Aghhh!

Well, you know me. And you know there's a story. :)

My sister had planned a bus trip to New York City for me and her as a Christmas present about 3 months ago. We've gone a lot of times before on a chartered bus with this crazy old lady named Gloria who who claims she was a Rockette and does high kicks and can can dancing to Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York" when we enter the tunnel to NYC....Love it.

This time around, since Nick's birthday was Wednesday I decided to look into staying overnight- something I've never done in New York before. Nick booked a room at a military hotel for Saturday night and even got tickets to see Shrek on Broadway- my first Broadway show!

Saturday my sister and I left at 6am to catch the bus up. We arrived shortly after 10 and had a blast shopping. We walked to Macy's and H&M then went down to Canal St and shopped through Chinatown and Soho. We took cheesey pictures in front of huge wreaths on restaurant doors. By mid to late afternoon the light drizzling of the morning had turned into rain mixed with a few snow flakes (it was the first day of snow!). We were both cold and wet.

We ate at a little restaurant called Il Fornaio on Mulberry St. The food was awesome and the canolis were the best I've ever had. Nick ended up meeting us there for a drink.

My sister Tina needed to meet the bus at 6:45 and we were going to see the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center. Nick didn't have the tickets to the play with him though so we swung by the hotel before the tree...then realized we didn't have time to see the tree before the show. We barely caught up to Tina's bus on time- I scrambled to get my bags off before the pulled away and took me with them...it was a close call!

I was anxious about being so close to Tina missing her bus when we got to the show. Since we were a little early and we both wanted to eat before the show we went across the street to this little pizza shop called Italia Mia. The 40something Italian lady who worked there (and probably owned it) was hilarious. Nick went up to the counter to give her our order and she just waved her hands and told him to sit down and told him not to get up. The whole time we were there she was answering her cell and talking in Italian. She told a table once how bad a waitress she was...I told Nick we should adopt her as our 3rd mom.

Shrek the Musical was amazing. I was so impressed by the set alone and how it kept rotating. Shrek is one of my favorite movies and they did an amazing job portraying it. Lord Farquaad was my favorite- a huge burly guy played him and since Lord Farquaad is supposed to be a midget, the huge actor performed on his knees the whole time with little fake legs attached to his real legs. His real legs were hidden by the cape. It was ridiculous. Such an awesome show.

Afterwards, feeling exhausted and pretty gross-looking from spending 9 hours walking around in the cold rain and sleet I really just wanted to go back to the hotel and clean up since Nick wanted to go out. "Why don't we just see the tree tomorrow?" I suggested. He insisted we see it then. And added that it was right around the corner anyway.

He was right- the tree was pretty. Still just a tree but a pretty one with all the lights on at night. I got my camera out and took a few pictures of the two of us before a couple about our age offered to take our picture if we took their picture too.

I quickly agreed and they took a picture of us. Then we switched and I took a picture of them in front of the tree. It was a nice couple and the girl was from Baltimore too. "Thanks so much!" I said again as we handed their camera back.

"Can we get one more?" Nick asked them. I looked at him funny. "Did the other one not turn out okay?" I asked him. He just shrugged. My camera has a habit of taking random blurry pictures so I thought maybe he had gotten a glimpse of the picture they took and it hadn't come out.

We got into position again for another photo and the girl started to take a picture. Nick paused, and said, "Oh, just one more thing."
And he got down on one knee. :)
Everything happened pretty fast but I do remember him asking me to marry him. I almost forgot to say "Yes!" I was really surprised.

I just kept kissing him and telling him I loved him. I was really thankful too that the girl kept getting pictures for us.

We called both of our moms from the Plaza before walking back to the hotel. Nick went out and bought a bottle of champagne while I showered and got cleaned up to go out. The hotel itself was laughable. It was this military hotel that you rent by bed. It was only $100 for both of us- but the communal bathrooms and showers were on different floors. I showered in socks because I was scared to death to let my bare feet touch the bottom of the gross shower. There were these pipes in our room that every time someone on the floor above flushed you could hear the water rush through the pipes followed by a long continuous LOUD popping sound....all night. We even had to push the twin beds together so we could sleep next to each other...definitely memorable. Hah.

After a few glasses of champagne, we walked around the corner to a bar called The Wharf and I had much more champagne and some midnight snacks while I stared at my ring under the lights and heard 5 Lady Gaga songs followed by Jay-Z's "Empire State of Mind." Gotta love crazy New York bars that are open late.

The next day I was determined to go to Serendipity Cafe- Serendipity is one of my top 5 favorite movies and Tina and I even stayed up Friday night watching it before the bus trip. I got pictures of Serendipity and would have loved to have eaten there but that's going to have to wait for our anniversary return trip some day- the cafe was booked through all of December and the walkin wait was 2 1/2 hours. I did get a mug though. :)

It's funny Tina had told me earlier Saturday about all the great New York prints and pictures I could get but I said that I wasn't really interested in anything like that. While NYC is a nice city to visit and of course to shop, nothing really significant had ever happened there for me so I had no reason to have anything hanging on my wall that signified NYC. Suddenly everything changed on Sunday. I wanted to find something to hang up or have in our new place that I could remember was from New York City the weekend Nick proposed to me. I really didn't find any cool pictures or anything so I was fortunate that Rockefeller Center had a gift shop and Nick bought me a beautiful snowglobe of the tree and the Plaza.

The entire weekend was...well, it had character. I kind of like that it wasn't perfect. It only made that moment stand out even more to me. I wasn't entirely sure that Nick had the ring. I was pretty sure he was going to propose sometime within the next 3-4 months but I thought he was going to wait until he asked my mom first (I made him ask her when we called to tell her we were engaged..haha). Maybe it worked better that way because I would have known it was coming had he already asked.

It's so funny to think a year ago we had just moved in together. I didn't even really know how he felt about me.

I'm so happy to have him in my life. It's nice to be able to look down at my hand and see a sign that someone loves you so much that they want everyone to know it.

Ahhhhh. So many more adventures to come. I can't wait. ;*)

PS. Thank you everyone for all the congratulations!! xoxoxox

It's been an amazing week. I've neglected blogging because frankly I've been enjoying spending time doing really stupid stuff with Nick.

He drove in Wednesday and got in about 11pm. Thursday was Thanksgiving. While pretty much everyone but me at the Rusty Scupper had to work, I got to have Nick spend the first holiday with my family. (Christmas day I'm flying to St Louis to spend Christmas with his family).

We were totally lazy Thanksgiving- aren't you supposed to be? While everyone else was toasting to sparkling cider, I brought two bottles of champagne and had a good time with Nick. I fell asleep (passed out?) on him during the Dallas game (couldn't care less) and woke up to watch Four Christmases with Nick, my sister and brother and law and my brother in law's ex son in law (got that?).

Friday morning my favorite Baltimore radio station 98Rock put on an event called Bacon and Beer/Purple and Black Friday at Hightopps in Timonium, MD to celebrate the upcoming Baltimore Ravens vs. Pittsburgh Steelers game. The event was basically a Kegs and Eggs event- it started at 6am (which is legally when you can serve alcohol in Baltimore County) and had drink specials. 98Rock broadcasted live. It was a blast. I wish Nick had been a bit more into it...he was still feeling the effects of the champagne, the 6 pack of IPA, and a Captain and birch beer (a surprisingly good combo!) from Thanksgiving night. We did get some awesome breakfast food, a load of bacon, and I had two amazing beer-mosas. (Yup, that's right- beer-mosas.)  A really fun morning.

We came back to my parents house and slept a few hours, got up and ate and fell asleep on the couch again. We basically spent all of Friday in comfy clothes and catching up on episodes of Fringe from the last month. Oh, and eating pizza. Awesome day.

Nick left this morning though. I'm pretty psyched to see him again this weekend in New York City. My sister and I try to go every once in a while when someone from her work charters a bus for a day trip to NYC. She booked it again like three months ago for this upcoming Saturday, December 5th. Nick's birthday is Wednesday so I had the idea that maybe I could just change the bus ticket into a one way to NYC for Saturday and come back Sunday night instead. I've never spent the night in New York City before. It worked out well- My sister Tina and I are going to hang out all day Saturday. Nick is going to drive in and take the subway the rest if the way in on Saturday (since Groton, CT is only 2 hours away) and meet up with me for dinner when Tina takes the bus back that night at 6:15. We're going to see Shrek on Broadway (yay! our fist Broadway show!), stay at a military hotel which was a third of the cost of every other motel there and I can go back Sunday night.

It will be a nice way to celebrate his birthday and spend some time together. I still already miss him like crazy. It's sad to see all his stuff from this weekend gone when I came home from work today. Ugh.....two months from this Friday until Hawaii. It needs to come faster- it's way too cold here.