Engagement!

Alex’s story

Cody and I planned a trip to Atlanta to visit my friend from residency. He picked me up from work on Friday evening, and we started driving west. On the way there, we had a Cody-prepared dinner in the car while sitting in the parking lot at Aldi’s: fried tofu, rice and choy. We stopped in Charlotte for the night. We had ice cream at Handel’s (I always get the Oreo cheesecake and Cody indulged in their lemon bar ice cream) and picked up food at Viva Chicken (breakfast for the next morning).

The next morning, Cody and I had wanted to go on a short hike. I was mentally exhausted, so he chose the Dixon School Road Boulders Trail in Crowders Mountain State Park. He seemed excited that it was a quiet trail and there were opportunities for rock scrambling. 

It was a short hike to Boulder’s Overlook. We did a couple rock scrambles. After we climbed the first boulder, Cody set up his phone in the tree to take a couple pictures of us. Although I felt tired, Cody seemed enthusiastic to keep climbing and saw a second boulder that he wanted to climb up onto. I wasn’t going to crush his excitement.

When we climbed up the boulder, he set up his camera in the tree again. Then, he held both of my hands, and at that point, I said “Are you doing the thing? No!” and he replied, “Well, I guess I won’t do it now.” And, then I responded, “It’s okay, you can do it.” He asked me to marry him! I said “Are you sure? I’m bad.” When I was reassured that he was cognitively intact and competent to ask this important question, I said “yes.” 

As we continued our drive, we shared the news with our family and friends! Once we arrived in Atlanta, I was happy to spend time with friends that I had not seen in a while. We were catching up and planning our activities for the next few days, that I didn’t feel like I had a good opportunity to share the news. While Cody and I were sitting in the back seat of their car on the way to dinner, I said, “I wanted to tell you that we got engaged this morning!” They had noticed the engagement ring from earlier, and they were so excited for us. It was such a nice time to celebrate with them.

Cody’s story

We’ve been having conversations about marriage for a while, so the act of getting engaged was not necessarily a surprise, but she wasn’t expecting it on this day. I had been carrying around a ring for 6 months in various bags/backpacks – long before I had the chance to talk to her parents about it (we played phone tag for a little while). Several months ago, I was even convinced that she found it! 

I wanted it to take place somewhere outside, and neither of us wanted it to be in front of other people, so I started bringing my little tripod to hold my phone and take photos of us on our various adventures. This both allowed us to get some nice photos on those hikes, while making it less conspicuous when I set it up each time. On this day, I purposely found a hike with multiple online reviews that claimed it was almost always empty, but was still fun with great views – extremely challenging to find on a Saturday morning! 

The hike is short (2.5 miles round trip), but the latter half has a series of “choose your own adventure” style boulders/rocky outcrops. As we neared the top, I started scanning around looking for potential spots that we could climb up, had something resembling a view, somewhere to hang my camera setup, and a flat enough area I wouldn’t fall off while getting on one knee. Also, in the back of my mind I knew that Alex likes doing a few boulder scrambles, but after a couple it would get suspicious if I was pleading with her to climb boulder after boulder lol!

Luckily, the second boulder fit the requirements and I went for it. In typical Alex fashion, when I grabbed both of her hands, she panicked for a couple seconds (her typical reaction when caught off guard by the doorbell, or in this case, me):

Alex: Are you doing…no!
Me: I mean, I don’t have to today 
Alex: No, you can do it.
Me: rambling words neither of us really remember
Alex: Are you sure? ….Really? Ok, yes!
Alex: (holding up both hands in front of her) Umm, which hand does the ring go on?