Mark and I met on Saturday, April 14 at Parma 8200 for our first date. We enjoyed great conversation and a great meal together, parted company with an exchange of phone numbers/email addresses and the best hug I'd ever experienced up to that point in my life. I was pleasantly surprised on Sunday night to receive an email from Mark thanking me for our date and reiterating that he had a great time and his interest in seeing me again. I invited him to call me and on Monday night he did. This first call set the precedence for what would become nightly calls exchanged from that point forward. We went on our 2nd date two weekends later to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. It was there under a Crabapple tree that we had our first kiss. Things just grew from there.

We celebrated our first and second anniversaries and Valentines day this year by returning to Parma 8200.

Fast forward to April 14, 2015, our 3rd anniversary. Mark booked reservations at Kincaids in Bloomington for our anniversary dinner. Mark came home from work to pick me up for dinner and on the mirror over his sink in our bathroom, I'd constructed a post-it note heart describing 36 things I love about him, which I know meant a lot to him. When we were ready to leave for our reservation, I found three red roses on the seat of the car, along with a card. It has become Mark's custom to give me one red rose for each year (something I hope will continue, hint, hint!) of our relationship. Once we were underway, Mark told me he'd found a couple of songs that he wanted to play for me, to help him say things that he might not find the words to articulate otherwise. Both were songs by Earth, Wind and Fire (I'll Write a Song For You and Love's Holiday) and I, admittedly, got a little leaky over this very sweet and romantic gesture. We arrived about 20 minutes early for our reservation, so Mark suggested we go to Normandale Lake Park to pass a few minutes since it was such a gorgeous April evening. We parked the car and took off walking toward a bridge we'd visited once before. Along our brief walk, Mark made a comment about the passing of these three years and I replied with a quip about hoping it is the 3rd anniversary of our last first dates ever... there must have been something in the air...

We got to the bridge where I was just soaking up the mildness of the evening and Mark noticed a Bald Eagle flying overhead. He pointed it out to me with a comment that my Dad was there checking in... (there's a back-story here) and maybe his was too. After watching the Eagle until it left our sight, Mark asked me what I thought my Dad would think about having had my last first date ever (see how that fit in?). Now we have snippets of conversation like this every once in a while, so this was really not unexpected or out of the ordinary, but when he then proceeded to say that he thinks it is time to take the next step in our relationship and asked me to marry him, I was completely surprised. I believe my response was "are you kidding me?" asked maybe 5 or 6 times. He even had to ask me why he'd kid me about something like that. Finally, I said "Will you ask me again?" "Why?!?" he wanted to know... "So I can answer you!" I replied. Obligingly he asked again, and I of course, said yes! In talking about this later, he asked me if when I tell the story, do I tell people that I "made" him ask me a second time. Since that is an integral part of the story, of course I include that! ;-)