Start from the very beginning (a very good place to start)

I have a tendency to jump into things head first with great enthusiasm, so I just realized after all this blogging, I haven't told the story of my engagement here on this blog !

PICTURE IT ! San Francisco 2007 ( previous line to be said in the manner of Sophia Patrillo of Golden Girls fame) Very early on a Saturday morning at the beginning of August (the 4th to be exact and I do mean early, like 6:30 am. ) I wake up to hear some noise at the door, then my phone starts ringing. It was the (at that point) boyfriend.
"hello ?" I rasped in my groggy half sleep state
"come let me in" he says, an urgent tone to his voice.
Slightly confused and still in a brain fog, I respond "OK, I'm coming".
I stalk, zombie like down the stairs, undo the chain on the door that was keeping him out, half hug, half fall on him from drowsiness and ask "what are you doing
here ?" My reply was a simple "go back to sleep"
Still to tired to really protest, or ask more questions, I did as I was told and returned to bed.

At around 8:30 or so I am beginning to rouse again, and am slightly aware of fabulous food scents in the air. After about 20 minutes of being in and out of sleep I get a kiss on the forehead telling me to wake up. When I open my eyes I see him standing there with breakfast for me. Biscuits, bacon, eggs, fruit, orange juice, the works. We sit and eat on my bed for a while, then he tells me we are going to go go-Kart racing, which is something neither one of us has done.

We drive about half an hour to the Go Kart place, have a great time zooming around the track in our racing suits and helmets. We then went and had some lunch. As we head back up home, I get a call from my friend Stephanie who says she wants to meet up at the beach later, but she's not sure what time. We head back to my apartment, where we just chill and helps me out with some laundry. Stephanie calls, and says she's going to be there at the beach and come on by. I ask Colin if he wants to go and he says yeah it could be good. I tell him I don't really want to go because it's all yucky and foggy and grey out.

He convinces me to go, and as we're walking we see a sandcastle in the distance (a pretty big one too) so I mention it, and say cool someone built a sandcastle ! Colin stops to use the phone for a second, and we keep walking, as we pass the sandcastle he stops and we turn and look at it.
spelled out in sticks is "will you marry me Cara"


He then got down on one knee, (it's still hotly debated whether or not I actually said the words "yes" right then) I say I chocked them out through the tears, and he didn't hear. (There were a lot of tears as evidenced by the make up all over his white sweatshirt)

He says he had to ask me when he stood up to hug me after putting the ring on my finger. He then read me a note that he had written to me when we first started dating that talked about the journey we were beginning on, and how excited he was. After I made tearful calls to my family and friends We then went back home and changed and had dinner at the Beach Chalet restaurant.


That night we stayed at a lovely
boutique hotel downtown hotel Monaco.

You maybe wondering about the significance of the other activities of the day. They were all things I'd mentioned (even jokingly) he never does (IE: why don't you ever do _____ for me ?) He had a list and everything he did that day was part of that list. Cooked breakfast in bed, make the plans for the whole day, help me with the laundry, the dishes, send me extra sweet text messages, etc. The day before around the time I was leaving work I received a text message 24 hours of I never begins now. I texted back a "?" and got the response "I love you so deeply".
The whole thing was part of what he later called 24 hours of "I never" so thoughtful !

Over the next few days we continued to spread the news to people, and I just kept staring at the sparkly bling on my finger, and thinking about what a great guy I got, and how lucky I am.