Danielle and I had been planning on taking a walk out to the river at my parent's place for about a month. They live about a half mile or so away from the river and there's a nice path from their place down to the river. Danielle got to the house a little before noon and we chatted with the family a bit before we headed out on our walk. We donned blaze orange vests because it's bow hunting season and neither of us were very keen on the idea of getting arrows shot in our general direction.


Hooray for blaze orange throwing off the color balance on digital photographs.

Hanyway, we carried on our merry little way with our brand spanking new blaze orange vests and walked out to the river with three of the cats from the farm keeping us company. They followed us all the way out to the river and back and made sure we were safe. We made our way back to the house for some tasty food courtesy of my awesome mom. When we got back no one was home because Jess had forgotten some of her stuff for work at the farm, so my parents had to go and chase her down. I figured we'd at least set the table and whatnot, so Danielle helped me get the food onto plates and set the table. As I was setting down some food on the table in the dining room, she walked in and noticed something was off. There were only two plates on the table. She asked me if this had been planned all along. "Maybe," said I in my completely not-smooth voice. "Hey, I have a question for you." *Will you marry me?* I asked in sign language (Danielle's a deaf ed. major). She said, "Yes." Actually, if I remember correctly, she said, "Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes," and gave me a big hug and started to cry. It was a good time.

And now it's picture time.


Ooooo.


Awwww.


I think she was surprised.


A picture of the cute engaged couple.


And a more serious picture for good measure.