ENGAGED

April Fools Day was a Friday and Chad and I had plans to meet at a friends house, Susan for her birthday party, and then go out after that for dinner. Unknown to me at the time, Chad had gotten a call from Ben Bridge the night before saying the ring was ready. So early on Friday Chad met with Jon for lunch and Jon gave him the “transfer of stewardship” conversation, and gave Chad his blessing and told him “You’re her perfect match.” Chad later asked my Father, Doug for his blessing as well. Chad picked up the ring before going to Susan’s house, and he got there before I did, so he showed the ring to Jon and Cori. When I got to Susan’s I had no clue that any of this was happening. We stayed at Susan’s house only for a little while and wished her a Happy Birthday, and then left to go out to dinner. Right across from Susan’s apartment is Gene Coulon Beach Park. Chad had been asking about that park when we were still at Susan’s and he thought that he had been there before. So when we got in the car to go eat, he said he just wanted to stop by the park real quick. I didn’t mind so I said sure. When we were pulling into the park it said it closed at dusk, and it was already dark, and there was a “Park Ranger” type of car driving by, so I told Chad “let’s just go”. To my surprise he was very adamant about walking around this park. I kind of thought that was a little weird but walked with him anyway. The park has these docks that go around an swimming area and from the dock you can see Mercer Island. It was pretty dark now, and so the lights from Mercer Island were beautiful. While we were walking a duck splashed into the water, and it scared and I actually screamed like a little girl and I jumped towards Chad. And again to my surprise he jumped away from me. I was totally weirded out by this, because I was thinking, “He doesn’t want to protect me,” or “He doesn’t want me close to him” it was just weird. What I didn’t know was that he had the ring box in his coat pocket, and he thought when I jumped into him, I would feel it, so he jumped anyway from me! We kept walking and when we got to the park path again under a lamp post Chad toward to face me. He said, “I love you so much. You’re the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. I want to be with you for Eternity. I want to grow old with your and have kids together.” The he got down on one knee and asked, “Kate will you marry me?” I said “Absolutely” then I screamed, “Wahh whoo!!!” He put the ring on my finger and we kissed. From the time Chad picked up the ring until the time he had it on my finger was only an hour and a half. He was so anxious to get that ring on my finger. Cori and Jon had tried to persuade Chad to pull some kind of April Fool’s prank on me, but just said he couldn’t do that because he had been waiting so long to get that ring. We drove up to the Temple to look at it, and then we had dinner at a little Italian restaurant close by. It was the perfect place because we almost had it all to ourselves, and the lights were dimmed- just the perfect setting. I couldn’t stop looking at the ring and how the diamond sparkled. When we got home Cori was soo excited to see me with the ring. We took some pictures where I look so happy and Chad looks so relieved.

We set the date for June 4th so Chad’s sister Rachel could come and it worked out with everyone else’s schedules. The rest of April and May just flew by with wedding perpetrations. Towards the end of April I started working for Leslie at Curves being a physical trainer. It was a fun change from nannying.