Alyssa and Brian

Posted Monday, May 11, 2009 10:44 AM

At the beginning of the week, Brian said that he had talked to some of our mutual friends and that they had made plans for all of us to hang out that coming weekend. When Friday evening came, I checked with my friend to be sure plans were still on for the next day, and they were. On Saturday, around when our friend was getting off work, I sent her a text to see when they’d be ready to go, but unfortunately she said she wasn't feeling well and she’d have to stay home! Brian suggested that we not cancel our plans and the two of us go, so we headed to Balboa park together.

We arrived at Balboa park at around 4:30. Brian suggested going to a museum, but I said I’d rather not pay to see a museum when they were all closing in half an hour. Instead, we chose to walk around a bit. We walked around for a while, pretty much all over Balboa Park. After about an hour, I was over it and ready to go home, especially since I had worn a skirt and it turned out to be a bit cold. But Brian wanted to stay and keep walking. I was a good sport and continued to walk around even though I clearly wanted to go home.

When we had finally walked practically the entire place twice over and there really wasn't any reason not to go home, Brian said there was just one more thing he wanted to look at, the large pond out in front of the Botanical Garden. So we walked over to the pond and strolled around it a bit. Then Brian suggested we go stand in this random grassy area, which I thought was pretty strange, but I did it anyway.

Once we were standing in the grass, Brian told me to turn around and close my eyes, so I did. When he told me to open them, he was holding the ring out in front of me. He then proceeded, real smoothly (sort of), to come around in front of me and get down on one knee. He said, "Alyssa Leanne, I love you, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, will you marry me?"

It turns out that Brian had had a friend stationed nearby who took pictures of the entire thing for us! And then on our way home, we stopped for dinner, and once again I was shocked because Brian had arranged for all of our close friends to be there waiting for us!