We're engaged!!

Austin proposed to me last Thursday and we are engaged!!!!!!

We had picked out a ring the week before and he picked it up on Tuesday but said he wasn't ready and probably wouldn't propose for a few weeks so I was just DYING because I wanted to see the ring and of course be engaged so it was hard... but then, the little trickster, he takes me to his new apt to drop off a TV and we walk inside to see the kitchen table covered in pictures of us, music playing, it's set for dinner, so I start freaking out. I just kept thinking OMGOSH IT'S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW RIGHT NOW RIGHT NOW!!! And then he starts reading me the following sonnet by Pablo Neruda and featured in Patch Adams:

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way
because I don't know any other way of loving
but this, in which there is no I nor you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep
it is your eyes that close.

So I started crying because it is just so beautiful... and he leads me over to where the ring was... and asked me to marry him. :):):)

Oh it was so wonderful. I was giddy all that day and the next, couldn't stop smiling, etc... :) It's so fun! Anyway, the date is October 23 which is coming up way fast I know, but no other dates worked out (his brother is getting married in Nov and his other brother has finals for law school in Dec). So we already took some of our engagements last night with my WONDERFUL photographer BFF Becky Leung, and this picture is one that she worked on because she couldn't wait. :) We'll get them back in a few weeks. I'm so excited!

Things are a whirlwind but I am so happy! Yayyyy everything is so great!! <3