The Long Awaited Update Entry

... I’m engaged!

Paul arrived in Italy Friday, August 20th. He had some very close calls with his connecting flights, but thank the Lord he made it to Italy in one piece and on time. I was so excited!!! Paul was so tired.

That afternoon/evening, I showed him around Firenze (aka we went grocery shopping), we listened to live music in the piazza, and had a nice dinner at my apt. Later while we were talking, Paul commented on all of the people asking him about his intentions in Italy. Questions like, "Are you going to propose?" Or suggestions from coworkers like, "Hey! You should propose when you go to Italy." I told him I was getting a lot of the same questions and that I was trying not to think about it, because I didn't want to be disappointed if it didn't happen. He shattered any ideas of romantic Italian proposals very quickly when he said it wasn't going to happen in Italy cause he didn't have the money after this expensive two week vacation. Totally understandable.

That was just the beginning of the head games.

On Saturday, we headed towards Pisa for some posing with the tower and picnic lunch in the shade of the baptistery.




After Pisa, we caught the train to Cinque Terre (more specifically, to Vernazza.) Earlier that month, I had found probably the last room in all of Cinque Terre and it happened to be super cool! We had to hike like a million stairs to get there, but we had TWO balconies! Here are some shots of the view.



We headed down the million and a half stairs to go swimming. The water felt amazing and we floated around on my yellow floatie for a long time, exploring rock caves and climbing around on the rocks. It was such a beautiful day!

After swimming, we went back to our super awesome room to get ready for dinner. We played around with the self timer on the porch to show off the beautiful view.



Then Paul started joking about buying a cheap ring in Vernazza just so we could say we "got engaged in Italy." I was not amused at all. Then he had this "great idea" to grab his key ring from his backpack and propose with it as a placeholder. When he went back into the room, I was mentally and physically rolling my eyes. And when he came back with the key ring I was flat out annoyed. Paul told me to follow him to the terrace because he actually wanted to fake propose to me with this piece of metal.

So picture this: my boyfriend, on one knee, sun setting over Vernazza, beautiful ocean and mountains, fake proposing with a 5 cent key ring. You can imagine the look on my face. (Paul said I looked "pissed.") Then I said "You're kidding me, are you really going to use that ring?" To which he replied, "How about this one?" as he pulled a sparkly ring from his right pocket. I looked at him again and just said, "Shut up." He told me he loved me more than anything in the world and then asked me to marry him. (I said YES!)



Paul had been working with my parents since I left on the ring and proposal. The center stone is my grandmother’s. I LOVE it.