On July 3, 2015 Rob and I were getting the house ready for our first ever 4th of July party in our brand new home! There was so much to do in such little time. To put it into perspective Rob was painting bedroom doors in the garage and I was painting trim around the doorframes, cleaning the house, preparing food, decorating and everything in between. Rob's parents bought us a new umbrella for our back deck and Rob had mentioned that we needed sand to hold the umbrella down. I knew we wanted to have the umbrella in action for our party so eventually we were going to the beach to "steal sand" in Rob's words. In the mid afternoon Rob randomly says to me "babe go get your nails done!" I looked at him like he was crazy! I said "Rob we have so much to do I can't go get my nails done!" He promised me he had everything under control and sent me on my merry way. I returned home to some progress, but knew you could always prep more for a party. Throughout the rest of the day Rob kept looking at his watch everyone 15 minutes (something he never does), but I just observed his weird behavior and carried on. Then he told me we had to be at the beach exactly at 5:00 p.m. because that’s when the lifeguards leave and we can "steal the sand!". In the mist of preparing for our travels to the beach Rob then says "Hey lets go out to dinner tonight!". Now I am really looking at him like he is crazy. Typically pizza would of been the dinner choose especially because we still needed to finish preparing for our party. But I went along and decided maybe a dinner out would be nice so there’s not an extra mess to clean up! While we are in route to the beach I was holding Rob's hand and noticed they were really sweaty. I asked him if he was okay and he said yes, but again just acting a little strange. The cherry on top of the entire ride is when Erik (Rob's brother called him) typically Rob would talk through is speakers in his car, but he immediately picked up the phone and said "ok, to the left or the right?" Now I started putting the pieces together, but still unsure as to what exactly I was walking into. Once we arrived to Rob's parents house we went inside and said hello to the family. After being there for about 15 minutes Rob asked me to take a walk up to the beach to see if the "lifeguards were gone". I remember him looking at be and grabbed my hand as we walked up to the beach. As we made our way there was a huge heart made of flowers and inside read Chrissy Marry Me? The tears starting running down my face in such excitement and happiness that the love of my life wanted to spend the rest of his days with me! There we toasted to champagne, took beautiful pictures, and went out to a romantic dinner after! It was a day I will never forget and always cherish close to my heart!

After lots of thinking and researching proposal ideas I decided to keep it simple and make it somewhere we both had spent so much time together.  Like most of my plans that are not always planned in advance.  I decided to propose on July 3rd which was a day before our first ever housing warming party.  That being said there was a ton of cleaning and setting up at the house that needed to be done.  This made my job a little tricky trying to also set up the proposal without Chrissy knowing.  This is where my brother Erik came in.  I called Erik a couple days before to make sure he was free and able to help me.  I had him buy flowers, champagne and customized champagne flutes.  I was going to propose to her on the beach where I grew up and where we both spent plenty of sunny days together.  I wanted Erik to set up the flowers in the sand in the shape of a heart and have him write, “Chrissy Marry Me” in the flowers.  He did great and had everything ready to go.

So back to the day of, we are busy cleaning and I am thinking of ways to get Chrissy to come down to my parent’s house when we really didn’t have time to do so.  So I get the great Idea of telling Chrissy we need to go get sand to fill the base of a umbrella stand my parents bought.  I had to convince her that we needed to go down by my parent’s house to get the sand (even though there’s a beach 5 minutes from the house) and that we had to go after five when the lifeguards left.  She fell for the plan.  

Next thing I had to do was convince Chrissy to go get her nails done (this was a previous request made by her).  So reluctantly she agreed and left the house.  So now I’m trying to balance cleaning, making the pool look good and making sure the set at the beach was going good.  This is where it got tricky and where my planning wasn’t so great.  So remember it is July 3rd (busy beach day).  I called my brother to see how it was going and told the beach is completely full so we can’t set up yet.  Whoops.  So, now I’m starting to get really nervous and also trying not to let Chrissy notice.  

She gets home from the nail salon and I again have to convince her to get dressed nice and that we would go out to dinner.  Normally before a party we would’ve had just grilled to make our live easier.  This is where I think she started catching on. 

We left the house and began our drive down crowded Rt. 35.  I was doing ok remaining calm until I got the final update from Erik.  Yes, this happened over the phone (which usually plays through my truck speakers) with Chrissy sitting right next to me.  He told me everything was set up but just a heads up there’s like 50 people waiting on the beach that want to watch.  Great….so now I have an audience.  

If I remember correctly Chrissy asked a few times if I was ok, So i must have been letting my nerves and excitement get to me.  

We finally get to the beach and walk past that crowd (which felt more like 100 people) and up to the flower set up.  Chrissy had the biggest smile on her face that I think I’ve ever seen.

I got down on one knee and proposed.  I was so nervous with everyone watching that apparently I was down on my knee for only a few seconds before I came back up (Chrissy told me that after…).  But even though I beat the world record speed for a proposal, Chrissy said YES!  We took plenty of pictures together and enjoyed the bottle of champagne on the beach.  That took the edge off and I felt so relieved!  The weather was perfect and everything went to plan.  And yes I did steal sand from the beach afterwards for the umbrella!