Day 6: A Moment You Wish You Could Relive

I have been thinking about this one all day. I mean how do I approach this? Is it a moment I regret and want to fix or a moment that was highly embarrassing that I want to turn around? I know that relive and not redo usually indicates that it would mean a moment I loved so much I want to do it twice but is that how I want to answer this? Taking into account all three options, I had a hard time narrowing it down to even a few choices.

Uh, do I want to do the obvious and talk about moments from my wedding or those times when I thought I would suffocate I was laughing so hard with friends or how about playing with puppies? Who wouldn't want to have a chance of playing with their dog in the puppy stage again? Volleyball games/practices, moments I made my mom laugh, getting awards, every brownie sundae I've ever had from CPK.......And then there's the entire dating period Dom and I had. I replayed those moments time and time again after Dom dropped me off for the night that I might be ok to skip this option but it was just SO good that I'm having trouble ruling it out. I guess I should be feeling pretty blessed right about now that I have so many moments in my life that I want to relive because they were just that good. :)

So what's it going to be? What moment did it for me that, if asked by a genie tomorrow, I would be completely prepared to relive? I'm going with: When Dom proposed to me. I don't know if you know our proposal story or not but it was up on our wedding website but that's gone now so I'll put it here. It's kinda long so you can skip down to the bottom if you'd like.


The Proposal:

Well you guessed it, he proposed and the joy that I experienced before was childs play compared to the complete and utter happiness that I am experiencing now. Let's just say that life definitely got better. There is a bit more to it than that though so let's start off at the beginning. Dom and I try and go on a big date at least once a month if we can and then little dates whenever possible. Well, we had not done either in a while and so he told me to prepare for a big date soon. I was super stoked and started counting down the days, seeing as how he told me about two weeks in advance.

Now when we do dates the one who plans it doesn't tell the other what is going to happen. We try and keep everything a surprise as much as possible. This date was of course going to be a surprise but I did get to know one thing, we were starting the date off at the beach.

Well, the day finally arrived, Nov. 15, and I was so excited that I hopped out of bed before my alarm went off. He picked me up around 11am and we headed to Huntington Beach. Now there had been fires in our area and so there were heavy smoke clouds looming over La Mirada which we were able to escape at the beach. It was a perfect day, 90 degrees, not too crowded, we found a great spot and set up camp. Laying on the blanket, we took in the glorious rays of sunshine and reminisced about our relationship. We eventually wandered to the water where we dipped our fingers and toes in just to make sure we had been there and then proceeded to make a sand castle. It was quite the amazing castle if I do say so myself, comparable to the Taj Mahal. After that we played volleyball and threw a Frisbee around.

By the end of our beach adventure the smoke clouds had caught up with us and had started to take over the sky. As we were packing up we were in admiration of the beautiful reflection that the clouds had on the water. We got a couple pictures of it. After this, we moved into phase two of the date but not before an intermission. Normally if we have to split up in order to get all ready and beautified we only take the time necessary to do so, this time around Dom said we had an hour and a half to get ready because he didn't want to rush me. He also said I could get as dressed up as I liked. I love to get dressed up so I took him up on his offer and put on a new dress that he had never seen.

After the hour and a half was up, he came to the door and we exchanged comments about how great the other one looked and then we were on our way. Seriously though, he looked good! Suit, tie, watch...he pulled out all the stops. Due to the fires some freeways were closed and so we had to take an alternate route, which put us a little behind schedule. This was fine with me since I had no idea what we were doing. We finally arrived at our destination, P.F. Changs. This is my favorite restaurant! He said we could order whatever we wanted and so we did, appetizers, entrees, and dessert.

After our meal was complete we went on to our next destination, the movie theater across the street. Once we got there I realized he had just recreated our first date. We had gone to dinner and a movie at the same locations and then went to the beach afterward. It was a cute realization. Unfortunately since we ordered desert we had made ourselves late for the movie which didn't matter since it was sold out anyway. We tried the old buy a ticket for another movie and just sneak in anyway trick but it didn't work, they wouldn't let us in. We ended up going to the movie Changeling. It was quite the opposite of what he had originally intended us to go see (James Bond) but we had a ton of fun joking around and laughing about how it was such a bad date movie. :)

This is where I thought the night was going to end. We had mentioned going to get coffee earlier but we never stopped anywhere and I figured the date was so much fun anyway, it was a good time to go home and smile about it while getting ready for bed. Well, Dom had other plans. As we passed my street and I began to get suspicious he said that he wasn't through with me yet and that we should go and see if they had put our bench back.

I will have to pause to give you some important background information about our bench. There is this little park by school that we always take walks in and there is a bench at the end of the park where we have had many important and long conversations. No matter where we are in our relationship we always seem to be able to talk here for hours. Well, at the beginning of the semester when we took our first walk after Christmas break we noticed that they had taken our bench! We didn't know why or when they would replace it. After many more disappointed trips to the park we began to give up hope but it seemed Dom wanted to try one more time on our date.

So, we parked by the entrance and started walking. As we were strolling through the park he stopped and pointed out something in the concrete, it turns out he was just killing time but it was fun nonetheless. We talked and danced and hugged for a while before we moved on to our spot. As we got closer I saw something glowing in the distance. I thought someone had put up Christmas lights on the fence and how that was odd, thinking where did they plug it in and would the city allow that? I then realized, after several more steps that the glowing came from tea light candles in white paper bags that outlined the walkway up to and around our bench. There were also two huge vases full of beautiful roses on either side of the bench on the ground and flower petals lining the walkway and all over the bench.

As the wheels started turning I began to smile thinking this could be it!! He walked me through the flower petals and sat me down on the bench. Taking both of my hands he stared at me and said how much he loved me and how he couldn't imagine being without me and that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. Then he took a box out of his pocket and opened it up to reveal my gorgeous ring and stood up and said, "Candice Ann Clark....(got down on one knee) will you marry me?" At this point my brain stopped working and I went into shock. I remember him saying my name clearly but everything else is a little hazy. I eventually stammered out a yes and he sat down with me and put the ring on my finger!

I am pretty sure that I said, "Are you serious?!!" about a hundred times and his handsome, patient faced smiled back saying yes. I smiled so big it hurt and I began to laugh and cry into my hands. I have never been so happy in my life! We hugged and smiled and then prayed together. It was all so wonderful. We were then greeted by his roommates a little later since they came to clean everything up for us. They set everything up as well, they are so nice. After this we scampered off to celebrate. We couldn't really think of anywhere that would be open at 12:30 at night so we went to a 24 hour doughnut shop we had seen. I was too giddy to eat but it was fun being able to talk about spending the rest of our lives together!

He dropped me off around 1:30am and I ran to my room to wake up my roommate a.k.a. one of the maids of honor, Mindy. After a quick dispute of unbelief from my half-asleep Mindy, we screamed about the news for about an hour and a half before I drifted off into a dream land that wasn't nearly as good as my reality. :)

Well, you made it to the end. I applaud you! I hope that you enjoyed the journey as much as I have. :)

So, when he asked and I said yes I basically broke down. I put my hands to my face and cried through my giggles and smile. It felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders and the happiness was almost unbearable. Pretty much every time I was with Dom I would be shouting in my head, "I want to marry you! I want to marry you! I want to marry you!" and because he wanted to keep everything a surprise we never had a serious discussion about our future together. To know that he felt the same way I did and all my dreams were coming true and I no longer had to wonder and hope, it was greater than any happiness I had ever known. So yeah, I would definitely love to relive this moment. :)