It's Finally Happened

I am finally engaged... wooo hooo... it happened on Sunday morning December 18th.

Okay so now that that is out of the way let me tell you how it happened....

Jerome and I had left for my parents house on Thursday, December 15th after work. The roads were just horrible. It had been snowing the day before and continued on Thursday. We left Bloomington around 5:30 PM on 94 headed to Wisconsin.

I called the answering machine as we crossed the river that separated MN from WI to let them know we were about 4 hours away like we always do. We started to think about stopping for gas and decided to stop in Menomonie... My old college stomping grounds. As we were on our way the snow started to come down a bit harder... there were even two semi trucks in the ditch just before we took our exit for Menomonie.

unfortunately there was no pizza yet again for me for dinner. Crazy enough I wanted some since that previous Monday! Instead we headed to Arby's for a french dip, if I do say so myself it was delish!

We left Menomonie with our tummies and gas tank full heading east on 94 to 29. Once we past Wausa 29 just was nasty.... it's like it wasn't even plowed. We were swishing back and forth thru the two tire track lane that was created by cars and trucks before us. We even were following a money truck that we were just hoping would slide into the ditch and pop open.

Mom told us not to call unless we needed help... well I figured since we didn't have a map in the car that I better call because I highly doubted that 45 would be plowed out if 29 wasn't. So off I was to call Dad as Jerome drove behind the money truck. I asked Dad if there was a better route and he told me just to stick with 45 and go slow since I really didn't know the back roads... and especially if those backroads were snowcovered.

We stop for a quick bathroom break and to clean the lights and windshield off at the gas station just off of 29 when you exit off to 45. I asked the cashier if she knew how much snow was expected and she seemed to not even know that it was snowing out! Small town livin'... what can I say!

Anyways... we set off on our journey on 45. It sucked. What more can I say? Thank goodness we were driving the Explorer vs. my little neon! We finally made it to Hortonville and headed over to Mom and Dad's house for a bit before turning in for the night at the house down the road.

On Friday, Tammy, Jerome and myself went into to Appleton to finish Tammy's Christmas shopping... lucked out at Shopko... almost bought a $15 pink Green Bay hat then decided against it. We also ran out to the good ol' cheese factory to pick up some num nums and headed back home after finding a Starbucks.

We all (Mom, Dad, Pam, Mckenna, Grady, Tammy, Allie, Anna, Jerome, and myself) went out to the boon docks for a Friday night Fish Fry in Fremont. Wow that was too many Fs. I had a rack of ribs that were better than what I expected for a hole in a wall kind of place and Jerome had some sort of batter fried fish. Needless to say everyone was done once that second plate came around.

Jerome and I drove with Pam and her kids to our cousin Don Lederhaus's 30th surprise birthday bash. I think we surprised him a bit considering Tammy, her kids, and mom and dad were in another car infront of us. We cut it short... which was fine by me since I was getting sleepy from the ribs.

On Saturday Jerome and I were at the house getting ready to come over for breakfast... but we missed out on pancakes... since when does Dad not make 8,000 pancakes? Heeheeee (yet again, fine by me since I've been eating Dad's pancakes for 28 years too many and now don't really care for them at all!). The grandkids decorated the tree and made Christmas cookies with Grandpa... not sure if that was on Friday or Saturday but it was tossed in these few days too!

For dinner we headed off to Pam's house. Casera had arrived that day as well... she's gotten pretty tall! Anyways, we headed over there for ham, turkey, cheesy potatoes, fruit salad, mandarins orange salad, and sooo much more. We opened the bottles of bubbly and had a pretty good dinner. After dinner the adults hung out telling stories and such... but I ran and took pictures of the kids playing together. It's not that often that we see them so it's nice to get some cute pics of them... not to mention Mom gave me a digital camera for Christmas! :)

After dinner we all found a spot to sit and started to open presents... I can't believe I lost $50! I'll go into more detail on that in a bit... anyways... we all were opening presents. Jerome and I were sitting on the couch and John was sitting on my other side. Jerome asked me if he should run over to the other house and get the ring... I said something loudly and looked to see if anyone heard me... which then I focused back to Jerome with some sort of comment like "do you really have it here?" . Jerome messed with me all night long saying it was in the other house, no, it's in my pocket, no it's still at the jewelry store, no I left it in Minnesota. Ughhh!

I decided to leave it alone and go back to opening presents. When all was said and done we all forgot to take family pictures by the tree like we always do.... how could we forget... the whole reason why I was wearing that stupid sweater that gave me hives on my arm! Jeesh. Mom, Dad, Tammy, John, the girls, Jerome and I all went back over to Mom and Dad's house once all the presents were opened for a bit. Then Tammy, John, Jerome and I went back to our house for the night.

On Sunday morning I heard Tammy in the bathroom. I thought to myself I should get up, if I don't we will miss breakfast again. But I kept sleeping. Jerome had crawled out of bed and was watching tv with John. I kept sleeping knowing that I should be getting up and taking a shower. Then Jerome came crawling up the steps to the room where we were staying and I was sleeping. I sat up in bed and he crawled next to my side of the bed. I asked him what he was doing... I guess not knowing really what he was doing... And that was it... he asked me to be his wife.