Engagement Session!

With all the wedding planning, I realized I never posted my engagement pictures to my blog. In honor of my parent's 36th wedding anniversary today, April 8th, here they are!

It was a cold morning, which is why we're all bundled up for half of them! They were taken by the lovely Kelly Garsee, who I would highly recommend if you are in the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex.

 

Engagement, Part 2!

Check out Part 1!

Even as we rode the elevator, my mind was buzzing: Was this it? Was this the proposal? And my logical side screamed NO! Of course not! I justified that this was just something special to commemorate us seeing Phantom on stage for the first time together - a callback to our first date. Something to commemorate the occasion. He opened the door, and through the doorway I saw this:

Balloons! Any room with balloons inside is no ordinary room. This was the moment that I knew. It was a callback to all the times he had asked me to dances, using balloons.

My bedroom, September 16, 2004, after he asked me to Homecoming, before we officially started dating.

October 10, 2006 - the same bedroom, literally filled with balloons to ask me to Homecoming.

I saw later that there were also flowers and candles, pictured below, also a callback to how he had asked me to dances in the past:

July 20, 2013

Asking me to prom on May 2, 2007, with candles and candy

I walked into the room, rounded the corner, and there he was, facing me. :) I watched as he got down on one knee and proposed. He used my full name and everything! Of course I immediately started sobbing and was able to choke out an enthusiastic "Yes!" midst my sobs. He called his sister to come upstairs and she took some cheesy posed pictures. I loved them all!

Love this!

The future Mr. and Mrs. Peters :)

My future sister-in-law!!

The ring:

Beautiful!

Sapphire and band detail

Most importantly:

There WAS cheesecake! And chocolates!

and champagne!

I took a few more pictures in the morning of the view we had (it was AMAZING):

The view in the morning

A latte I got the next morning at Hundred Acres, appropriately decorated.

It was an awesome, awesome way to get engaged. I wish we could have stayed in the hotel longer! JW had bought it just for that one night, which made it all the more special. I can't believe I got engaged in Times Square after seeing The Phantom of the Opera! I smile every time I look at my hand :)

We look forward to the wedding!!

This is how excited we are!! :D

Coming up: Our engagement party!

Engagement, Part 1!

It's about time I tell you guys our engagement story, huh? :)

We were in New York City from July 17-24, and scheduled a show for every night, save for the day we had to leave. We really love musical theatre- it was SO awesome!

Wednesday night

Thursday night

Friday matinee

Sunday matinee

Monday night

On Saturday July 20, we made reservations at The Capital Grille, which is a pretty swanky chain restaurant. They had a special going on called "The Generous Pour", which was a tasting of 7 different wines (both red and white) that came at various points during your meal, as well as an 8th dessert wine.

The servings you see are the "tastings" they poured us - a generous pour, indeed! My god, it was like a full glass of wine. Except there were 7 of them. And then there were 8! Obviously, I drank everything that I was given, except for maybe one of the whites. I was feeling preeeetttyyy great at this point!

We left the restaurant later than we anticipated because the meal took so long - JW had promised me cheesecake for dessert, but we couldn't get it there because we would have been late for The Phantom of the Opera, the musical we were scheduled to see that night. He promised that we'd get some after the show.

If you can imagine it, we literally RAN out of the restaurant at 7:47pm. I know because the below picture was snapped at 7:46. The show started at 8:00 and was 7 blocks away. !!!

Honestly, I think JW is surprised I'm still standing. Full disclosure: me too.

A little reference:

Please imagine me, in the pictured wedges and dress, RUNNING through Times Square, and JW chasing after me. Yep.

Fortunately, we got to The Majestic Theatre with one minute to spare. (Again: time stamp!) The below pictures were taken at 7:59 and 8:00, respectively.

The Phantom of the Opera is a special show for us. For our first official date, we went to see the movie on December 26, 2004. We both love the soundtrack and had watched the 25th anniversary special, but had never seen the stage show together. (I had seen it a few times, with my family.)

I thoroughly enjoyed the show - so much so, that I started crying near the end of it. I'm pretty sure I was so emotional because I was still a little drunk, but honestly the performances were so top notch that I wouldn't have had to be drunk to be moved by the performance. It was spectacular!

We left the theatre and I made JW take some awkward pictures by some of the posters outside, like the one below.

Why did I think The Angel Sculpture called for a picture??

::headdesk::

As we left the theatre, JW told me that his sister, who was in town visiting, was at this place with really good cheesecake, so we should meet her there- fulfilling his promise that we'd have cheesecake. Uh, duh! To cheesecake we go! We started walking, and maybe went about a block before we approached the Intercontinental Hotel:

(taken two days later)

So tall!

As we approached, he wheeled around and said, "I wonder if we have a room on the 31st floor?" and in my confusion, all I could muster was a bewildered, "What?!" as I followed him inside. He went up to the front desk, and retrieved the room key almost immediately. We then headed over to the elevators, as I continued to stare at him with a look of bemusement and confusion.

The room key :)

Now, at this point you must be thinking: "Come on, Hayley. You knew he was about to propose!" And I have to tell you that honestly I had no idea. He had spent most of the trip expertly leading me off the trail and making me believe that proposing during this trip was the farthest thing from his mind. We'd constantly joke about it - we'd be in museums, and he'd get down on one knee to tie his shoe. Or, we'd be walking around and he'd randomly turn to me and say, "What if I proposed right now?!"

I mean, just the way that we talked about it so absurdly, plus, after the idea of getting engaged "in a few years" had been ingrained in me ever since we graduated college, it honestly couldn't have been further from my mind.

Part 2!

An Engaged & Miserable Run

Lemme give you only the important updates, meaning workouts... and THIS:

:D :D :D :D I'M ENGAGED!! <3 <3

To read more about our engagement, visit these two posts: Part 1 & Part 2

The engagement was the highlight of my wonderful rest weekend (only two more of these until I start doing Saturday runs!)

Monday

I ran my first 5 miler on Monday, unfortunately on a treadmill. Womp-womp- it was still so hot, and I had another late night beforehand, so I figured the treadmill would be fine. My goal is to stop treadmill-ing it for the rest of the training!

I watched the first 50 minutes of Les Misérables, which I thought was a GREAT idea whenever the music swelled and everyone was singing in those perfect harmonies and it was LOUD - but then I thought it was a terrible idea when it was really quiet or only one person was singing.

If anyone was wondering, "I Dreamed a Dream" is not a great running song. 

Although, having something visual always helps me when I run on the treadmill -typically I watch a Conan episode - so it helped. I didn't feel like pushing myself, but ended up with an average 10 minutes/mile. Walking around NYC all day and then running the next morning really tires out your legs!

Tuesday

My NTC workout on Tuesday wasn't as early as the other ones were - this one was the Beginner Get Toned Energizer workout, and was 45 minutes long. I really hated it- there was NO recovery time. Who does that?! Who makes a 45 minute intense strength and cardio workout with no water breaks factored in? I refused to go all the way through without stopping -call it wisdom or stubbornness- and paused it throughout to take my much needed breaks.

The workout was really difficult, and not one of my favorites since I didn't have anything to cushion myself against the floor of the gym. Although the workouts themselves were pretty entertaining and there wasn't much repetition, every time I repeated an exercise I got a little annoyed. That's the reason why I can't really get into circuits: I know each round is exactly the same and I know exactly how many more times I have to do a certain move.

I'm anxious to continue running outside and going to our regular gym!