Engagement Weekend!

Well, Travis finally gave in to my “hinting” (that’s how I’ll put it) and asked me to marry him. Since I had been “discussing” it with him, I figured that he wouldn’t be asking me anytime soon because it wouldn’t be a surprise, but he asked! So I guess that was how he manged to surprise me – and it caught me off guard because I really didn’t see it coming. Here’s how the weekend went:

As I’ve said before, I love October… and basically anything having to do with Fall. Last May (yes, that long ago), I reserved a spot to go camping at Enota towards the end of October anticipating that the leaves would be changing colors that weekend. I was very excited about the trip, but quickly became disappointed when we saw that it would be raining all day on Friday and there would be near freezing temperatures Saturday night.

We decided to stay at home on Friday (which is when I made my cape for Halloween) instead of trying to set up camp in the cold rain. On Saturday morning, we woke up early, packed lots of warm clothes, and went up there for one night. I was worried that it wouldn’t be worth the drive and hassle of setting up camp for one night, but we didn’t really lose a lot of time since we got there around noon on Saturday. I’m glad I booked the campsite early – I was able to get the one with the waterfall that was right across from it.

After setting up camp, we hiked to one of the two nearby waterfalls and walked around the campground to explore. Bailey had a great time running around and there were so many funny “first experience” moments for him, even though he camps all the time…

The first is that Bailey noticed fish for the first time. Enota had a fish pond and I got Bailey to look at the water when all of the fish darted in one direction. He went nuts! He desperately wanted to go after them, but he is too chicken to jump into the water off of a dock even though he loves to swim. He did eventually walk into the water to try to catch one, but once he was in the water, he couldn’t see them anymore.

After his adventure with the fish, Bailey walked over to a swing bench and jumped up on it. This is normal behavior for Bailey – he prefers to sit on things, not on the ground. However, he quickly discovered that it was a “moving bench” as it swung away from him as he jumped up. Unfortunately for Bailey, he panicked and jumped down, so the swing came back towards him and smacked him in his butt. Poor thing… we were laughing so hard that we couldn’t even console him! Travis did eventually hold the bench for him so we could get a picture of him on it.

Saturday afternoon, Travis and I threw a football some and I learned how to throw left handed (not well though). We tried to play again at night, but it was too dark (which was nice for the stars) and it was also really cold – so we had to go back near the campfire.

Alright, finally to the main event… on Sunday around noon Travis and I decided to hike to the other waterfall at Enota after packing up all of our gear. It was a tough walk up a hill to it (mainly from the rain because the ground was slippery), but we made it. Once there, it was really nice – we sat on a big rock in front of it and Bailey played around in the pool under the waterfall and looked for fish. We sat around for a while enjoying the view and listening to the waterfall while Bailey roamed around and got us muddy.

Then, Travis turned to me and told me that he had a problem. I was thinking that his thermal underwear was riding up or that he needed to use the restroom, but he seemed more serious and hesitant in his responses than usual so I started to catch on. He then asked me if I would say yes even if he didn’t have a ring with him. I said that I probably would, so he then attempted to get on one knee. This was the cute part – it was impossible to get on a knee where we were, so he had to put one foot on a log over the pond and lean onto the rock I was sitting in with one of his knees. It was close enough for me - YES!

As for the ring part, I had something very specific in mind that I wanted, so Travis knew that I would want to be there when he picked one out. It took three weeks to get what I wanted, but here it is…