As reported yesterday, April and I are now engaged 🙂  Since then, we’ve been drowning in congratulatory wishes from family and friends, for which we’re extremely grateful.  It’s a little overwhelming, and it’s had me a little verklempt, the amount of people who care about us — you sometimes forget just how many awesome people there are in your life and how many friendships you build up over the years!

I thought it might be a good idea to answer some of the frequently asked questions we’ve been getting over the past 24+ hours.  All of these are from my perspective… if April wants to chime in with her perspective, she has her own blog for that 😉

Q: Was she surprised?

A: She knew it was coming sooner or later, because we’ve talked about it at length, many times over.  She wouldn’t have moved her life to California if she didn’t know it was coming!  And she suspected that the moment of truth was getting very, very close.  But I caught her totally off guard when I actually popped the question.

Q: So how did you pop the question?

A: Long answer to a short question… I’ve had the ring since mid-June, and I had always targeted July 30th (today) as the specific day that’d I’d ask her.  July 30th has a special significance — it was one year ago today that we first said “I love you” to each other.  Romantic that I am, I thought there’d be no better day to propose.  Originally, I’d wanted to surprise her with a weekend getaway, and as I was making arrangements in secret for it, April RSVP’d to another event for this evening.  Plans foiled!  I couldn’t tell her “No, we can’t go to that” without revealing why I had other plans for us.

So, I still had it in my head that I’d propose on July 30th, but had to think of some other opportunity to do the deed.  And I was struggling with that.  Every time I would try to come up with a plan, I got anxious.  Not because I was nervous about proposing, but because I was scared to death of screwing it up!  I was definitely over-thinking things.  The more I would over-think things, the more anxious I would get.

Thursday night, we both had different plans.  I had dinner with my parents, who were in on the secret, and they asked me, “So when are you going to… you know?”  I said, “I’m still planning on Saturday.”  At that point, Saturday was still the date I wanted to do it, but there was no plan at the ready.

When both of us got home after our respective dinners Thursday night, as the night got later, we were in our bedroom, chatting away about this and that, being a little mushy and cutesy… the usual.  It was about 11:00pm, and we were both pretty tired — it was definitely time to go to sleep. But when April stepped into the bathroom to get ready for bed, I was struck with the thought, “Why not just ask her now?”

And that’s what I did.  I snuck the ring under her pillow, and when she got into bed, I started telling her how much I loved her, and she mumbled back, “I love you too, and I’m sleepy.”  She started to move to turn off the bedside lamp, but I held her back and asked, “Do you want to know how much I love you?”  I pulled the ring out from under her pillow and showed it to her. Then I asked if she would marry me.  And by now you know her answer 🙂

Q: Didn’t get down on one knee?

A: Nope, that would’ve been awkward to do when I was already lying down!

Q: For the ring, did you go to Jared?

A:  No, I did not go to Jared!  The ring was a custom design at a local jeweler, with a diamond that was my great-grandmother’s.

Q: Have you set a date?

A:  No, not yet.  We’re talking about it, and we expect to make a decision fairly quickly.  We want to get the ‘when’ and the ‘where’ locked in early.

Q: Have you registered anywhere?

A: No, not yet. Does that mean you want to get us presents???