January 9 –13, 2019
Walt Disney World, Florida
Coronado Springs Resort
ARRIVAL: CORONADO SPRINGS RESORT
Dave proposed in our home on December 22, 2017 in front of one of our Christmas trees.
Dave proposed to me on the eve of the Christmas holiday weekend in 2017.
Rewind a week and lets look back at the weekend prior.
On Saturday, Dec. 16, we had decided to go out on a date night. We decided to go to Phipp’s Conservatory to see the holiday lights and I had been wanting to take him to Emporio in downtown Pittsburgh.
Me not thinking I decided to wait to that day to look online to check out information about tickets just to find out that all of the times were SOLD OUT. Well that scratched our plans and we decided to push it off a week. At this point I don’t remember what we ended up doing that night. But that is neither here or there.
Moving forward, Monday morning comes along and it’s not just morning… it is before dawn.
Dave wakes up and he is antsy. He decided to get ready to start his day. Normally he leaves me alone and just heads into work. But on this particular morning he decided to wake me up as well. “I can’t sleep. I am going to just leave now.” I look at him all perplexed with one eye open and state, “are you OK?” He continued with “I haven’t seen my mom in a while so I am going to go visit with her and have coffee with her when she wakes up.” He leans over kisses me on my forehead and heads out the door. I roll over and fall back to sleep.
The week continues on and I keep getting the cold shoulder all week from Dave and he seemed to be on edge the whole time. He continued acting weird each day.
I tried to reschedule our plans for weekend but I couldn’t get straight answers. He finally agrees and I purchase our tickets on Thursday for Phipp’s on Saturday.
The next day he calls. Very sketchy like with a stutter in his voice. He asks if we can cancel because he would like to go visit is mom at his gram’s house on Saturday night.
At this point I am starting to get irritated by his weird behavior and the cancelation of our plans, again. I was like, what is going on? With not much reason than he just wants to see his mom and gram, I continued to off load my tickets to my mother and she took her friend Chris.
The text message conversation between Dave and I in the afternoon of Dec. 22, 2017.
Later on that same day I get a text. He sends me a picture of a Mickey Mouse figure that he had purchased for me. Followed by another text telling me to check the security camera when I have a chance. Once I look at the camera I noticed that he placed a stuffed teddy bear in front of the camera. He tells me that he did this so that “[I] can’t spy on [him].” He then asks if we have any more wrapping paper. I proceed to tell him where it is.
Another thing I noticed when I looked at the camera was that he was in his comfy clothes as he passed by the corner of the camera.
I then continued on with my afternoon.
The end of the day comes and I head home for the holiday weekend. I call and tell him I’m on my way home and he tells me to not head home to quickly. He apparently still needed to wrap my gift. I in turn head to the grocery store.
I finally pull up to the driveway and notice that all the blinds are up to the livingroom and the front door is open. As I pull in I notice he has the fireplace on the TV. I get out of the car and decided to walk through the front door instead of opening the garage. As I get closer to the door I notice he has music playing.
Once I am inside I notice he had cleaned the livingroom and kitchen. He also had a few candles lit around the room. He walks around the corner and he is dressed up in jeans, a collared shirt and brown dress shoes. I looked at him like where are you going?
I am standing in the kitchen trying to go about my business, trying to plan dinner. But, he won’t stop staring at me. I look at him and he asks me...
“Can I get you something to drink?”
I look at him in frustration and place my hands on my head as if I was preparing to pull out my hair and said to him “who are you and what have you done with Dave?”
For starters the only time he asks me that question normally is when we are getting ready to sit down to eat dinner. At this point in time, I had just walked in the door and barely even thought about what I was going to make. I continued to say to him that I live here too and I know where I can find a drink. “What is going on?” I had exclaimed.
He looks at me realizing that he is not hiding anything very well at this point. He answers my question with “well the only way I know how to get Dave back is to just get this over with.” I look at him with a puzzled look as he grabs my shoulders and guides me to be in front of the main Christmas tree in the livingroom and proceeds to get down on his knee.
With his eyes locked on mine he says to me “yes, this is really happening.”
And I said “YES!”
Afterwards he turned on Tale as Old as Time from Beauty and the Beast and we danced in the livingroom.
At this point in time I realized that all he wanted to do on Saturday was spread the news with our families. :-)
I announced our engagement publicly Christmas day on social media. Using this image and the message... "One of these is not like the others!!!"
We went out on our first date on July 16, 2011.
Of course I had to make sure we meet up somewhere in a public place. I wasn’t going to have him drive to my house on a first date. I’m not crazy now. I needed to make sure he wasn’t crazy first.
With a little digging on an old iPhone I found this text message conversation from our first date.
So we meet up at River’s Casino.
Of course he beat me there… we all know I was ran a bit late. I know this comes as a surprise to no one.
But I did let him know once I did finally park. I asked him where he wanted to meet and said to “just come down the elevator.”
Once I got off the elevator he meet me right at the security check.
We then proceeded to head over to one of the bars to have a drink. Looking back now the details are a bit blurry but if I had to guess... I had a cranberry vodka and he had a Jack and Coke. We didn’t get to fancy.
After our drinks we headed out of the casino and strolled down the Riverwalk towards Heinz Field.
The day was beautiful with a nice breeze in the air.
On our first date we took a walk along the Riverwalk from Rivers Casino to Rivertowne for dinner.
A few moments into our walk as people were passing us on their bikes he stopped to look at me. He asked if he may give me a kiss. I replied with yes and he gave me a nice sweet peck. Before we continued along the path.
Our destination was not too far. We just walked down to Rivertowne to grab a bite to eat.
We walked in and were seated in a booth across from the bar.
The details are fuzzy on what we ordered that day, but minor details.
All that matters was the conversation.
Through our conversation we realized we were opposites in a lot of ways but we were ok with that. For instance, he liked his 80s music and I liked my heavy metal.
We just moved along talking about this and that. Until he mentioned the kicker…
“I have an action figure collection.”
I let him wait it out a bit, before I responded with “I have a beanie baby collection.”
We both chuckled and moved along to the next topic.
After our meal we walked back to the casino where I believe we may have had another drink and played a game or two before we went our separate ways.
We ended up going out on a few more dates before we finally had the talk…
The Facebook talk.
We were sitting in the parking lot drinking a few beers, tailgating. We were going to the 2011 Steelers home opener on Sept. 11, courtesy of Brian. I was sitting with my feet dangling out of the back of his tan Ford Escape when we decided to make it official.
Facebook official. ;)
We did wait a few more days before we actually made the update on Facebook.
Once upon a time on the evening of Jan. 29, 2011. A girl was invited to a party of a male co-worker. “Snowmageddon II” – Party Before the Meltdown was the event. The girl was accompanied by another girl, who was also a co-worker and a cubical mate. They drove together. For this party was in a faraway land to which neither girl had been before.
The two girls had a enjoyable evening. The night was full of beverages that were adult in nature, people were met, conversations were had, games were played and laughter filled the night.
One game in particular was flip cup.
How to play flip cup.
Fast forward to a little less than a month to Feb. 26, 2011.
There was another event. This time it was Birthdayyymaggedon 25.0. But, this time the girl decided to stay home and her cubical mate went alone.
The following Monday the two girls were talking in their cubical gossiping about what transpired at the gathering.
The story was that there was a guy the was asking about her friend that was with her at the last event. He was wondering where she was and why she didn’t come.
The girl asks “which guy was asking about me?”
“The roommates brother,” the cubical mate exclaimed.
The girl replies, “he was cute!”
The girl then investigates further with the male co-worker to whom invited her to find out more about the guy.
The two devise a plan. They went to a hockey game together. Then the plan was to get the guy to join them for linner for the two to properly meet.
But the guy had other plans with other friends that day.
Fast forward again to Jul. 9, 2011. Yet again, imagine that there was another party. This time “No You’re Drunk” Party was the title.
This time the cubical mate and the girl swapped and the cubical mate stayed home.
On the way to the party the girl’s heart was racing she was nervous. She had to stop herself and tell herself that “everything will be ok.”
She proceeded to the party. This party was much like the last with drinks, games and laughter.
Again the game was flip cup, but this time, the guy pulled the girl aside and said….
“You are on my team.”
This is a photo that Dave took of me from that night, it has since been his caller id photo on his phone for when I call.
