Our daily weekday morning ritual involves Paul waking up sometime between 5:30 and 6:00 am and me waking up to see him off before I fall back asleep to wake up several hours later for class. On Friday morning while we were saying bye he briefly mentioned that he'd have to work late because they were working on the merger and so I would need to pick up dinner for our small group by myself.

Around 10:30am he called me to find out if I could get my friend Henry to help me pick up the food and transport it all to where we would be meeting up for bible study but I was still in bed and said I would do it later. Around noon he called once more to ask if I had talked to Henry yet. I told him no (I was still in bed sleeping when he called =x) and he bugged me to hurry up and find out - which I thought was weird since I didn't feel I particularly needed Henry's help...but since he seemed nervous about it I went ahead and called Henry. He told me he had a lot of work to do and he'd let me know towards the end of the work day whether or not he could. So I called Paul back and told him Henry would let me know later and he got all weird and started asking why he would be telling me so late in the day. I, was still totally oblivious, wondering why he was being so weird about it, but didn't give it too much thought.

So I went about my business and headed off to my doctor's appointments. I should have realized something was up when Paul kept calling me every half hour after 4pm to ask where I was, how long am I going to be at the doctor's, when am I going home, when/where am I going to pick up dinner....all of this extremely unusual because normally when Paul calls from work its because he needs a quick question answered or needs me to go pick something up, etc. Then around 5pm (duh, the time he gets off work) he calls me and tells me that he's going to be working out of someone else's terminal and so he won't be at his desk, so call his cell phone if I need him. I was still at the doctor's so I was just like ok whatever. Then when I was leaving the doctor he called again to ask where I was and I said since it was already 6pm I would go straight to pick up dinner for our small group (Henry had called me around 5pm to tell me he wouldn't be able to help). He asked where I was picking up dinner and which restaurant I was going to, etc. which all should have made me very suspicious since he was supposedly working late and he spent a good 15 minutes on the phone with me (which he never does at work).

So anyway, I went and picked up the El Pollo Loco and when I was almost home he called again and asked where I was. When I told him I was almost home he told me to go home rather than straight to small group because he had actually managed to finish up early and was on his way home.

I was still totally oblivious so when I stepped out of the elevator and noticed a pathway of rose petals leading up to our doorway my first reaction was, "What moron dropped a bunch of flowers in the hallway?" Then I realized that they were deliberately placed and started to get the picture. When I opened the door there was a continuation of the rose petal path, leading up to a gorgeous flower arrangement from my favorite florist. At that point I still hadn't turned on the light and was somewhat confused (When did he do this? Is he still at work?) but he stepped out from where he was hiding inside the apartment and got down on one knee and proposed =)

But that is not all. There is more! And what happened next made me realize that I am sooo gullible when it comes to Paul and have the tendency not to question anything he tells me. I'm not sure if this is good or bad, but since it enabled him to really surprise me I'll say it's good for now.

Anyway, so at that point he told me to get ready for small group and not to wear my sweatpants for once ("They don't go with your ring!") and I agreed. So we both got dressed up and I was kind of like joking around saying we should ditch small group because they'd understand and he was saying we should but that we had to bring dinner anyway so we might as well stay. Which I agreed with. Then I pulled out a quesadilla I bought for myself from El Pollo and started munching away at which point he completely flipped out. He grabbed the quesadilla and started talking about how I shouldn't eat because we had to eat with the group. And I was really confused and said I only bought one quesadilla as a snack for myself and there wasn't enough for everyone else anyway. But he insisted that we had to eat with everyone else so I relented and let him put it in the fridge. Then another thing that should have tipped me off to what was coming was when I told him I was going to call Henry to see if he would be able to come with us after all. Again, freaked out and started saying how it should just be the two of us tonight, to which I replied, "Uh, what about the rest of the small group? They're going to be there." And he said something like, "Just us and the group." This of course, made no sense whatsoever but I just let it go and chalked it up to him being excited and wanting us to be somewhat alone (yeah, I know, it still doesn't make sense).

Anyway, when we got to small group, our small group leader Perry had a goofy grin on his face when we opened the door and it was clear Paul had given him a heads up because he announced to the group that we had just gotten engaged and would be leaving small group for our dinner reservation shortly.

At that point Paul led me back to the car and blindfolded me with his tie and we drove up into the Hollywood Hills for dinner at....Yamashiro! The view was absolutely gorgeous and left me wondering, how much would it cost to get married here? It's probably out of our price range but I think I'll look into it anyway, just in case.

So yup, there you have it. I have pictures of the rose petals, a zillion pictures of my gorgeous flower arrangement from LA Premiere (best florist ever) and, of course, the ring. But I am feeling lazy and overwhelmed by wedding preparations (already!) so that will have to wait for another day.

Speaking of wedding arrangements, did you know planning a wedding is like having a freaking job? I thought prom took a lot of preparation but that didn't involve guest lists and invitations and seating arrangements and color coordinating and cake and AH! I will try not to turn this into a wedding blog but um, can one of my friends please get engaged soon so I can blab about weddings with someone without the fear of losing all my friends? Please? Someone? Engaged? Soon? Please?

So far, I have a (very) rough guestlist and we know who's going to be in our wedding party (MOH is my baby sister and my bridesmaids will be Helen, Lian and Grace, his best man will be his brother Michael and his groomsmen will be his childhood friend Alvin and two of his closest frat bros). Also, we're targeting July 2007 in order to give ourselves plenty of time and also to avoid a weird 10-month post-marital separation due to me going off to school.

Yup, that is all. I started looking at wedding dresses over the weekend and realized a) there are a lot of extremely ugly wedding dresses out there (who buys them??) and b) there are a LOT of wedding dress styles period (how the heck do you pick?). I need all the help I can get so if you know the first thing about wedding planing I'm sending you an SOS. Save me!