Jace and I had a very awesome weekend with all of our kids with us in Ruidoso. It was great to see everyone and to start talking about a wedding for August. Thank you kids for spending time with us. We love you.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Awesome Weekend
Jace and I had a very awesome weekend with all of our kids with us in Ruidoso. It was great to see everyone and to start talking about a wedding for August. Thank you kids for spending time with us. We love you.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Monday, February 11, 2008
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Monday, February 4, 2008
Here's the Story
Kristi's Perspective: Ken lives in Nashville and I live in Tulsa. Ken had plans to come visit me in Tulsa. He was supposed to fly in Friday night at 9:00. Ken's house in Nashville is for sale and I was convinced that we wouldn't get engaged until his house sold.
Thursday morning I gave Ken a call while I was on my way to school and he was supposed to be on his way to work...No answer. So then i think to myself, "maybe he is still sleeping...uh oh....or maybe he took some sick time since he was feeling bad....hopefully he will call soon." I go about my business at school and don't hear from him, til I get on a computer and he IMs me to tell me he stayed home for a few hours because he felt bad and he left his phone at home and he is going over to his friend Tyler's house for dinner and a movie. He assures me he will get home soon so he can call me and we can talk. That is all fine and well.
I get home that evening going through Ken withdrawals and spending my time doing pilates and studying for my oral comps. It starts getting late and I start getting inpatient. I decide to look at Tyler's photography website to get his number. I find it and call Tyler to see if Ken has started his long drive home (45 minutes or so). Tyler answers and tells me they were watching some live anime movie (whatever live anime is???) and that the power is out due to the weather so his phone might act funny. I think to myself, "live anime??? that's weird...but that seems like something those two would watch." I offer to look up the weather on the internet so I could let him know if the storm had passed or not. Tyler tells me Ken is in the bathroom and asks me if he should harass him. I emphatically say "YES" then there is a click and the phone is disconnected. I call back...no answer. Again, I am unable to talk to my boyfriend.
So I start complaining to my roommate that Ken is out late and is sick and needs to pack for his trip to come see me. I really miss him and am mad at him at the same time....are you supposed to be mad at people because you miss them? I was trying not to be mad.
I get in bed and read a little more and think to myself "hmmm if he calls now, maybe i just won't answer. maybe i will just be asleep and he will learn his lesson." Its 11:30 and the phone rings. I don't think twice about answering :) He tells me he is sorry for getting in so late. I just say "ya." Then he says "to make up for getting in so late, I had something delivered to your front door." I think that's weird....but then again I did hear my roommate lock the door, so maybe she is in on something. I look out the peep hole and nothing is outside. I open the door and look on the ground expecting that there might be something there. Then I look up and Ken is walking around the corner. I just start crying. It didn't seem real that he was right there. I don't even let him inside because I am too busy hugging him. So we are hugging and I'm crying and having trouble breathing and finally take a step back so he can come inside (it was really cold out that night). I'm starting to catch my breath when he kneels down and I just starting crying and hyperventilating all over again. He tells me I am the love of his life and that he has known that for a long time and he wants to spend the rest of his life with me. I think he asked "will you marry me" but I can't really remember that part. But i do remember that i didn't say "Yes"..... I said "Of course!" He pulls out the ring from his coat pocket and I can't really see it because I was wearing my glasses and they were foggy from being smushed up against ken. But I don't care...i just want him to put it on my hand.
Luckily, a few days before, I was sitting in my car filling it with gas. As I was waiting, I noticed some finger nail clippers in the car and decided to fix a nail that was chipped and I proceeded to clip all my nails on my right hand but then the gas pump was done and I never got around to clipping my nails on my left hand so they were nice and long and pretty for showing off my beautiful new ring :)
Ken's Perspective: So for me this whole process started a while back. I really did want to try to sell my house before proposing since it'd just make things easier, but as time went on I started to get impatient about that. I started talking to Kristi's friend Sara House about ideas, and she mentioned at some point how Kristi thought my house HAD to sell before I'd propose. So, I figured I'd use that to my advantage.
The most important thing I needed to take care of though was a ring. And while Kristi was out visiting me, there really was no way I could get away without her knowing about it. Thankfully Sara came to the rescue again by coming out to Nashville to visit Kristi and another friend of theirs up in Kentucky. So I had one day to find a ring while they were out of town.
I knew that to be able to find a ring that fast I really had to have a lot of information going in. So I started out by researching stuff about diamonds late at night after Kristi went to bed and we were off the phone. It was actually pretty interesting how they grade things, and I think it being interesting to me made it really easy to remember. I also asked around quite a bit about different jewelers and who was good to go to. I got a lot of recommendations for Genesis Diamonds, which had just recently opened a store right behind where I worked.
So the day that Kristi went to Kentucky, I spent my lunch hour at Genesis. They didn't really have a huge selection at that store, but there was one ring there that I really liked a lot. The problem was that it was a designer ring, and I'd have to wait a few weeks for it to be built with the diamond that I picked out for it. That night I decided to go to Shane Co. with Jennifer to look around some more. Shane had a huge selection, but after two hours of searching, I couldn't really find exactly what I was looking for, and I found that me and Jennifer have very different tastes in rings ;). They did have one ring that was decent when it was paired with a wedding band though. And they said they could solder them together to look like one ring. That and the fact that they could have it done in a few days convinced to me to at least put $500 down to hold on to that ring until I decided (I could always get the money back).
So, the next day before lunch I took an hour off of work to go talk to Genesis again. Seeing the ring that I saw the previous day again reminded me how much I liked it - and how much more I liked it than anything at Shane. Genesis also had some good responses to some of the deals that Shane was offering. So, I figured I'd see what diamonds they had available. Being a small store, they didn't really have a ton of diamonds, but there was a diamond up at their larger Nashville store that seemed to fit what I was looking for. But, it would take another $500 deposit for them to bring it down for me to look at. So I went ahead and had them do that and went back to work.
Kristi was back in town again so I went out to lunch with her. On the way back I got a phone call from Genesis, and was like "Hey, can I call you back in 10 minutes..." Kristi asked who that was and I just told her it was someone from work. So as soon as I was back to work and Kristi was gone, I went over to Genesis again. I started looking at the diamond the brought down and really liked it a lot. I'd looked at quite a few diamonds at this point, and it really bothered me when I could find a flaw in them, even if it wasn't very apparent to the naked eye. So I really wanted to go with quality over size. After looking at that diamond for five or ten minutes in a loop, I couldn't find anything wrong with it, and decided to go with it.
Kristi was leaving in about a week, and since the ring was special ordered, I knew that I wasn't going to be able to propose while she was still in Nashville. But this way, I could surprise her even more by just showing up in Tulsa. Kristi really wanted to see me again before the family get-together in late February, so we decided to see each other the first week of February. I'd originally wanted to just show up out of the blue, but with Kristi having such a busy schedule, I figured maybe it was good that she'd already have the weekend blocked out... But I still wanted to surprise her somehow. So I thought, I could just show up a day early - her Fridays weren't usually very busy anyway. But would the ring be here on time?
I called up Genesis to see if they could give me a specific date that they knew that the ring would be in by, and they said January 30th. That just gave room for it to be one day late. They promised though, so I went ahead and got plane tickets for Thursday. I took the itinerary they emailed and changed all the dates and day names to fit Friday, and emailed that to Kristi, and From talking to her friends, I knew that she had no clue I was planning on proposing soon.
The ring came in about a week earlier than scheduled, so it was really nice to have that taken care of. I still needed a good plan for how to be unavailable while I was traveling on Thursday night. I didn't want to say that my phone was out of power, because I may still need to talk to people and I didn't want Kristi to call and get a ring. So, I told her on IM that I just forgot to bring it that day, and I was going to be out that night at Tyler's house (I picked Tyler because I knew she didn't have his phone number....but apparently she's too clever for that and found his number on his website). I told her I wouldn't be out too late though, because I was supposed to be getting in to Tulsa a little before 9:00.
This is where things went a little wrong though. There were bad thunderstorms in Houston that day, so almost all continental flights that go through Houston were delayed. Mine was delayed over two hours. They got me on a backup flight out of Houston though, since unless my connecting flight was delayed just as much, I wouldn't be able to make it. I finally got to Houston, and my backup plane was going to leave in about 15 minutes... and it was in another terminal. So I rushed to the other side of the airport and made it onto that flight in the nick of time.
I finally made it to Tulsa a little after 11:00. I was sure that Kristi was starting to worry where I was at this point. I even got a text message from Tyler saying that Kristi called him, and he covered, but I needed to "Fly faster." Sara house picked me up and drove me down to Kristi's apartment...
I'd originally wanted to think of something really cool to do for the proposal, but there were some things working against me. I didn't really know much about Tulsa, I'd be getting in rather late (probably later than Kristi would be willing to go out with her friends somewhere), and there was always the possibility that a flight could get in late ruining all my plans anyway. So it's good that I decided to just go with something simple...
So I showed up at the apartment and gave Kristi a call. At this point I just acted like I just got home from Tyler's - I apologized for being out so late, but told her that I got her something to make up for it, and it was just outside her door. At first it sounded like she wasn't buying it, but a few moments later she opened the door, and I just walked around the corner - she freaked out!
So we just hugged for a while - I was really happy that I'd surprised her so much, and she was pretty much hyperventilating, so I didn't even want to propose until she calmed down a bit. After a few minutes she invited me inside... I still think she wasn't really expecting a proposal. So I said "Oh, about that present I got ya..." then I knelled down... told her I loved her and wanted to be with her for ever, and asked her to marry me. I don't even remember exactly everything that was said. It was just one of those moments, but she said "of course", and tada, we were engaged.
We spent the rest of the weekend calling people and being very sick. I'd already been getting kinda sick by the time I got out there, and it got bad enough that I had southwest move my flight back a day to give me some time to get better. Hopefully when we get together in a few weeks in Ruidoso, we'll both be feeling much better.
Thursday morning I gave Ken a call while I was on my way to school and he was supposed to be on his way to work...No answer. So then i think to myself, "maybe he is still sleeping...uh oh....or maybe he took some sick time since he was feeling bad....hopefully he will call soon." I go about my business at school and don't hear from him, til I get on a computer and he IMs me to tell me he stayed home for a few hours because he felt bad and he left his phone at home and he is going over to his friend Tyler's house for dinner and a movie. He assures me he will get home soon so he can call me and we can talk. That is all fine and well.
I get home that evening going through Ken withdrawals and spending my time doing pilates and studying for my oral comps. It starts getting late and I start getting inpatient. I decide to look at Tyler's photography website to get his number. I find it and call Tyler to see if Ken has started his long drive home (45 minutes or so). Tyler answers and tells me they were watching some live anime movie (whatever live anime is???) and that the power is out due to the weather so his phone might act funny. I think to myself, "live anime??? that's weird...but that seems like something those two would watch." I offer to look up the weather on the internet so I could let him know if the storm had passed or not. Tyler tells me Ken is in the bathroom and asks me if he should harass him. I emphatically say "YES" then there is a click and the phone is disconnected. I call back...no answer. Again, I am unable to talk to my boyfriend.
So I start complaining to my roommate that Ken is out late and is sick and needs to pack for his trip to come see me. I really miss him and am mad at him at the same time....are you supposed to be mad at people because you miss them? I was trying not to be mad.
I get in bed and read a little more and think to myself "hmmm if he calls now, maybe i just won't answer. maybe i will just be asleep and he will learn his lesson." Its 11:30 and the phone rings. I don't think twice about answering :) He tells me he is sorry for getting in so late. I just say "ya." Then he says "to make up for getting in so late, I had something delivered to your front door." I think that's weird....but then again I did hear my roommate lock the door, so maybe she is in on something. I look out the peep hole and nothing is outside. I open the door and look on the ground expecting that there might be something there. Then I look up and Ken is walking around the corner. I just start crying. It didn't seem real that he was right there. I don't even let him inside because I am too busy hugging him. So we are hugging and I'm crying and having trouble breathing and finally take a step back so he can come inside (it was really cold out that night). I'm starting to catch my breath when he kneels down and I just starting crying and hyperventilating all over again. He tells me I am the love of his life and that he has known that for a long time and he wants to spend the rest of his life with me. I think he asked "will you marry me" but I can't really remember that part. But i do remember that i didn't say "Yes"..... I said "Of course!" He pulls out the ring from his coat pocket and I can't really see it because I was wearing my glasses and they were foggy from being smushed up against ken. But I don't care...i just want him to put it on my hand.
Luckily, a few days before, I was sitting in my car filling it with gas. As I was waiting, I noticed some finger nail clippers in the car and decided to fix a nail that was chipped and I proceeded to clip all my nails on my right hand but then the gas pump was done and I never got around to clipping my nails on my left hand so they were nice and long and pretty for showing off my beautiful new ring :)
Ken's Perspective: So for me this whole process started a while back. I really did want to try to sell my house before proposing since it'd just make things easier, but as time went on I started to get impatient about that. I started talking to Kristi's friend Sara House about ideas, and she mentioned at some point how Kristi thought my house HAD to sell before I'd propose. So, I figured I'd use that to my advantage.
The most important thing I needed to take care of though was a ring. And while Kristi was out visiting me, there really was no way I could get away without her knowing about it. Thankfully Sara came to the rescue again by coming out to Nashville to visit Kristi and another friend of theirs up in Kentucky. So I had one day to find a ring while they were out of town.
I knew that to be able to find a ring that fast I really had to have a lot of information going in. So I started out by researching stuff about diamonds late at night after Kristi went to bed and we were off the phone. It was actually pretty interesting how they grade things, and I think it being interesting to me made it really easy to remember. I also asked around quite a bit about different jewelers and who was good to go to. I got a lot of recommendations for Genesis Diamonds, which had just recently opened a store right behind where I worked.
So the day that Kristi went to Kentucky, I spent my lunch hour at Genesis. They didn't really have a huge selection at that store, but there was one ring there that I really liked a lot. The problem was that it was a designer ring, and I'd have to wait a few weeks for it to be built with the diamond that I picked out for it. That night I decided to go to Shane Co. with Jennifer to look around some more. Shane had a huge selection, but after two hours of searching, I couldn't really find exactly what I was looking for, and I found that me and Jennifer have very different tastes in rings ;). They did have one ring that was decent when it was paired with a wedding band though. And they said they could solder them together to look like one ring. That and the fact that they could have it done in a few days convinced to me to at least put $500 down to hold on to that ring until I decided (I could always get the money back).
So, the next day before lunch I took an hour off of work to go talk to Genesis again. Seeing the ring that I saw the previous day again reminded me how much I liked it - and how much more I liked it than anything at Shane. Genesis also had some good responses to some of the deals that Shane was offering. So, I figured I'd see what diamonds they had available. Being a small store, they didn't really have a ton of diamonds, but there was a diamond up at their larger Nashville store that seemed to fit what I was looking for. But, it would take another $500 deposit for them to bring it down for me to look at. So I went ahead and had them do that and went back to work.
Kristi was back in town again so I went out to lunch with her. On the way back I got a phone call from Genesis, and was like "Hey, can I call you back in 10 minutes..." Kristi asked who that was and I just told her it was someone from work. So as soon as I was back to work and Kristi was gone, I went over to Genesis again. I started looking at the diamond the brought down and really liked it a lot. I'd looked at quite a few diamonds at this point, and it really bothered me when I could find a flaw in them, even if it wasn't very apparent to the naked eye. So I really wanted to go with quality over size. After looking at that diamond for five or ten minutes in a loop, I couldn't find anything wrong with it, and decided to go with it.
Kristi was leaving in about a week, and since the ring was special ordered, I knew that I wasn't going to be able to propose while she was still in Nashville. But this way, I could surprise her even more by just showing up in Tulsa. Kristi really wanted to see me again before the family get-together in late February, so we decided to see each other the first week of February. I'd originally wanted to just show up out of the blue, but with Kristi having such a busy schedule, I figured maybe it was good that she'd already have the weekend blocked out... But I still wanted to surprise her somehow. So I thought, I could just show up a day early - her Fridays weren't usually very busy anyway. But would the ring be here on time?
I called up Genesis to see if they could give me a specific date that they knew that the ring would be in by, and they said January 30th. That just gave room for it to be one day late. They promised though, so I went ahead and got plane tickets for Thursday. I took the itinerary they emailed and changed all the dates and day names to fit Friday, and emailed that to Kristi, and From talking to her friends, I knew that she had no clue I was planning on proposing soon.
The ring came in about a week earlier than scheduled, so it was really nice to have that taken care of. I still needed a good plan for how to be unavailable while I was traveling on Thursday night. I didn't want to say that my phone was out of power, because I may still need to talk to people and I didn't want Kristi to call and get a ring. So, I told her on IM that I just forgot to bring it that day, and I was going to be out that night at Tyler's house (I picked Tyler because I knew she didn't have his phone number....but apparently she's too clever for that and found his number on his website). I told her I wouldn't be out too late though, because I was supposed to be getting in to Tulsa a little before 9:00.
This is where things went a little wrong though. There were bad thunderstorms in Houston that day, so almost all continental flights that go through Houston were delayed. Mine was delayed over two hours. They got me on a backup flight out of Houston though, since unless my connecting flight was delayed just as much, I wouldn't be able to make it. I finally got to Houston, and my backup plane was going to leave in about 15 minutes... and it was in another terminal. So I rushed to the other side of the airport and made it onto that flight in the nick of time.
I finally made it to Tulsa a little after 11:00. I was sure that Kristi was starting to worry where I was at this point. I even got a text message from Tyler saying that Kristi called him, and he covered, but I needed to "Fly faster." Sara house picked me up and drove me down to Kristi's apartment...
I'd originally wanted to think of something really cool to do for the proposal, but there were some things working against me. I didn't really know much about Tulsa, I'd be getting in rather late (probably later than Kristi would be willing to go out with her friends somewhere), and there was always the possibility that a flight could get in late ruining all my plans anyway. So it's good that I decided to just go with something simple...
So I showed up at the apartment and gave Kristi a call. At this point I just acted like I just got home from Tyler's - I apologized for being out so late, but told her that I got her something to make up for it, and it was just outside her door. At first it sounded like she wasn't buying it, but a few moments later she opened the door, and I just walked around the corner - she freaked out!
So we just hugged for a while - I was really happy that I'd surprised her so much, and she was pretty much hyperventilating, so I didn't even want to propose until she calmed down a bit. After a few minutes she invited me inside... I still think she wasn't really expecting a proposal. So I said "Oh, about that present I got ya..." then I knelled down... told her I loved her and wanted to be with her for ever, and asked her to marry me. I don't even remember exactly everything that was said. It was just one of those moments, but she said "of course", and tada, we were engaged.
We spent the rest of the weekend calling people and being very sick. I'd already been getting kinda sick by the time I got out there, and it got bad enough that I had southwest move my flight back a day to give me some time to get better. Hopefully when we get together in a few weeks in Ruidoso, we'll both be feeling much better.
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