It's amazing what can happen in a month

Well, this is taking a lot longer to post than I expected. Tara and I started this post a couple weeks ago. I finally finished it yesterday, but when I tried to post it, it deleted a bunch of it and totally messed up the rest. As a result, I'm going to rewrite a shorter version.

The month of February was amazing! During the month I had an amazing Valentines date, went skiing for the first time, and even got engaged! For Valentines I made dinner for Tara and I at my apartment. After dinner we played pool, had dessert, and went for a drive. I'm sure Tara will add in some details later.

Over President's day weekend Tara and I visited her brother, Tim, in Tooele. On the way to his house on Saturday we stopped in Salt Lake and did a session at the Temple. Most of Tara's family came for the weekend and we had an official President's day party, complete with a parade march for the kids. It was a lot of fun to be with her family, and meet her parents...again. On Monday, Tara, her dad, brother, nephew, and I went skiing at Alta. It was the first time I'd ever been skiing, and despite all of your predictions I survived without injury.

Tara also met the family at Sunday dinner, and still stuck around, so I decided it was about time to talk to her dad and get a ring. I talked to her sister, Tiffany, who told me that her parent's were coming to Provo on Tuesday the 26th and set it up so I could come to her house to talk to her dad. While I was there talking to them they told me that they hadn't even told Tara they were coming out. This was perfect because I wanted the actual proposal to be a surprise, even though she knew it was coming eventually. Her parents were also coming out that weekend so I told Tara I was going to talk to her dad then so she wouldn't suspect anything. Her dad makes rings, so the weekend of the 22nd we went to a couple jewelry stores so Tara could get an idea of what she would want her dad to make. At the time we went ring shopping I knew I was going to be talking to her dad the following Tuesday, but I didn't know how the rest of it would work out. I decided that I wanted to propose sooner than her dad would be able to make a ring, but I also wanted to have a ring for her to wear, so the day after we went ring shopping I went back to one of the stores where my friend works and picked out a diamond and a simple solitair band for Tara to wear in the mean time. I picked the ring up on Wednesday, the day after I'd talked to her dad.

I decided to propose on Friday the 29th so I planned a date. We went to dinner at a little Italian place in Provo called Gloria's Little Italy. Tara loved it because they have pretty authentic food, and she loved hearing the Italian people who were there speaking in Italian. After dinner we brought our dessert back to my apartment. Tara had asked about mission pictures before, so I told her that I had a disk with some on it from my old computer. That night I told her I had found the disk and asked if she wanted to see them. I had actually put a few mission pictures on a DVD together with some other random pictures. After the pictures of me I put pictures of the two of us in high school, and some from recently. After the pictures I put a few slides of words asking her to marry me. While we were watching the DVD, before the pictures of us started, I said I'd be right back and went back into my bedroom. I got the ring, flowers, and personalized M&M's and waited until the slides with words came up before going back into the living room and kneeling down and asking Tara to marry me. It all went perfectly and she was completely surprised. One of the first things she said was, "did you already ask my dad?". I told her they had been out earlier that week and she couldn't believe they hadn't told her. I still can't believe everything has worked out the way it has. I feel so lucky and blessed to have found such an amazing girl. I'm not sure how I tricked her into liking me, but I'm extremely grateful that it worked. I love you, Tara!