7-22-2006

This date was almost five years ago. It was a Saturday. And it was the day Kody proposed to me.

We had decided about a month prior to this date that we wanted to get married. We talked on the phone every night before bed, saw each other every day, thought about each other all the time...we were crazy kids in love. So Kody told me that my job for the summer was to learn how to cook and save the money I was making at my new teller job instead of buying shoes. In return, he would save up to buy a ring and to find us a place to live.

So I was expecting a proposal in the near future, but I was not expecting it to happen the way it did.

On Saturday, July 22nd, 2006 Kody suggested that we go on a hike to the Cecret Lake. He had never done this hike, and I had only done it once before, but as I mentioned we were crazy kids in love and everything seemed possible. We drove up the canyon and parked Kody's truck in the parking lot at the bottom of the mountain. Then we began our memorable hike. We followed the signs that led the way to the lake for a while, but eventually we somehow got lost. Or maybe it wasn't that we were lost, we were just impatient and felt like we should be at the lake by now. It was hot and we were tired and thirsty (we did not come well-prepared for this journey). My feet were killing me (hiking in heels is not wise) and there were bugs so of course I was starting to get irritable. We decided to turn around and hike back down the mountain without finding the Cecret Lake.

As we got close to the bottom of the mountain, a little creek suddenly appeared out of nowhere. We must have come down the mountain a different way than we went up because I did not remember this creek being there. Kody, being the brave and outdoor-sy one in our relationship, decided to cross the creek first and instructed me to follow in his exact steps so that if he slipped I would know to stop. Across the creek he went as I slowly teetered behind him. As luck would have it, I slipped anyway and landed right on my bum. I was fully expecting him to laugh at me as I sat there on a moss covered rock with soaking wet pants. But he didn't. Confused at not hearing laughter, I looked up at him, and to this day I will always remember the look on his face. He makes the same face now when Kailee gets hurt. It was a look of pain because I was in pain. He rushed to help me up and make sure I was ok. I was fine, just humiliated to be walking down a mountain with wet pants in front of fellow hikers and a whole campsite.

As it turns out, Kody was planning to propose when we got to the Cecret Lake. But he was so nervous about it that he left the ring in the glovebox of his truck. Imagine my surprise when the proposal I had envisioned since kindergarten involved the phrase "look in the glovebox."

I have long since teased and complained to Kody that he proposed wrong. But in these five years we have spent together I have learned that he did it right. He didn't do something cheesey because WE are not cheesey. He didn't do it in public because WE like to keep things small. It was very US.

So Kody, I hope you know I wouldn't have had it any other way. And the words of a card we once read at the Hallmark store still ring true: I would rather do nothing with you, than something with anyone else.