Happy Anniversary! Again!

My husband and I like to celebrate. Two weeks ago, we celebrated six years since we unofficially became a couple. The shortest version of the story is that we started dating on February 6, 2005 and then became exclusive two weeks later on February 20, 2005. We were low-key about our celebrating the anniversaries last year, as last year was also the year of our first wedding anniversary (May 23, 2009). This year, we figured we should just celebrate everything. And why not?

My husband had a really cute and romantic idea that for our February 20th this year, we would go back to Northern Virginia, where we lived for four years (five for him, but I moved in with him a year later), and relive the night he proposed to me, which was February 20, 2007.

The story behind that was my arriving home from work and seeing that he had taken the night off from working at the school library. We dressed up, and he took me to dinner, but the location was a surprise. When I saw that we were nearing the Cheesecake Factory, I'd figured it out. This might have been the first time we'd ever gone there. I hugged him while we were in line waiting for our names to be called, and I felt something papery in his jacket pocket. He was secretive when I asked him about it. I had suspicions, but rings are not made of paper, so I tried to dismiss my thoughts. We had a lovely dinner, and he stared at me lovingly the whole time. I tried reading him, to no avail.

When he didn't propose, I figured that it just wasn't happening that night after all. It started to rain as we were walking in the parking lot. He wanted to take me to the nearby Borders, to get me a cup of coffee (as you know by now, I love my coffee).

It turns out that the trip to Borders was last-minute. The plan had been to drive me to this nifty park area, where we'd walk under the starlit sky, which is something I've always liked. I had told him when he was first courting me (yeah, that's the best way to define what happened with us) that my idea of a perfect date was to maybe have dinner, followed by a nice quiet walk at night looking at the stars. And we'd manage to never really do that at this point. So he was going to propose on our walk. Despite the forecast being in his favor, it rained. He needed an alternate plan, and he thought of Borders, which was my first permanent job when I moved in with him, so it held great significance to me.

We wandered around the store, perused the DVDs, and he found the first two seasons of Dinosaurs and said he was getting those for me. I actually thought this was part of the anniversary goodness, as I'd been going stupid over wanting those DVDs for-frickin-ever. We bumped into a former co-worker of mine, and he walked with us down the escalator (or maybe we stood-- irrelevant to the story) and to the cafe on the first floor, where we stood in line for coffee. My friend was on his way out, as his shift had just ended, but my husband asked him to wait a moment. Then he pulled out something papery from his jacket pocket and handed it to me. Some pamphlet about taking care of jewelry. I had my big pillowy coat draped over my left arm as I held the pamphlet in my right hand, so I honestly didn't see him drop to one knee. It wasn't even until he started asking, "Will you marry me?" that I knew, based on where his voice was coming from.

I didn't say anything. I just grabbed the ring from the box and slipped it on my finger. To me, that was obvious. The way he retells the story though, I kept him in suspense. "Well?" "Uh, yeah!"

People in line aww'ed. I said that we should probably step out of line. We handed my friend my camera to take pictures of us and a short video of me girling out over it. It's probably on YouTube.

We went back in line and as I ordered my coffee, a fellow near the serving station said, "Man, give it to her on the house. She just got engaged!" Somehow the barista had missed all of that. Engaged and a free cup of coffee. Win.

Fast-forward to four years later. My husband felt it would be best waiting for five years to reenact it all, but as many Borders are closing-- and our Borders where he proposed being one of them-- he decided this year would be a better idea. So he booked a hotel room, and we took a trip out to Tyson's Corner. We meandered the mall for a bit before checking into our room. Then we had dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. The picture of the day is of the ceiling just before entering the elevator. I love their scenery. I made sure to have a cup of coffee for dinner, as the cafe in the Borders had closed a couple of days before our arrival.

It began raining as we walked into the parking lot, just like before. We drove to Borders, but they had just begun closing procedures. Back in the day, they did not close at 7pm, but times are a-changin'.