Just another Tuesday...or maybe not???

I woke up this morning at 545am and went out to my living room at 615am. It's normally completely pitch black dark on the way to my front door....to where I use the light from my iPhone to light the hallway. But, this morning, one of the lights near the front door was on. It's a good thing it was on, because I would have completely walked past and not noticed this.

On the back of the couch was two red roses and a note with my name on it. Now, if this was a normal occurrence, I probably wouldn't have immediately thought "Oh my gosh!! Today is the day!!", but I haven't ever woken up to roses in my living room....so my next thought was "Eek!! I look awful. I need to change!".

And so starts another Tuesday...
But this morning is already different than most.
Perhaps by the setting of the sun....
It will be a day that you never forget.

!!!!!!!!!!!

I was excited, freaking out, trying to keep quiet all at the same time. I was SO thankful that Emily was about to arrive at my house, as I was taking her to the airport. I calmly walked out to her car as she parked it on the street, told her that she had to come inside and see something....and when she got inside, she had to keep quiet and not freak out too. We hugged and jumped up and down a few times, and started to predict out how the regular Tuesday would end. I knew, I think that was Brett's intention, but I refused to jump to any conclusions.

We went out to my car, and right as I opened the door...I found another rose and note.

Sell some software today.
As hard as it may be....
Try to go about this Tuesday like normal.
Don't forget your camera.

More hugging and squealing ensued as we tried to remain calm on the drive to the airport. (Side note: My security key fob didn't work last week at work, and so instead of coming back to my house, I called Brett at 625am and asked him to let me into his house, since it was closer. So, last night, as Brett was leaving my house, he said to me "Whatever you do, don't call me tomorrow morning at 630.". I didn't think anything of it, but guess I thought it was a little strange since the doors had worked for over a week now.)

So, Emily and I decided that it was a good idea for me to text Brett instead of calling at 627am.

Just like any other Tuesday...on my way to work. Going to sell some software. Not calling you at 627am. Love you. :)

After dropping Emily off at the airport, and promising to keep her posted on the rest of the day....I drove to my office. For some reason, I thought to turn on all the lights before going to my desk today (something I don't normally do), and it was a good thing, because sitting on my desk, were two roses.

I didn't mention it yet, but on all of the roses that I'd received so far, there was a little white tag tied to it with red ribbon, and on each side of the paper, was something written on it.

So far....the roses had spelled out...

Side 1: I LOVE YOU ANNEMARIE. YOU ARE
Side 2: B R E TT -A

So...I'm at work...I have this "secret" and it's killing me. I don't want to really say anything because I only have part of a story to tell. One that I am not 100% sure of the ending. I was glad to have some things that I had to take care of for work to try and keep me distracted.

When Danielle got to the office (one of my roommates works with me now), I calmly went to her desk and asked her "So, did you see anything out of the ordinary last night before you went to bed in the living room? Like some roses and a note?".

She didn't know what I was talking about, so I showed her the pictures that I'd taken that morning and told her about the other roses that I'd gotten so far. She got really excited too! I sat back down at my desk, tried to concentrate. I had to share with someone what I knew already, and so I replied to an email that Renae and I had going, and then snuck in the bit about what had happened already this morning. She called me right away and my voicemail was something like "Ohmygosh! Ohmygosh! Ohmygosh! I'm dying over here!!! I can't believe you just put that in an email! Call me!". So I called her back and we shrieked some more on the phone and I promised to keep her updated.

At 8:07am I texted Brett again. I didn't want to talk with him, but I did want to let him know that I was getting everything that he set out for me, so I sent him a message.

Are you up yet? I think some little elf has been busy putting things in places for me today. I'm quite liking it. Wanted to tell the elf that. ;)

At one point in the morning, I was staring blankly into space, and Danielle yelled over at me "You can't focus at all, huh?". She was right. I wasn't really able to do much, so when lunch time rolled around, right at 11, I said "Let's go!".

We went out to our cars, and as I looked into mine, I saw another rose. ND on one side. THE BIGGEST on the other.

We went to run a few errands and got a bite to eat. Danielle was already asking me if I'd thought about when I wanted to get married, where, etc, etc. I kept telling her that I haven't thought about ANY of that, and wasn't going to unless I had a reason to! She thought I was ridiculous, and kept telling me "This is it! Even if you're going to be conservative, I'm going to be excited. It isn't your birthday, it's not your anniversary, it's not Christmas...this is THE day!". Of course, again, in my heart, I knew it.....but wanted to just see how it was all going to play out. :)

After eating, when I got back to my desk, there were two NEW roses there waiting for me. I looked around to see if anyone in the office wouldn't be able to hide a smirk letting me know that they know what is going on, but no one gave me any clues. Danielle acted surprised. Uh huh....at this point, I figured that she was in on it...that some of that texting and playing with her phone during lunch had to be her telling Brett about our whereabouts, but I didn't want to know, so I didn't ask. I just wanted to enjoy the story as it unfolded.

These roses said -A, NN and BLESSING IN MY.

At one point, I said to Danielle...."Well, what am I supposed to do? I haven't talked to him, so what am I supposed to do after work?". Luckily, Brett thought about that too. The note at my desk told me what to do.

You've worked hard today...

So you definitely shouldn't work past 3:00.

When that time comes...

Head on home.

Ok....so it was now about 1230, only a few more hours to kill. I made some work phone calls, took care of some business, and around 2 I started to think...okay, just a little bit longer. I got an email that I knew was going to take some time to sort through so I got on the phone with one of my prospects and was trying my best to get her to sign the contract. She asked me, well, how much longer do you have until you leave? I told her "I have 11 minutes. Can we go ahead and get this contract signed before then?". We got that sorted out, the contract was in, I did what I needed to get done, and at 245pm, I was running out the door telling everyone that I had to go.

I called Renae from my car on the way home and filled her in on what had happened so far. She kept asking me if I was in my neighborhood yet and if his truck was at my house. When I finally got there, his truck was nowhere to be seen, but there was a package on the front door. They weren't for me, but I slowly brought them inside. Brett was nowhere to be seen. There wasn't anything in the living room for me, but when I got to my room, there were two roses and a note on my dresser.

Get all sexy looking...

Someone will be by at 5:15 to take you away.

It's cold out there...

Make sure you've got a way to stay warm.

I saw the note said that I had until 515, and I breathed a big sigh of relief. I had rushed home so I could do something with my hair....but now I had almost 2 hours to get ready. Phew. I quickly turned on the shower and started to think of how much I really disliked my clothing options at that point. Then I noticed that Brett had put out a few options for me to choose from. :)

I got in the shower so quickly that I didn't even look to see what the roses said until after I got out. I shrieked as I read these two roses.

They said NE MA and LIFE. WILL YOU.

!!!!

Eeek!! Will you. Will you WHAT???

I finished getting ready after trying on more than a few options in my closet. I did try on one of the dresses that Brett put out, but they just looked ridiculous as it was 50 degrees outside and I wasn't about to wear open toed shoes. I finally made up my mind, got my hair fixed up, and it was only 430pm when I was finished.

I sat on the couch and tried to kill time. Oprah had Sarah Palin on, I thumbed through a magazine, and then Shyla called. She kept me distracted until around 513 when I said...I gotta go, I have to leave in 2 minutes.

I sat in the chair by the front window and tried to stay calm as I was looking for who was coming to get me. Kyle pulled up around 520 and slowly walked to my door. When I opened it, he said "This is for you", and handed me a rose that said RIE on one side, and BE MY on the other. I played it cool, and put it on the table with the rest of the flowers, and walked out to the car with him.

I said to him, "I'm not asking you any questions because I don't want to know", to which his response was "Good, because I don't know anything.".

He proceeded to drive as slow as humanly possible all through Santa Barbara. We were in the car for about 30 minutes before we got over towards the area near the Biltmore and Butterfly Beach. As we drove along the main road, we passed by Brett's truck, and then Kyle pulled into the circular drive near the end of the beach, and I saw Brett.

"Hey, I know him".

Brett walked up to the car, opened the door, and lead me out. He handed me one more rose, the side saying WIFE? on it, towards me. He asked if I'd been keeping up with what they said during the day. Well, duh!! He then very quickly, popped down on one knee, pulled out a box, opened it, and said "So, Annemarie, will you be my wife?".

Of course I said yes...I think more than once. :)

He lead me over to the end of the walkway where he had a speaker setup and he started one of our songs "You and I", and we danced and talked. He told me that he had a few nice things that he was going to say to me when he proposed, but when he saw me get out of the car, he got too nervous and a little choked up, and decided to just go for the one line he knew he had to get out. :)

I think it was perfect. The day was a LONG one. Almost 12 hours of waiting....but Brett liked it that way. I told him that I knew as soon as I saw the roses in the morning but was anxious and excited for the rest of the day to play out and didn't want to jump to any conclusions. I loved all of the surprises during the day.

We took a few pictures at the beach. It was great that it was just him and me. We had fun sharing a little bit about our days, I begged him to tell me who his helper was, and we just laughed, smiled and loved.

As we were packing up, I noticed the back of the tag on the last rose, and it said .COM. I was like "What?". I had figured out that the back of the tags were spelling out our names, but I didn't put it together that Brett was spelling out a website address. He bought http://brett-and-annemarie.com/ and had it setup for us already. I looked it up on my phone right away to see what it was that he'd done. So adorable!! Love that I'm marrying someone that thinks of something like that. Yes, this is one of the many reasons why we are definitely meant to be with one another. I didn't figure it out....but he had up another home page just in case I had during the day of http://brett-and-annemarie.com/too-smart.html. Yes, he's so funny. I love him for that.

We drove off to our plans for dinner....he had reservations for us at San Ysidro Ranch at Stonehouse. I'd heard about this place and was excited to be celebrating together at such a pretty and wonderful place with my fiancee. Heehee!!

On the way to dinner, Brett turned to me and said "We're going to get married. We're going to be a family. We're going to have kids!", and that was when it hit me. I mean, I knew that this was going to be part of our future, but we hadn't ever talked about it anymore than that. I wanted all of this to be a surprise when it happened, and so we never spoke about dates, timelines, possibilities, etc. We lived our relationship as boyfriend and girlfriend as just that and it was perfect. When the morning started, I knew that was what the day was going to end like, and it happened so fast, that I really didn't have too much time to react. But then when Brett said that to me, with the biggest smile on his face, it hit me. I'm going to marry this man, spend the rest of my life with him, and have children with him....that made me so warm inside and that was when I realized what it all meant. I couldn't have been happier.

We had a perfect dinner. We recounted every minute of both of our days to each other....and I gave myself a headache from smiling so much. We had the yummy dessert on which the chef congratulated us on our engagement. One last picture in front of the pretty Christmas tree at the restaurant before we headed back to my house.

On the way home, we called both of our parents to share the news with them. Of course, they had known it was going to happen since Brett called and talked to both of them the night before. He waited until the last minute on purpose as to not burden any of them with trying to keep a secret. Kyle and Bethany came to see us before the night was over at my place, and we shared with them the end of the story.

Of the perfectly normal Tuesday....but unlike any other Tuesday I've ever lived.

I realized that I hadn't gotten a picture of the last two roses, so I snapped a quick one back at the house of each.

Around 930, we kicked out B and Kyle so we could make a few more phone calls before we both passed out. Brett commented, "I know we should probably be excited to stay up and talk about this for a lot longer, but I'm exhausted". I was with him, I was pooped. All the excitement of the day wore me out....and he'd been running around the last couple days coordinating and planning to pull off the most perfect surprise.

We called and talked to my sister, Erika, and Brett's sister, Autumn, and made plans to figure out how to track down my other sister, Taylor, who is in Chicago for Christmas, the next day.

Brett tucked me into bed, and we said our goodnights. It would have been like any other Tuesday that he'd done the same with me.....except, this Tuesday was different than most. This Tuesday was the Tuesday that the man that I love asked me to spend the rest of my life with him, and I said yes. And Brett was right.....by the setting of the sun....it was a day that I will never forget.

I love you, Brett Bollman, and I can't wait to be your wife.