if you:
a) do not live in Niverville
b) do not have facebook
c) do not read Ruth's blog
d) have not talked to anyone close to me in the last 30ish hours

THEN: you may not know that yesterday after church ERIC PROPOSED TO ME!!!! surprised?? maybe not.....but i was!!!! wow, how amazing! it hits me every couple of minutes that i am actually engaged to be married. i will be a wife. a wife!! wow. here are a couple of pictures from the happiest day yesterday:

we're cool

shiloh just cannot believe that i'm engaged!

so how did it happen? well, to be honest...i've told this story A LOT/MANY/TONS of times already...but i would love to tell it again! we had church that morning & immediately after the service finished our friend Char came up to us and said "ok, so i have a hankering for hanging out with you two and a bucket of chicken. so how about we go to the city, buy some chicken and hang out in a park somewhere." i was totally down with that...but Eric didn't seem too excited about it...so i was like, ok, no chicken or whatever! no big deal! but when Char gets an idea in her head....she gets an idea!!!! so she kept on bringing it up & i guess eventually eric had to take her aside & say LET IT GO!! so we slowly made our way out of the church, talking with friends, etc. and then Eric came up to me and said "oh, i just talked to my Aunt Em & she has some sunday school stuff that i need for teaching sunday school next week." i had no idea...so i was like ya sure, let's go there! ****note to you readers, this was all a ploy to get me out to the country near the railroad tracks**** so we're driving to his aunt and uncles house, i've never been there before, which is a good thing b/c it turns out we were going the LONG way there. just before we get to the train tracks eric starts looking at the heat gauge on his car & asks me if it looks like his engine is cold. ok, so i know NOTHING about cars....but it looked pretty normal to me! so i told him it looked fine, but you know, he was so sure it just didn't feel right, so we stopped in the middle of the road (note: it was a dirt road, so it was ok to stop in the middle of it) he popped his hood and then started looking at the engine. "hey, Mel, come and look that this!" so i get out of the car & start looking at the engine. i look at him and realize that he's on one knee and asking me to marry him!!! WHOA! i think i said "are you serious???" a couple of times & then finally YES!

we spent about 1/2 an hour at the rail road tracks...trying to get it all to sink in, we were quite unsuccessful, so we then made our rounds telling family & then friends all the happy news! :)

so there you have it! there will be an october 2008 wedding. xoxoxox