The Story

I'm sure that most of you have heard The Proposal Story, and if you haven't, you don't want to because you're either disenchanted with the whole "love" thing, totally happy single and thus unimpressed, or just getting along and doing your best to avoid bitter diatribes at "freaking save the date cards".

(No offense, Annie, I've felt the same way in the past and thought it was too classic not to share. :)

Anyways. The point I'm trying to make is this - I realize that this post is probably completely unnecessary, but I'm going to write it anyway, if nothing else, so I won't forget the little things that make it special.

So. The Friday of Memorial Day weekend, I was supposed to be working a half-day from home. It started out stormy, and the workday was matching the weather with all the gloomy-ness it could muster. It was going horribly and because of the storm, my internet kept cutting out. I'm getting more and more upset as I realize that, not only am I running late, I am running late for a CAMPING TRIP IN THE RAIN. I love camping and all that, but I am not a hard-core mountaineer. I am also very prone to being cold, and once I'm cold, I'm very prone to being miserable. So. Adam came over at the appropriate time, only to find me still hunched over my laptop, getting more miserable by the minute. Being the good sport that he is, he assured me it would be fine, let me finish my work and even bought me a latte on our way out of town - a sure bet to make me smile again.

So, we got up to Sequoia, and it was cold. But it was OK, we had a great dinner with the other early birds, hung out by the fire, and I was feeling pretty cheerful about the whole thing. The next day, I kept bugging Adam to go for a hike. He didn't really seem like he wanted to, which was weird, but luckily for him, he was leading the camp-out, so that gave him an out. Later in the day, he mentioned that he wanted to go for a hike "just the two of us" on Sunday. I thought it was weird that he was planning something that he hadn't wanted to do all of an hour earlier, but I just thought he was being weird.

Saturday night, our friends Phil and Kirsten and Nate and Lindsay showed up. Phil and Adam went off on a random hike and were gone FOREVER. Kirsten and I wondered what the deal was, but we didn't think about it too much.

It started snowing that night. Lindsay, Kirst and I all snuggled in my itty-bitty backpacking tent and had girl-talk. They both are engaged, and hearing them talk about their plans with such assuredness made me wonder if Adam and I would have that someday.

(Also, Before we went to bed, Adam asked if I wanted to just wake up on my own or set an alarm. I thought that was weird, too, normally he's so relaxed about that kind of thing.)

The next day (still snowing/raining) we hung out by the fire and had some coffee, than Adam came over to me sort of sneakily and asked if I was ready to go. As we left, I asked if we shouldn't tell somebody where we were going. "I told Phil and Rocky last night," Adam assured me. Again, weird. Also, why on earth was he carrying such a big backpack for a little hike? Where were we going, anyway?

He said it was just some breakfast stuff, and I believed him. Looking back, I just swallowed a lot of things that were definitely fishy.

We hiked for a while on this beautiful trail through the woods. I did turn around a time or two to see if Phil was following. I figured if Adam was proposing, Phil would be in on it with a camera... but he wasn't, and Adam seemed nonchalant about looking around the forest, so I put it the proposal idea out of my head. The whole time it was sort of misting/snowing/raining, but we were working hard and didn't mind. We got to some pretty deep snow and decided that our boots weren't quite up to that (I've worn mine since high school) and we turned around and found a big stump in a pretty area to sit on.

Adam said he brought me out there to tell me all the reasons why he loved me. He pulled out a piece of notebook paper and started telling me all these things and read a scripture. It was very special, and I thought he was just being sweet for our one year anniversary. After he'd finished, we sat there for a minute, but I, being the practical girl that I am, suggested that we break open his backpack o' breakfast.

"I have one question I have to ask you first," he said, at which point it started hailing and I started hyperventilating, saying yes over and over, as he got down on one knee (in the snow!) and pulled out the ring. I teared up and said yes again.

He had packed a whopper of a celebratory breakfast, complete with prosciutto, cheese, fruit, yogurts, hummus, pita chips, crackers, bread, brie and champagne and OJ for mimosas. We made mimosas in our Nalgene, (in his hurry, Adam had forgotten the flutes, which we decided was sort of appropriate anyway) and had an AMAZING breakfast together, despite the cold.

We took some pictures and walked back to camp, where Phil happened to be waiting in the parking lot for us. He got Kirsten, Nate and Lindsay, and us girls did an awesome screaming engaged jumping dance.

All day was euphoric, and even though the weather got so bad that we had to pack up and head home that night, we still had the best engaged day ever, and tried our best to slip the word "fiance" into every possible sentence. Actually, I'm pretty sure we still do that. Or at least I do.

I love Adam because he's my best friend as well as my love. He knew exactly what would make me happy in a proposal, and he did so fantastic at it.

Here's us on our stump, just after he asked:

Love

It's true. I'm in love with the my best friend, and he loves me. The full story is coming, but I just couldn't hold it in any longer.

Love, Soon-to-be Mrs. Nichols

There's a Spring in My Step

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I would like to share with you all the glad tidings that Lady Spring has finally arrived. I got such a kick out of my my sister-in-law's Spring-y observation of Portland versus our colder native habitat, that I simply must share: "I'm enjoying getting to "know" Portland. I learned there IS such a thing a Spring!! I always wondered why Easter was marked by a white bunny hopping around in green grass with a basket of yellow flowers, instead of grunge-haired cow stuck mid-belly in brown snowbank. Or... maybe it's just a matter of marketing."

Hee. Love it. While the beauty of mountain-range wildflowers is made all the sweeter by the memory of last month's "grunge-haired cows" - it is an incredible phenomenon to this country girl to see flowers popping out of perfectly groomed medians and hillsides bursting into bloom, accompanied by 70-degree temperatures and the insatiable desire to cook my skin at the beach. (Unfortunately, the water temperature hasn't quite caught up with the sunshine - it's still a brisk 58 degrees. I say, being the tough girl that I am, that if any part of me is blue, or if I wish I could wear two wet suits, or if after five minutes in the water I start hallucinating about being a survivor of the Titanic, it's too soon to get in. It's too soon.)

This weekend, Hot Donna and I had our traditional Hot D Summertime Activity: Making Out with Park Newport.* It was beyond amazing, although I did realize that the rainy weather diet of Oreos and Cheeseburgers doesn't work as well in a bikini. Spring Resolution now formed!

Also this weekend, Hot Adam** and I went hiking of off Highway 74 in the Ortegas. Whenever I get pictures off the camera, maybe I'll post a couple. It was gorgeous and freeing and exactly where one should be in the Springtime with someone you love.

So that's the moral of this story. Even though Springing Forward leaves an hour of sleep to be desired, Spring is a fantastic season and you should go out and enjoy it.

*Park Newport is the incredibly posh apartment complex where D lives - it's basically like living at the Hilton, with less luggage-hauling through gigantic lobbies. Making out is not really making out - it's laying out and getting tan - but making out is funnier.
**Not normally what I call BF (although it is apt) but like the above explanation, this too is funnier. I'm all about funny today. It's Tuesday and you still haven't given me any new blog ideas. So there.

Just Because

Today I got up early, I had a blissfully hot shower, pulled on my favorite khakis, and threw some random odds and ends in my lunchbox. I desperately need to go to the grocery store, but in the interim I'm stuck eating baby clementines, BBQ Pringles and instant oatmeal left over from last weekend's camping trip.

Work is full of little episodes like this:

Scene: Every-day-looking office supply room, full of highlighters and pens and Kleenex boxes. Two middle-aged men are standing, staring blankly at the shelves holding said necessities, when I walk in, in search of a pink highlighter. (Give a girl a break, I need some reason to edit stories... this week it's pink ink.)

Me, feeling funny and quippish, fresh from the weekend and already tired of my desk: "Don't worry, guys, the screen'll come down in two seconds... the cartoons are about to start."

Guy #1: "Actually, we were waiting for a sideshow."

Guy #2, smiling at me: "And we just got it."

Me, thinking: "Exit, exit, pink highlighter! Yes! Exit, exit, laugh, OK. Aaaaaand scene."

Other than random encounters with creepy men, the day has gone fairly smoothly. No big catastrophes, no major triumphs, just one long vanilla milkshake of an afternoon.

This weekend a group of us went camping in the hills by San Diego, and while we weren't very hard-core about it, we definitely had a good time. It's the little things that make up a trip like that - Bum Steer BBQ sauce, (watch YouTube for it, it'll be a big hit) hot cocoa in the mornings, "secret" fishing spots on the lake, endless firewood gathering, and Man-lympics, which mostly consisted of growing facial hair and throwing large pieces of trees back into the forest, accompanied by war cries.

Definitely silly. So much so, in fact, that I've already lost half my readership (now we're down to one, thanks, Mom, for hanging in there,) and I feel ridiculous for even writing it down. But the truth is, we are pretty silly people after all - we're a whole lot nerdier than we'd like to think, and the best belly laughs come from an honest acknowledgment of our own and each other's quirks.

So I'm going to steadfastly continue to get a kick out of you... and you're more than welcome a giggle in my direction as well. Life is just funny... and so much better when we look at it that way.

Christmas Time is Here, and so are the Surveys

In honor of the fact that it is after Thanksgiving and therefore officially Christmastime, and I am having desperate lack of inspiration, I will now fall back on the procrastinator's/uncreative blogger's closest ally: the email survey, this time with a festive twist. Enjoy.

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? Depends on what I'm giving and in how big of a hurry I am. Also, I would like to point out that non-traditional wrapping styles (i.e. paper grocery sacks, re-used shirt boxes and even bath towels, can be used in a pinch with great success. It's been done. That's all I can say.)

2. Real tree or artificial? Artificial trees are dead to me. Haha.

3. When do you put up the tree? As soon as humanly possible. I love decorating for Christmas, plus, then I get the Woods inside my house, which is a huge bonus.

4. When do you take the tree down? I dunno. Sometime after New Year's, when the bells stop ringing and the children aren't singing and the world is grey again.

5. Do you like eggnog? I like it in my coffee instead of creamer. So delicious and fattening. Perfect for Christmastime.

6. Favorite gift received as a child? I remember getting My Little Ponies, which was pretty exciting. I also got Samantha one year, complete with a trunk to keep her in, thanks to a woodworking Dad.

7. Do you have a nativity scene? My mom and dad have a Precious Moments one that's really cute. I'm beginning to feel that the Bower needs one of it's own, though.

8. Hardest person to buy for? My Dad, hands down. I'm a pretty good shopper, though, and an intense listener around holidays and birthdays, so I dig for hints and usually come out somewhat close to the mark.

9. Easiest person to buy for? Probably my mom. There always seems to be something perfect for her readily available.

10. Worst Christmas gift ever received? I think I was 16 when my grandma gave me the last baby doll I hope I ever receive. I think it smelled funny, too.

11. Mail or email Christmas card? Snail mail, all the way. I love opening letters, and I figure everybody else does, too. Mom and Dad were dependent on me to write their Christmas letter too, up until last year, and I have a feeling I'm going to get drafted for Linthicum Family News Update Duty again soon.

12. Favorite Christmas Movie? It's a Wonderful Life, far and away. Elf also makes me laugh and think of House 9 Christmas, and of course I love the creepy claymation Rudolph.

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? Sooner than I probably should.

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? Yes. Everybody does. Don't look at me like that.

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Wow. That's like asking a Valley Girl to name her favorite store at the mall. Or boy at the mall. Or shirt at the mall. Or... anyways. Right off, I love Pumpkin Pie, Christmas sugar cookies, my Mom's coffee cake, sweet breads, and ham and scalloped potatoes for dinner. Gosh I like food. Gosh I'm hungry.

16. Clear lights or colored on the tree? I like colors. Mo' color, mo' betta.

17. Favorite Christmas song? O Come O Come Emmanuel is my favorite hymn. Mary, Did You Know? is quickly climbing the charts, though.

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? I travel to go home. Makes sense.

19. Can you name Santa's reindeer? When I read this, I thought, "No, because they're already named. I may think Blitzen is a dumb name, but who am I to mess with tradition?" I realize now what it really means, but my original thought is funnier.

20. Do you have an Angel on top or a star? I grew up with an angel up there. At House 9 we had a rather ramshackle foil star. I like it either way.

21. Annoying thing about this time of year? That I can't actually afford to buy all the gifts I would like to. Boo budgets.

Walkin' in the Woods

We went to a costume party on Saturday, and allow me to clear a few things up. No, we are not Adam and Eve, no, we are not Ents.

It's an inside joke, and we are basically WAY too clever for our own good. Enjoy!