Show & Tell Tuesday: How We Met/Got Engaged

Today I am joining the fun of Show & Tell Tuesday with Andrea @ Momfessionals to walk down memory lane of how Danny and I met and our engagement story. This is coming at a perfect time. I've had an incredibly frustrating morning at the doctor about my leg. Long story short, the doctor doesn't know why my leg hurts. Cool. Moving on...

This story begins in 2004 at the start of high school. Danny went to the Catholic school in town, so we never really knew each other until our freshman year of high school. Funny enough, his step sisters dad was my neighbor, his dad was my school bus driver for a couple of years in middle school, and his sister drove me and 3 friends to a Hanson concert. I knew my in-laws before I knew my husband!  So back to how I met the hubs. We dated briefly, I'm talking like a month, our freshman year. We just didn't hit it off or something. Danny has this confidence about him that just radiates for miles and is so sure of himself. I do not and still don't know what the heck I'm doing on a daily basis. A least a dozen times each school year between Christmas break of freshman year to probably 4 days before Fall Break of our senior year, I said something along the lines of "Danny Summers is such a flirt." He did get voted Biggest Flirt of our class "I could not imagine dating him." Except he asked me to hang out one night and I said yes. I am so very glad I did.

Summer 2007 - I'm sure I'm thinking this guy is such a tool

We dated off and on from Fall break to right before Valentine's Day. Literally, on for 2 weeks, off for 2, on for a month, off again. I swore in February of 2008 that was it. I was done. I was going to college and I was going to meet someone not from Alexandria like my dad always begged me to do. Aaaand then Danny struck again. After a week of him, you guessed it, flirting, he texted me one day in the middle of the school day asking if I regretted us breaking up. After a week of hiding our reunion (a few friends were a little upset about it, one all but stopped talking to me for a few years over the whole thing), we were back together and we were back together for good.

In the first 2.5 years of dating, we endured a best friend dying(a month and one day after we got back together), going to school in different states for a year, him being a part-time firefighter with a pretty unpredictable work schedule, my parent's getting divorced, my dad dying and turning our world upside down, and we moved in together at my dad's house. That. Was. A. Lot.

In November 2010, we made forever official. As I was sitting through my last initiation for my sorority, Pi Beta Phi, I was imagining what an engagement ring would look like on my finger(important detail) as I thinking about the next chapter of my life as a grown up (mind you, I was 21) in the real world with my dad's business and leaving the "college girl" behind. After initiation, I went to eat with my sisters, then met up with my mom to attend a baby shower and go meet my cousin's baby. When my mom dropped me off back at home, Danny was home from whatever he was doing that day and after my mom left he walked out of our room and a conversation along these lines took place...

Danny: So you're going to be mad at me.
Me: Why? What did you do?
Danny: I bought a new gun today.
Me: Okay?
Danny: And it cost about as much as I would have spent on an engagement ring.
Me: Alright. I can't remember what exactly I said, but I'm sure I was visibly annoyed.
Danny: Do you wanna see it?
Me: Suuuuuure.

Danny sat on the coffee table in front of me trying to fake interest in this gun that he's about to show me. Danny opened the case and there was no gun. There was the most beautiful, shiny ring I had ever seen in my life. My look of disgust quickly turned and the tears started flowing as Danny got down on one knee there in the living room of my childhood home with just us and our dog watching haha. It all happened so quickly. I immediately called my mom and told her to hurry back to the house. She was only 2 miles away. Like I said, the whole proposal happened fast! We spent the rest of the night visiting friends and family sharing our good news.

Danny was originally going to propose sometime before August 1, 2010. That was the date of his family reunion and he wanted to introduce me as his fiancé. I only knew he was going to do this because he told me. If he stuck to his original plan, he would have been proposing like a month after my dad died and that didn't seem right. Knowing this, I asked him if that had been his plan since he changed the plan. He said no. He told me he just woke up that day and that was the day he was going to ask me to marry him. He had talked to my brother about a month before and talked to my dad's best friends.  He said he even had the ring for a few weeks. We had seriously gone to look at rings about 2 weeks before he proposed and he already had mine! Sneaky sneaky!