The blog, the ring and the proposal.

[The blog.]

Here's the idea: Kelsey and I post bits and pieces of what God's doing, bits and pieces of our story so far and occasionally photographs, since I'm a photographer (supposedly.)

Begin entry number one.

[The ring.]

Kelsey wanted to look at rings, which is great. Phenomenal. Men should be held to high (biblical?) standards when it comes to many decisions, big and small, all of their lives. I am pretty sure very few of them are actually qualified to decide on an engagement ring, however.

We went to a pretty fancy store, looked at pretty fancy rings and got talked down to by a pretty fancy saleswoman. I think we were both fairly discouraged. We were talking later and Kelsey said, somewhat out of the blue,

"All those rings were ugly."

We decided that something super simple would be smart for a lot of reasons, including our plans to be overseas.

The next morning I got an email from Mrs. Vicki Haley (Kelsey's mentor and friend) that said she and Wayne had store credit at a jewelry store they'd like us to put towards a ring. Vicki inherited Wayne's mother's ring, traded it in, had rings made for the ladies in their family and still had some left over.

The very first ring Kelsey tried on at this jeweler was the style she was interested in, fit her without being sized, and was $45 LESS than our store credit. I think we smiled for about the next hour straight on our way home.

[The proposal.]

I packed pretty light: the ring, a bible, a camera and a quilt my great grandmother made.

We ate at our favorite Thai place for lunch and began the journey down I-35W. We stopped for coffee, sat for a bit, talked for a bit and drove for a bit. Our destination was the Botanic Gardens in Fort Worth, but I seriously had no idea if there would be a chance for solitude. I hadn't been since I was a kid.

We explored for a while. We saw a lot of people (like, 30 or so) dressed in blue jeans and white dress shirts attempting to be a happy family while being photographed. Oh man, whose idea was that?

So we wandered. And occasionally stopped and looked around.

Me: "Have we found it yet?"

Kelsey: "I don't know. What are we looking for?"

Me: "I don't know. I think we'll know when we find it."

So we kept wandering.

We found a somewhat secluded spot and I'm pretty sure we were both thinking,

"OMG let's do this, already."

We spread the quilt and we sat. I read Kelsey Proverbs 31 and she wept. (I'm surprised I made it all the way through it.) I closed the bible, I got on my knee and I said,

"I've intentionally waited until now to say this: I love you. Will you please marry me?"

I'm pretty sure she said yes. Neither of us can really remember...

And we took a self portrait with my camera on a rock on a timer. It was a really, really long timer for some reason, so the laughter in that one was not faked. We held our pose for about 30 seconds, started laughing and then the shutter clicked.

You can click to scroll through all the photos.

JT