CR and I have discussed our future together a lot over the past few years - sometimes the medical school timeline forces your hand in those conversations. We decided after only a few months of dating to go to hospitals close together for our clinical rotations. Now we have decided to go through the couples match together. Getting married and so on came up quite often, but always kind of in the hypothetical.
So although I knew we were headed in that direction, I did not see any of this happening this weekend. To be honest, I had a feeling that it was going to happen in January just because that is when we are no longer separated after our six months living apart. Basically, I went into this weekend not even thinking about rings and engagements, I was just excited to spend a whole weekend together!
I'm currently in York, PA and he's back home in Ohio this month, so we had decided months ago that we weren't going to go more than two weeks without seeing each other, so we had this weekend in State College (about half way between us) planned for months. We met at our hotel Saturday morning, and immediately drove over to the Corner Room for brunch. Unfortunately, we got there right as they stopped serving brunch! So we got lunch instead, mac & cheese for me, beef on weck for him. Then we spent a few hours just walking around State College and the Penn State campus. As a Big 10 alum, I love visiting all the other campuses, and was excited to check this one off the list - it's a gorgeous campus! I didn't think we really had any plans for the day, and because we had both talked about wanting to see the new Dan Brown movie, Inferno, I suggested we go see it. CR got a bit weird then and said that we should go on a hike instead. We had already talked about doing that, so I didn't think much of that either.
We decided to go up to Mount Nittany Conservancy, which supposedly has a few great look outs over the town and campus. We drove up, parked our car, and basically just started walking. Well, we walked for like three miles and weren't getting any closer to going up the hill, which is when we realized we weren't on the right trail at all. The thing is, neither of us really cared! We were having fun just walking through the woods, discussing all sorts of things like recent podcasts and interesting stories from work and basically just enjoying our time together. We spotted a really old Jeep deep in some shrubs, and we both brought up how my dad would go try to take a closer look (because he has an old Jeep that needs a new windowpane) and somehow that evolved into joking about why CR would be calling my dad. We walked into a clearing, and then he started saying all these nice things that wasn't new for him, but it felt different somehow. I wasn't initially sure exactly what was happening until he reached into his pocket and pulled out the ring. Everything just kind of went black for me at that point. I do remember saying yes though! Then there was a lot of kissing and hugging and trying to believe that this actually just happened!
We did eventually find our way back to the beginning of the trail and realized we missed the turn to the right trail exactly three feet into the hike. We hiked up to actual look out (it was so steep!), where CR later told me he initially was going to propose. When we got up there and saw how many people were there, we both agreed that our lost-hike-in-the-woods alone was exactly how it was supposed to happen.
After forcing a college kid to take our picture, we quickly drove back to our hotel to call our families. I had asked CR to bring my nail polish from back home since my current manicure was chipping, so I did the most girly thing and quickly changed my nail polish - if I am going to make people stare at my hands, I may as well have fresh nail polish on! Both of our parents knew what was happening (CR had called everyone earlier in the week), and so were quick to pick up our phone calls! I wish we could have been able to celebrate in real life with our families afterwards, instead of the delayed celebrating we will be doing over the next month, but we at least had FaceTime! His parents were so excited, as were mine. Next we called my youngest sister, who has been pushing for an engagement from the first day she met CR. She was studying at Panera, and burst into happy tears when we told her the news - it was my favorite reaction of the whole day! We were able to reach all of our immediate family members and closest friends, and were just giddy about the whole thing.
CR is my best friend and favorite person in the whole world, and I'm very excited for this next phase of our relationship. I could not ask for a more caring, understanding, funny, and kind man to spend my life with. He has and continues to make me a better person, and I'm so excited to see what our future holds.
I don't intend for this blog to become a wedding blog at all, but will periodically write a post here and there about our wedding planning process! We've (CR says I have, but he's just as actively filling it out) already started the spreadsheets and venue searching, but have plenty of time as we are currently planning for late spring of 2018. Can't wait to share more with you in the future!
