Finally, a reason to post and a desire to do so!

Andrew & I got engaged this weekend at the Carolina Renaissance
Faire!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was kind of thinking that he might do it this past weekend with it being
so close to my birthday & all, but I wasn’t sure how he’d pull it off. The
ring that we had looked at had to be ordered and would arrive close to the
holidays.

Unfortunately, he had the flu on my birthday. So I’m afraid that I spent
the evening checking his temperature and cooking chicken & rice.
Thankfully, he was well enough by Friday afternoon so we made it to
Charlotte by 10pm.

The faire is near Concord, just over the county line into Mecklenburg Co.
It is the faire that we went to twice 2 years ago when we first started
dating. Honestly, we feel like we fell in love there.
The faire was awesome and had expanded some.

The big event happened on Saturday at 5pm. The last bellydance show had
just ended featuring some of my Charlotte area dance friends. When the show
was about to end, Andrew said he was going to go "take his sword off". To
take it off, he has to stand, so I didn't think much about it. (It’s a
really huge sword about 3 feet long, and he carries it diagonally across his
back in a leather harness.) After the show, he pulled me over to my friend
LeeAnn's booth and made me put all my stuff down (cape, basket, etc). I had
no idea what was going on. Another bellydancer Naima was with us and it
became evident that she was going to take our picture somewhere with our new
digital camera....which also happens to take short videos. So I stumbled
along behind them over to the bridge next to the Dutch Door Stage where the
bellydancers had performed. Then, he said something to her about taking
"video" and that's when I started wondering if this was IT! When he went
down on one knee, I knew that the moment had arrived! He said really sweet
things about how this has been the happiest 2 years of his life, and that he
fell in love with me at this faire so it’s only fitting that he propose here
next to the bellydance stage. Then, he whipped out the ring and asked me to
marry him. The video is hilarious because you can't hear what Andrew is
saying, but you can hear all my gasps and squeals of delight. When he put
the ring on, you can hear people clapping. I have no idea how many people
were around us because I had such tunnel vision.

No date has been set yet, but we're thinking about next Fall............