Yes, I really am engaged.

And this is how he asked me.

On Sunday, Hollis asked me if I would like to go out to a fancy dinner with him on Tuesday night. Half of my brain was immediately thinking, "Proposal! Engagement! Yay!" while the other half was working very hard at ignoring the first half. I managed to say "Yeah, and we should dress to match because it's more fun that way!" Because it is.

So Tuesday came along. We'd decided to go with black and green - mostly because I wanted to wear my "little black dress" that I'm currently borrowing from my sister Nat. Hollis had made reservations at a restaurant called Anthony's in Kirkland. It's right on the waterfront with a view of Lake Washington. Dinner was really nice, especially since *someone* had given us a gift card to the place. (Hollis was trying to throw me off and said his friend Kyle "happened" to give him a card to Anthony's, but really my awesome, incredible, amazing roommate Carrie Marie had given him a gift card.)

After dinner we went down to a park on the water front. As we are walking along, I see that the park mostly consists of a large gazebo that is conveniently empty. The park was mostly deserted, which I think was because it was raining (not that hard though). As we get closer, Hollis comments, "I think someone is playing music," and I notice that there is music playing. He starts dancing as we walk along. I also notice that there are candles set up inside the gazebo, but I pretend that I don't see them.

Then Hollis comments, "Oh, look, candles." As if they just happen to be there. We walk into the gazebo and have a dance party. There were three songs that played that were of the peppy variety, and we had fun dancing to them. Though I couldn't dance as intensely as I wanted because I had just finished eating dinner, and I can't dance on a full stomach. But I had fun.

Then, when we were both quite winded, Hollis (pretending that he didn't know what songs were on the playlist) said, "I hope the next one is a slow song." And then our song started playing. (Yes, we have a song - "Leaving on a Jet Plane.") I didn't know that we had a song until it began to play. And as soon as I heard it, I realized, "Hey, we have a song." And I also realized that I was actually going to be engaged.

So we danced and Hollis sang in my ear. And then, right after the third verse, he gets down on one knee and proposed. I just about cried. I didn't, but I almost did.

I said yes, and Hollis pulled a ring box out of his pocket, and inside was this beautiful ring he had made:

You see, I had a dream the week before that Hollis had proposed to me with a ring that was of lower quality than a paperclip, and he had purchased the ring. In my dream, I was frustrated because he'd spent money on it. So Hollis made this ring and informed me that it was better than my dream ring - it was made from a paperclip!

One final note: Carrie Marie and Maren, two of my very good friends, helped set up the candles and the boom box with music. And then they hid in the bushes and filmed the entire thing. And both of them got very wet, but they are awesome!