Exciting New Year

It has been such eventful end of the last year for me. After not so exciting and almost drab year, on my birthday it all changed with a question "Will you marry me".
That is right ladies and gentleman, this lady is engaged :).  But it is not I who is turning into Bridezilla, oh no sir :)
My beautiful love is dreaming up magical wedding and stars are shooting out of his eyes, oh,  I love him so.
Every year, somehow he manages to throw me surprise birthday party and I swear to you I never catch on. Which is sad, since I do consider myself super sleuth; I am the last person you want to watch movie with, I will figure out the plot and the ending in first 20 minutes. But for some reason, Michael's surprise parties always get me. It is like covert ops with him, he engages army of people to distract me and help him out.
This year he had enlisted help of our friends Amber and Julien (aka Juliber) to lure me out to Central Park to do our routine ritual of gorging on fattening crap from Grace's market on our favorite meadow, before engaging in game of badminton (how counter productive). They always bring their black Pomeranian pooch, my dear friend Ivan with them, but this time Amber said, while holding up bandaged finger, that Ivan bit her (he does have a bit of a drama queen personality), I believed her.

This is my portrait of Ivan

So here we are walking around central park, taking our time, I am like Ferdinand the bull distracted with every pretty flower, and I HAVE to take the picture. Instead of birds chirping, all I hear is my dearest Amber mentioning how much she has to go to the bathroom. I know we are walking toward one, so again, I am taking picture, inhaling pretty November air, but my dear friend is doing a pee dance. So I join her at the boathouse on the lake, where upon exiting bathroom she suggest little drink, which sounds magical.
I am surveying place where we will sit, see my cousin Alex beaufiul face smiling at me, go back to surveying the seats and then.....schreeetch.....did I just see my Alex in the same restaurant...

I look now, for real, and there they are standing by the bar, my friends, neighbors, my cousin, with flowers in their hands, smiles on their faces.... SURPRISE!!!
Yep, he did it again, surrounded me with people I love and his love on that beautiful November day.
Another cast member of the covert operation was my cousin Alex, who helped him organize everything and brought most amazing cupcakes from Magnolia bakery.

There I was surrounded with people I love, content and happy, when Michael asks me to take a walk with him for a few minutes. So I am hopping after him, joking that he has Mariachi band waiting for me somewhere, but he is so serious and focused, I can feel something is up.
He sits me down on the edge of Bethesda fountain, at sunset, and goes down on his knees. He pulls up the most beautiful antique looking box, and starts telling me about his search for a perfect ring…then he starts to sound like Charlie Brown character to me (mhuahah, ahljfku, buahha bahha), since I am too busy crying, realizing what he is doing.
And there it was, on the bed of purple silk, laid the head of the crow. Its elegant silver beak pointing to my heart and I scream YES trough river of tears, I put the ring on the wrong hand and cry some more.

Then jogger stops by and offers to take our photo, I flaying hands saying “We just got engaged”, he smiles and says he knows, he figured it out.

 Hello captain Obvious 

So there I was, once again surrounded by my friends, admiring my beautiful engagement ring, basking in the glow of a promise.

My ring is so magical, he listened to my explicit opinions of no diamonds and that engagement rings should be something unique to the person. Crow is a protector and a messenger and she delivered the most amazing message to me.

So here I am, I start this New Year, knowing I will say “I do” to most important person in my life, I will be his wife.

I start this year toasting to the new chapter, to us working hard and working together … our pockets full of dreams.