That title doesn’t have enough excitement in it, but it will have to do for now, because if I changed it to “Hiking and Other Things!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” I might lose all respect for myself.  I blame my mom for that.  She loves grammar.  Anyway, here’s a really good story (in my opinion, which is totally biased):

I woke up early on Saturday to go celebrate a belated Mother’s Day with Scott’s mom in Blacksburg.  It’s a long-ish drive, so I took a short nap complete with head-bobbing sometime near hour two of the drive.  During that time, I kind of half heard a phone conversation between Scott and his sister, who said that their car had broken down, and we would celebrate at dinner instead of lunch.

The plan* was to hike on the way home from Blacksburg on Sunday, but that was going to make time tight since I had to be back in Norfolk by 6 to help lead youth group.  After the change of plans for lunch, Scott suggested that we hike on Saturday instead of Sunday.  Sounded like a great idea to me, so off we went towards the trail.

The hike was nice.  There was plenty of cloud cover to keep things cool, and there was fog in the valleys that made views even more dramatic than usual.  It was a good time.  Then somewhere near the end of the trail, Scott started running.  I think he said something about, “See you at the top!” as he ran away, but honestly, I didn’t register that until we talked about it later.  I just saw him sprinting up a mountain.

My thoughts at that point were along the lines of, “There’s no way I’m running up that trail.  Surely he’ll stop.  He’s not stopping.  He’s not coming back.  [Shrug.]”  I kept hiking, taking the wrong trail at one point, then getting back on the right trail pretty quickly.  Then I saw a picture nailed to a tree.  It was a picture of Scott and me on our first date.  I started to understand what was going on, and my pace may or may not have increased.  There were more pictures–my front porch that we love to hang out on, the two of us hanging out in our respective hometowns together, hiking at Thanksgiving.  And near the end of the trail, there was a letter instead of a picture.  It’s a good letter.

I should have stood there and read the entire letter carefully like a good girl, but darn it, I wanted to get to the top of the mountain.  Instead, I read a few sentences, skimmed, and walked some more.  (In my defense, the letter jokingly told me to keep moving.  You could say I was just following directions.)  When I got to the top, Scott and one of his good friends were standing there together.  Josh looked up, saw me, said, “Oh, crap!” and ran off.  I wasn’t supposed to know he was there.

Since I hadn’t finished the letter yet, Scott and I stood together while I did that.  Then he asked me a pretty important question.  He asked me to marry him.  About a quarter of a millisecond after he finished that question, I said yes.

We celebrated with some prayer and my favorite beer, Shiner Hefeweizen, and we got to enjoy talking and being happy while Josh, who is a great photographer in addition to being a great friend, took pictures of the happiness.  I have no idea how those pictures will turn out, because the last thing I was thinking about was looking good for a camera.  I had just hiked 3.5 miles in fairly warm weather, then had a life-changing moment.  Double not thinking about smiling pretty or what I looked like.

After beer and pictures, we hiked down the mountain again with Josh and Eric, another friend who helped out with the preparation and picture-taking.  As soon as we started hiking down the trail, it started to rain.  Apparently, there had been a 70% chance of rain in that area all week, which made Scott less than relaxed about the whole hiking situation.  But it worked out perfectly, and I think the rain on the way down made everything more fun.  It felt like we were all on an adventure together.  Also, not much could have changed my mood from ecstatic.

Goodbyes with Josh and Eric happened at the trail head, and then it was on to The Homeplace, a delicious/beautiful/awesome family style restaurant between the hiking spot and Blacksburg.  I could gush about the good food and the conversations that we had about the afternoon and the fact that we’re going to officially be a family soon (Family style restaurant… get it?  It took me a minute.).  But you don’t want 800 more words about that.

We’re happy, plain and simple.

If you want Scott’s version of the story, I have a feeling that it might appear on his blog someday.

*There are lots of things about “the plan” that were faked to make important events a surprise.  “The plan” refers to the plan I knew going into Saturday.