Tuesday, September 4, 2012

A Modest Proposal

On September 2, 2012, Tony H. Miller asked me to marry him.  I said yes.  Here is our story.

We had planned to go hiking in one of our favorite places, Whitewater State Park in Minnesota.  It's only a 40 minute drive from Rochester, so it makes for a nice Sunday afternoon activity.  On this particular Sunday, however, I found that my legs were a little sore from playing tennis the evening before, so before we left for church that morning I mentioned that I might not be able to do much hiking.  Tony said that was okay, but he'd still like to go to Whitewater.

After church, while I was making lunch (crabcakes from Trader Joe's and salad), Tony asked, "Do we have any plans for dinner?"
I replied, "I don't have any plans.  Do you have any plans?"
And he said, "Well, not really," with this sort of sneaky look on his face.  I looked at him for a moment, thinking he would go on.
When he didn't, I said, "You know, Tony, you're a terrible liar."
"What?!  No, babe, I'm not lying.  I don't have any plans... for dinner."
"Aha!  So you *do* have plans, just not for dinner!"
"Stop asking questions!"

At this point, I knew something was up, but I didn't know what.  It could have been an early surprise for my birthday, and I decided I wanted to be surprised.  We finished lunch and headed up to Whitewater.

When we got there, Tony asked again if I felt up to hiking.  I said I thought I could do a little hiking, just not anything too steep.  He led us to Coyote Point trail, which turned out to be almost entirely stairs the whole way up.  When I protested, he promised it would be worth it.  We made it to the top, and the view was really spectacular.


He had brought along his camera, so we took some pictures.




As it turned out, Tony hadn't actually been on this particular trail before, so we had a good time exploring the views it offered and trying to guess where it would end up.  At one point, a narrow gap in the trees overlooked a bridge where we had sat and talked on a previous trip.


We went a little further on, but after seeing a map of how far the trail actually went (almost 4 miles total), we decided to turn around and go back.  When we came to the overlook again, Tony wanted to take my picture looking out over it.


(I think this was when he must have removed the ring box from its hiding place in his camera bag.)  When I turned around and was ready to continue on, Tony kept stalling.  Finally he said, "I have to ask you a question."  He got down on one knee, opened the ring box, and said, "Laura Marian Camp, will you marry me?"

I said yes.


We headed back down the trail as fiancé and fiancée.  On our drive back to Rochester, I called my parents and a few very close friends.  Once we were home and had cleaned up a bit, we went to visit Tony's grandparents and tell them the news.  They were very excited and happy for us.  Then we went to Tony's parents' house and told his dad, sister, and two nieces.  They were happy for us as well (although from the girls' point of view, Spongebob was more exciting.)  Tony's mom was out for dinner with a friend, so we met them at the restaurant.  They celebrated with us and bought us dinner (hence why Tony asked if we had any dinner plans.  He figured we might end up going out to celebrate!)  We all ended up back at the house chatting for awhile, until Tony drove me home.

Then yesterday, we dropped the ring off to be re-sized (it was a little too small).  Then we went kayaking down the Zumbro river, and it was a good thing I didn't have it on, because I did an unintentional barrel roll when my kayak decided to reenact the sinking of the Titanic.  Fortunately, no lives were lost, and while I dumped the water out, Tony rescued the banana and the water bottle that were floating off downstream.

My hero.

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