The Engagement

So Peter is the kind of guy who thinks he can fit 36 hours of events into a 24 hour day
Which is why that weekend was so incredible, exciting and exhausting.
Here goes:

I woke up on the morning of the fifteenth slightly exhausted and very confused.
First off, Peter's flight had been a bit delayed and we'd pulled into Ormond just in time to grab a Valentine's Day dinner from Grind before the kitchen closed
and pass out watching an episode of Sherlock at 11.
Secondly, it was 10 in the morning and Peter was already up, snooping around in the kitchen
and asking me for my car keys.
Bold moves for the guy who doesn't like to drive in Florida traffic
{can't say I blame him.}
So I lazily acquiesced and fell back asleep.

I came downstairs to a huge bouquet of the loveliest flowers,
and Peter cooking up the fluffiest banana oatmeal pancakes with strawberries, mascarpone cheese and honey.
A pretty great start to our third year anniversary,
especially seeing we had spent our first and second an entire ocean and eight time zones apart
but hey, who's counting?

He told me we were going on an adventure,
So naturally I threw on a cute skirt and my Frye boots,
and naturally he told me that, dear, I might not want to be wearing a skirt where we're going.
I begrudgingly changed into jeans.

In the car, he handed me  a note:

Dear Georgia, 

 It's so great to finally be together on our anniversary. I hope you enjoy the day. Here is your first envelope of the day. Let's see if you can guess where we're going.

Love, Peter

Inside the envelope was a tag from the boots  he'd gotten me for Christmas,
and a photo of the two of us holding a heart-shaped falafel. {???????}
You can see why I am marrying him, obviously (:
 Well, in spite of appearances, I am not hopelessly dumb and realized he was taking me horseback riding
and freaked out accordingly.

On the way to the stables, we stopped to pick up our race packets
{did I mention we were running  the Daytona Beach Half Marathon?
Because that also happened that weekend.
As I said, 36 hour days :)}

So then came the horseback riding!

Which was incredible.

There were only four of us, 

and the very weird trail guide let us trot a few times,

which was a nice change of pace from your typical trail ride.

So now we had to pause and help my roommate load his motorcycle onto a trailer,
Before heading out for the next adventure-
a picnic on the beach!
We stocked up on spanakopita from Theia's bakery,
prosciutto from Bon!

And obviously, wine...

The next surprise was an incredible album of photos,
from when we first met,
to the first Pascha we celebrated together,
to our time in Massachusetts in November, and everything in between.
And Peter made me pose with it like a dork, so here's the photo:

As we realized the sun was setting,
Peter suddenly seemed to be in a hurry,
and herded me back to the house to drop off the leftovers,
then into the car for a short drive.

Afterwards he told me that he wanted to take me on this mini-road trip,
but we had run out of time :-/
But on the plus side,
 we've got something to look forward to the next time he comes.
We stopped at a pier nearby my house that lies on the loop.

At this point it actually did briefly cross my mind that this was a little fishy,
as my parents had gotten engaged on a pier,
but after all, this was our anniversary celebration,
not just an ordinary day.
Regardless I was so happy and relaxed that the thought fluttered out of my head pretty quickly
as I enjoyed the sunset, and being with the best guy ever (:

We were talking about nothing, 

laughing and taking photos, trying to stay warm,

When Peter told me he had one last surprise.

Without skipping a beat, 

he pulled out an envelope and handed it to me. 

Inside were more photos,

from nearly every adventure we'd been on together, 

but with seemingly no connection to each other. 

I looked at him blankly, 

and he coolly pulled out a piece of paper and read:

a box without hinges, key, or lid, yet golden treasure inside is hid.

And  of course I said egg, because any self-respecting Tolkien fan knows the answer to this riddle, which Bilbo told to Gollum to buy time escaping from him deep beneath the Misty Mountains.

And also, the photo of Peter and I cracking eggs at Easter helped a little.

Peter went on asking riddle after riddle from my favorite chapter of The Hobbit, Riddles in the Dark.
Some of them stumped me entirely, as I hadn't read the book in over a year,
but each photo correlated with the answer to a riddle:
fish: the picture of a huge tarpon biting my hand in the keys
mountain: Psiloritis in May
Time: a close-up of the beautiful clock in the heart of Prague, where we ran our first Half together
Teeth: an embarrassing photo of me laughing at something someone said in the Ford Flex on our cross-country road trip.
and so on.

Until all the photos had been matched to their respective riddles,
and all but one riddle had been said.
That's when Peter looked at me with those huge blue eyes and asked,
"what do I have in my pocket?"

At this point I became a first class idiot,
and thought that the photo of Psiloritis somehow meant he was taking me to Crete to climb it
so I blurted out "tickets to Greece?!"
and then, because I was afraid of being wrong about what was VERY CLEARLY in his pocket,
I said "a key??"
And then Peter realized how hopeless I truly was,
and got down on one knee,
and pulled out the most beautiful, perfect ring,

and asked me to marry him

And I said "yea I'll marry you!!"
And we hugged and cried, and watched the sunset,
and the ring was THREE SIZES TOO HUGE
and all I could picture was my beautiful perfect engagement ring falling through the board cracks into the river
so we got off of the pier and had an amazing dinner at The Dish 
at which point my cousin called me crying and we cried together and laughed about it afterwards
and came home at ten.
My roommate T somehow immediately saw the ring and freaked out,
which K (roommate two) heard in her room and came and we all freaked out in mutual spastic happiness
And it was perfect.

We woke up at four the next day to get to our half marathon,
ran a great race,
went to church, and went back to the Speedway to enjoy the races afterwards
{just another subversive move to ingratiate Peter into 'Murica}

It was incredible.
Thanks for following along and reading, whoever you are.
It feels great to be writing again,
Regardless of who is or isn't listening.
Brace yourselves, the wedding plans are coming up next!

G