romantic so I bought it and thought it was really sweet. We park in the drive way and walk around to the back of the house. It was my responsibility to get PG&E turned on so when we walked in the back door and I saw light coming from the living room I said "Sweet! The power is on!". Chris just says "Oh, yeah?" and closes the door behind him. Once the street noise is closed out I hear music coming from the living room as well. My first thought was that Frank and Jodie, our new house mates, had the same idea to come checkout the house and we were... interrupting. But Chris urges me to continue into the living room. He grabbed my hand just as I say "I hear music" and he says encouragingly "Well lets go check it out then!" and we start to walk over.

As I get closer I can see candles on the floor, then the whole fireplace comes into view and I see the set up in its entirety. There are candles, as well as flowers and rose petals, all over the mantel and the floor below. My eyes find a bottle of Perrier Jouet champagne on ice and two champagne glasses resting on the floor and then my brain registers the music playing. It's a song by Calexico called "Yours and Mine" (hellooo blog title!). Its one for those songs that Chris has put on mixed types for me and he knows I love it, definitely a good choice. All I can say is "Did you do all of this?!" and his huge smile that I love starts to spread across his face and he said "Frank and Jodie set it up while we were at dinner". At this point it still hasn't hit me that he's going to propose. I just thought that this was a part of this "new chapter" that involved us not walking through the front door. Ha! We started dancing in the living room and I'm still trying to take everything in and then he stops and tells me to close my eyes. I follow directions and start to think that maybe he was actually going to do it. He stepped away for a second and when he came back he put his arms around me and I felt a foreign object brush my arm. He says I can open my eyes and then he drops to one knee and says "Stacy, I love you so so much, you are my heart, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?" (I THINK that's what he said, I totally couldn't remember and had to ask him later. But I think that's normal!) And the only thing that came out was "ARE YOU SERIOUS?!" he laughs and said yes and then I said yes.

We busted into the champagne and danced a little more. After that it was all questions. When?, How?, Did you ask my Dad?, all that stuff. Then phones were out and calling began. That was about 5 months ago now and we're steadily making our way through planning a wedding. As far as proposals go I think that one was just right and I wouldn't have wanted it any other way. I'll leave you with a few photos of the set up. It was seriously dreamy. I've also added the song "Yours and Mine" by Calexico.




And then one of me afterwards :)

Music Playlist at MixPod.com

Until next time friends!

#2

I was going to tell you all about the proposal today but I thought it would be fun to share something else with you. I think I told Chris not to tell anyone about this because at the time I was embarrassed but now that we're actually engaged I don't feel as stupid. Its actually pretty funny.

For our third anniversary last year we went to Monterey. We stayed in a hotel, hung out at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and basically just enjoyed being alone for the weekend. It was really nice. Chris had made plans to take me out to a nice dinner at the Chart House on Cannery Row. When we got there the hostess knew who we were and said "Happy Anniversary! Have a seat and your waiter will be right over to seat you." I was like, well that's weird! How the heck do they know that? I figured Chris must have said something when he made the reservation and they were just being super nice about it. The waiter comes over to show us to our table and does the same thing "Hello! I'm (we'll just say Dan) and I'll be your waiter tonight. I'll be right back with your menus." We say thank you and he drops the "Oh, and Happy Anniversary you two!" I've never had people be that nice to me at a restaurant. I don't know if it was because we were in Monterey and they're just nicer everywhere or if the Chart House really likes to celebrate with people.

Chris and I are sitting at a small intimate table in the back, there's music playing, we're by the windows look out over the bay, candles on the table, the whole shabang. "Dan" comes back and hands us our menus and I start looking it over. Then I see it. And my heart starts pounding, my head gets fuzzy, my hands get sweaty, and I feel like I can't breath. All those things that people tell you happened when you think someone is about to ask you to marry them. On the top of the menu it says "Happy Third Anniversary Mr. & Mrs. Dixon!"

I wait a second to try and get myself together and then I say to Chris "It says Mr. & Mrs. Dixon on the menu!" and he's all like "Yeah, I know! Weird." and then he looks at me and sees that I'm kind of losing it and starting to cry. "What's wrong?!" he asks and I say "Are you going to propose?!" and then I see it on his face and know that the answer is no and he kind of starts to laugh a little bit. I ask "Does everyone have these menus or did they just give them to us?" He said he thought they just made them for us. And then explains what he thinks happened. When he called the restaurant to make the reservation they asked him if it was for a special occasion and he said it was our third anniversary. They didn't ask if that was with a wife or girlfriend, they just kind of assumed wife and went with it. So for about ten minutes after my misunderstanding he has to talk me down from the tears, make sure I'm okay, and then he starts to feel horrible. I totally thought he was about to ask me to marry him and he had no plans to at the time. So then I spend ten minutes making sure he's okay, telling him I'm not crying because I'm upset, it was an adrenaline rush and I'll be fine in a minute.

Once we're both okay and I understand that just because he isn't proposing right now doesn't mean he's not going to one day, he starts laughing about it. I'm totally fine with that, I get it, its cool. And then the horrible embarressment kicks in. If I would have just laughed it off in the first place we wouldn't have had to go through this awkward State of the Union talk in front of a bunch of people. I'm worried he thinks I'm a little nutty for reacting that way, I'm thinking I've scared him and it'll probably take that much longer for him to actually pop the question. The embarressment was all encompassing and horrible. I felt stupid. But he just kept on laughing about it and asked if he could tell people. I had to beg him not to, I wouldn't be able to stand other people laughing at me, especially about this.

It took me a few months and an actual engagement to see the funny side of freaking out like that in a fancypants restaurant. But hey, its a good story to tell the kids one day. Here's a picture of us at the Monterey Bay Aquarium earlier that day. For some reason it looks like I have no upper lip but oh well!

#1

Hello Blog World!

I thought the best way to start was a little history on us. That way if anyone we don't know ends up liking this thing they'll have a little back story to go on. And hey, maybe some of you that do know us don't know this stuff either so its good for everyone. Be warned, this might be long.

Chris and I met in 1999 when we were just a fresh fifteen years old. We were freshmen in high school and we had drama together. We were both working on the school play, Grease, after school as well. I was on the prop crew and Chris was in the band they affectionately named Hoffy and The Hofftones after the director, Mr. Hoffman. We had become pretty good friends and had started to hang out outside of school. We used to have a daily ritual called "Song of the Day". Its just like it sounds, we would alternate days and bring a song for the other to hear. I'll be honest, I should have known when one of Chris's songs was I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend by the Ramones that he was interested in being more than my friend. I probably did on some level but at the time I was really just excited to be making new friends. Then it happened. We went to our friend's birthday party together, Chris' mom drove us. At some point during the party we happened to be across the room from each other and he winked at me. I don't know why but it really creeped me out. I just felt...strange. When his mom dropped me off at home later that night Chris walked me to the door. This wasn't out of the ordinary, Chris' mom taught him how to be a gentlemen and that's what he did with all of his female friends. As we're saying our goodbyes he musters up to courage to ask me to be his girlfriend and I said..."Can I think about it?" Ouch.

About a week goes by and I'm avoiding him like the plague. I was just so conflicted. I loved hanging out with him, he was way cooler than me, he had the cutest curly hair I had ever seen, but I was worried that it would end like all other young romances (quickly) and then I'd lose my awesome friend. I couldn't face him, I couldn't watch his face as I broke his heart with my rejection. So I did what most fifteen year olds would do, I wrote him a letter. And then had someone else give it to him. And then I got as far away as I could. So yeah, he wasn't stoked but somehow I got him to talk to me again. I had broken my ankle about that time so being a gimp probably helped my pitiful factor. After a bit of awkwardness we picked right back up where we were; hanging out, Song of the Daying it up, and somewhere along the way I stopped caring if everything was ruined. I realized I liked him. A lot. Like a fat kid likes cake. Getting it?

After school one day we were talking on AIM (this was when it was just starting to be cool - we're old!) and the conversation went something like this (not verbatim, but the gist):

Stacy: Do you remember what you asked me when you dropped me off that night?
Chris: Uhhh, yeah
Stacy: Ummm....could you ask me again?
Chris: Are you serious? Are you going to say yes?
Stacy: .....yes.
Chris: Hold on, I'm calling you. We're not doing this over the internet.

And on April 11, 2000 we started dating/going steady/engaging in gross public displays of affection for the first time. I wont walk you through that first year and half of high school romance but he was indeed my first love and we all know what those usually entail and feel like. The relationship was far from perfect. We both had issues and a lot of growing up to do but hey, who doesn't when your young? As I said, we lasted about a year and a half, a long time in high school, and then things got bad. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about the end but I will say this; when it happened, the big IT, it was Halloween, it was for another girl, and I was dressed like a pumpkin. A FREAKING PUMPKIN. Imagine being 16, getting dumped, and then realizing that you're a big orange fruit. I was crushed, embarrassed, and really pissed that I had picked such a lame costume.

It took along time for me to be able to be around him which was hard because we had the same friends. I want to say it was about a year before we started hanging out again. We had been best friends and losing that was the hardest part so being able to suck it up and head back into friend territory was nice. We both moved on, moved away, and all those things that happen when you start to grow up and wonder what else is out there besides the town you grew up in but every now and again we would touch base via text or phone call, it always felt like coming home to me. I went to him when I couldn't talk to anyone else and he was always there, always understanding and supportive, though he really didn't ever approve of my boyfriend choices.

In 2005 we starting talking a little more frequently. Both of our relationships at the time were coming to an end and we were both pretty broken by the time the smoke cleared. I was living in Santa Barbara and Chris was in Berkeley. We hit October in 2005 and Halloween weekend was approaching (don't worry, no pumpkin costumes). At this point we were talking multiple times a week and I decided to be spontaneous. Our texts went something like this:

Stacy: Hey! What are you doing tonight?
Chris: Hanging out in Berkeley, what are you doing?
Stacy: Would it be okay if I came up to see you?
Chris: Umm...its like 6 hours away.
Stacy: I know!
Chris: Sure
Stacy: I'll see you in six hours!

And I drove up right after I got off work at 5. We hadn't seen each other in a year or two so I was incredibly nervous the whole drive up. I just knew that I had to see him, no matter what happened. My intentions were totally friendly. At first.

The first time we saw each other again it was October 29, 2005. When I got to his apartment he gave me a huge hug and said "Wow, you still smell like you" and that was all it took. I was a goner. I still had no idea where we were headed but we jumped into a massive catching up session. It felt great. To be around him, to have a face to face conversation with him, pretty much just seeing his face was good enough for me. Half a bottle of Jack Daniels later we were making out and we've been together ever since. I was 20 and he was 21. Almost four years exactly from when we had originally broken up.

A month later, November 2005, I convinced him to move in with me in Santa Barbara and then about eight months later, July 2006, he convinced me to move up to Berkeley and that, apart from Chris, has been the best decision I've ever made. This coming October will mark our fourth year together. If you want the total, without the four year break or what we affectionately call "half time", we've been together for almost five and a half years.

I'll leave you with a picture from one of my trips to Berkeley before all the moving happened.



I'll be back soon with the proposal story!