Our Engagement
April 9, 2010 was a Very Big Day™.
We started off the day closing the sale on our very first Space Tomato, which was quite a grand occasion. Space Tomato Central Command is a 1950s ranch home on Fairview Drive in Austin, Texas, and the Space Tomato Hangar is just out back. There's also Space Tomato Science Outpost Station 1, which is focused on horticulture, as well as a burn zone we use for engine testing, and an amphibian breeding pool. Soon, we will rule the cosmos with an Fe fist, but right now we're renovating CentComm. (If you want to see our progress, check out our site on teh World Wide Web!)
Anyhoo, sometime around 2:30pm, we finally got word that the funding went through and we could pick up the keys. So we did. Then we went to the house to put out a welcome mat and enjoy some bubbly. Not just any bubbly. This was a bottle of sparkling pinot noir that we bought from Brian. If you're ever in South Gippsland, you should definitely stop by! He was, by far, the most awesome wine maker that we met, and everything we tasted of his we loved. Even thought we didn't taste this sparkling pinot when we were there, we decided to buy it on the basis of everything else of his. We figured we'd save it for a special occasion. It was delicious!
Then, we each had a few errands to run before enjoying our first meal in the house (unbeknownst to Amy, Dave's errands were to bring back a few things to the house for later). We decided that we'd get some takeout sushi from one of our favorite places, Maru (which just happens to be half a block away from Dave's old house), and eat picnic style in our new great room.
When we got to the house, Dave had already set out a very special bottle of wine that his brother had given him for Christmas several years ago, and he had laid out some of the really nice decorative plates from our travels (like some of our Murano plates from Italy) and told Amy that he thought for just this one time, we should use our fancy souvenir plates to eat from; she agreed that it would be fun. So we put the sushi out on them, and Dave started unpacking the picnic basket (it was on the ground, so he was naturally kneeling). Dave was taking things out and handing them to Amy to set out somewhere, and after he had taken everything out, he told her that there was just one more thing -- and took out a ring!
The ring was from our recent trip to Hawaii. Amy had been looking at all of the colored pearls there, and Dave knew that he wanted to get her a nontraditional ring. So, he snuck off (under the guise of stopping for a restroom break) and found one when we were on Kauai (which is where we were when we found out our bid on the house was accepted). It's a Japanese blue pearl, and there's a small diamond next to it (for tradition's sake). The blue color comes from the twenty-two miniature, or "bonzai," smurfs trapped inside. When it comes to pearl technology, there is nothing the Japanese can't do.
Back to the proposal. On one knee, Dave told Amy how much he loved her, how crazy he was about her, how she was his best friend. He told her that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her and that he wanted to start a new life, together with her. He told her that he didn't want a single day to go by that the house wasn't theirs together, and he asked her to marry him. She immediately said yes. Actually, she was nodding yes the entire time he was proposing, stunned that everything was happening at once. A house? Engaged? All in one day?
But that's not all. After the ring and the proposal and the "yes," Dave told Amy that "in case the ring didn't work" he had commissioned a work of art for the occasion. He then revealed a sculpture of the two of them as gnomes (yes, gnomes!), with Dave-gnome kneeling and presenting Amy-gnome with a tomato that reads "Marry Me." Who could say no to that?
Like we said. April 9th was a very big day.