February is Now Officially Grown-Up Decisions Month

So it's been a bit since I've had time to write because we've had quite a bit of life-changing stuff happening at Casa Rizzbanik. For starters, the engagement. Followed only two weeks later by the purchase of our first house. Yes, I know. We're insane. We didn't plan the timing that way, but cest la vie. First things first, the proposal story:



During the never ending Snowpocalypse of 2010, there was a State of Emergency that started at midnight on February 10th. Since neither Alex nor I have companies that close during state of emergency, we both waved goodbye to our respective PTO days and opted to spend the day in our pajamas. I started my day by emailing work to tell them that the four feet of snow outside would be keeping me from getting in today and then promptly calling my Mom so she didn't freak out and think I was insane and attempting to travel to work. I also remember in this conversation telling her that she should be jealous because in light of the fact that we probably wouldn't have power for some portion of the day (as there were already 6,000+ power outages in NCC alone at that point), Alex had bought her most favorite game and we were planning to play a few rounds. My mom is a Scrabble fiend. She actually was a little jealous.

So after breakfast, we both sat down and played a round or two of good ol' Scrabble. Since there was really nothing better to do, I think we were actually working on game three when Alex pensively stared at his wordbank for quite a while. I was getting annoyed because he was taking forever. Eventually he tentatively threw down his word. I glanced at it and was all prepared to get mad because one of the "letters" he threw down wasn't a letter at all...but then it registered. He had spelled out "L-O-V-E" with the engagement ring as the "O." I know I looked at him puzzledly, but I couldn't tell you much of what was said after that because I was totally overwhelmed and happy. Once things had calmed down a bit, I got the whole story which he had been bursting to tell me for about a week at that point.

The previous Thursday, Alex had gone to the jeweler and picked up the ring after work (Again I had no idea...I just thought he was teaching at the Kung Fu school like always). Being excited about his new purchase, he decided to go over to his parents and tell them that he was planning to propose and get their blessing. Unfortunately his Dad was away on business, but he did get to have dinner with his Mom.

After dinner with his own Mom, he then headed over to see my Mom. Apparently she wasn't home, so he waited ("like a stalker" is how he put it) in his car outside. She came home a short while later and he got out of the car and her immediate response was first, "Do you need to borrow the second car?" quickly followed by "What's wrong with Annie, is everything okay?". Being the wonderful lady that she is, she took the news very well and was supportive of Alex's decision. So two important people down, two to go. Mom-mom and Pop-pop.

Alex headed there on Friday. but Mom-mom wasn't home, so Alex talked to Pop-pop. Pop-pop of course gave his blessing along with lots of other marriage advice including what to look for in a house and the benefits of a joint bank account. The one thing he made sure to throw in was the fact that he was glad that Alex was going to ask me to marry him because he thought that was what my Dad would have wanted. I cried when Alex told me that.

So it turns out that Alex told all these folks (and Pop-pop told Mom-mom who was PISSED that she missed Alex's visit) that he was going to propose on Thursday, Feb 11 — our third dating anniversary. Well, it turns out that the ring was burning a hole in his pocket and he absolutely couldn't wait any longer, so he put his plan into action a day early. It was a lot of fun to call friends and family that day because even though they knew it was coming, they were expecting to hear from me the following day. I think I spent literally 5 hours on the phone that day telling different people and eventually had to give in and send a mass email. I really wanted to be able to call everyone individually, but it was literally impossible. Especially when after the 3rd phone call, I was getting phone calls! I guess good news travels fast :-)