a lovely wooden bench

Some of you might have wondered why the header of this blog is an empty bench in a seemingly empty park... yes? Well, long story short that bench is where my sweet husband proposed to me two years ago today. But who ever likes a long story cut short? Not I said the fly. Of course, I hail from the days of Chi O's having candlelights every week, so perhaps I just enjoy a good proposal story... I can't help it. So if you don't care to hear about how we started this little journey of wedded bliss, you can skip this post. If you're a diehard romantic, you may want to stick around... ;)

Well, two years ago good ole husmate pulled the wool over my eyes and led me to believe that he needed help finding an apartment up in DC for when he started his job. Somehow it was simultaneously important enough that my advisor (sweet Dr. A) excused me from a mandatory Alumni Delegate function and common enough that my usually detail-oriented always-asking-questions mother simply said "be sure to take a camera!" Hmm... red flag, anyone? (Actually my mother being so keen on the idea from the start really did send up a red flag, but I just brushed it off and asked my dad if she was okay. Haha!). I then emailed all my professors that I would be absent on Friday (one of them told me it was my decision if I wanted my grade to suffer... I think I made the right decision in the end) and started to get excited to fly to my favorite city!

Since I now had a free weekend, I packed my bag and flew with then-boyfriend to DC eeearrrly Friday morning. He told me that the schedule consisted of job interviews on Friday morning and apartment hunting on Saturday, so when he left me at the hotel to go to his "interviews" I thought nothing of it. I climbed back in bed and took a nap, while the boyfriend was actually walking around the city memorizing his route for that night's plan & calling some friends to calm his nerves. He came back that afternoon saying his "interview" went well, and we got ready to go to dinner.

Boyfriend was super smooth in that he "let me" choose where to eat knowing that I would choose a restaurant we went to the previous summer while he interned up here and I was visiting friends. So still no red flag had been raised in my head. After dinner, I begged him to walk around the monuments at night because it's my favorite time of day to view them (again part of his evil plan). Still no red flag. 

As we're walking towards the monuments we pass the DAR Constitution Hall and see all these people milling about. By nature, I do not get curious about what others are doing but he does, so he asks if we could go see what was up and I agreed. As we're nearing the steps I see someone pull out tickets to be admitted, and I make a remark about how we don't have tickets and can't we please keep walking to the monuments? I got shot down pretty fast while also being pushed towards the door. Turns out he has tickets to some mysterious show that he won't tell me what it is until we're sitting down in our seats. Red Flag. 

Oh, it's just the Avett Brothers. My favorite band. Ever. No big deal. He tells me he discovered that they were playing here earlier this week and he bought the tickets on stub hub (can you tell how gullible I am with him?) and I totally believed him! Red flag is at half mast. Avett proceeds to play an incredible show, and naive little me- I comment during their song "Murder in the City" about a lyric saying "Always remember, there was nothing worth sharing/Like the love that let us share our name" that one day we'd share that bond. Ha! I crack myself up at how soon that was going to come true. 

So the concert ends and I beg again to walk to the monuments; obviously I am playing into his master plan... So we're walking and talking and heading towards a park that we both had mentioned we wanted to see. I start rambling on about how cute the ducks were in the pond being paired off, and he just lets me go on and on in my merry little nerdy ways. By this point we reach the Bench. We sit down and start chatting, and he tells me he has a small surprise for me. Now you would think that this would cue a red flag? Yeah, weirdly it didn't.

He pulls out a puzzle and tells me to put it together but not to flip it over. Hmm, what was that? Don't flip it over? So there's a part two to this? But that little train of thought exited stage right as I started to put the pieces together. Super sly one over there had collaged together all of the ticket stubs and receipts and trinkets from our relationship (even though he adamantly told me not to be sentimental about these things earlier in our dating relationship), and I was simply put quite mesmerized. He had to interrupt me from my trance to even remind me of part two of the puzzle. Ha, whoops... So I flip it over, and it was a picture of a little boy and a little girl kissing him on the cheek. And there was a speech bubble in the picture that said "Will you marry me?" WHOA. Hold up. Read that again... Yep, it definitely says that. I did not string this together out of my imagination... I look over and he's on one knee. He told me he loved me and asked him to marry him! 

The romantics of the story don't even stop there (I know, right? He's gooood). Inside the box was a gorgeous ring surrounded by yellow rose petals that he told me he picked the same night he told me he loved me for the first time. That night he had given me a red rose, and on our wedding night he gave me a dried white rose (also from the same night). Yeah, he thinks really far in advance...

After he put the ring on my finger, he told me there were a few more things. My mind is completely blank by this point. Can't even fathom what is going on. He hands me our journal and tells me that he wrote about his entire planning process, and in the binding was a scrap of paper I once gave him several months back of a quote by e.e. cummings: "Unless you love someone, nothing else makes any sense." 

After reading our journal, he said he also had a letter from someone that I might want to read... He hands me an orange letter in a wonderfully familiar handwriting that's addressed to Mr. Jordan Berry (and KB). My sweet big sis, Laney, had been tipped off and wrote a beautiful letter that brought on the first wave of tears. Her letter made our engagement real for me, and I couldn't have asked for a better way to come to the understanding that I was getting a new last name and wonderful husband to spend the rest of my days with. I was so numb from emotions by this point that all I could do was thank God over and over again for all of my many blessings, most of which were sitting on a park bench holding my hand. God is so good.

To end this scene on a note typical of us Berry's, my now-husmate looked at me before we left our little bench and pulled his hand into the shape of a gun and said "Boom!" as if to shoot the starter pistol my dad had always joked about (Boys only get to determine the start to the wedding, girls do alllllll the rest). 

Funny, funny boy whom I get to love for the rest our life. I am a lucky girl.

Luray Caverns

Last post I shared about our short little day hike in Shenandoah, but to finish off the day, let's go back to that morning when we went to explore the Luray Caverns (I know- I realize that I posted about the afternoon before the morning... What can I say? I work backwards sometimes). 

So to give a little background, the last time I ventured into a cave was during a third grade field trip to Desoto Caverns in the great state of Alabama (please note I refrained from using the phrase "sweet home Alabama." Growing up with that song being played at every.single.dance until you're into your 20's means that you tire of the phrase at the age of, oh, fifteen). What I remember of that trip was learning the cutesy way of distinguishing stalagmite and stalactite (some things never leave you, usually the ones that aren't useful for everyday life), being told that you should always carry a flashlight in a cavern unless you're feeling courageously stupid, and getting lost in an outdoor maze and climbing under the fences so that I wouldn't get left. Quite the adventure for a bookworm third grader whose glasses took up half of her face.

In comparison to the memories of that trip, the Luray Caverns are HUGE. Like I thought it was kind of ridiculous at the start what we were paying to see, but after the hour long walk through the massive underground world, I'd say the trip was worth it. Now that I have an inkling of what a cubic inch is and how long time can be (neither of which you understand in the third grade), it's incredible that that it takes 120 years to form one cubic inch of new deposits. I mean good grief. The tour guides at Luray estimate that with the formations they have, Luray began forming a loooooong time ago. Like 400,000,000 years ago. Hello dinosaurs, how's life up in the Shenandoahs? That's swell.

I think my favorite part of the Luray story was how it was founded: Some men discovered a sinkhole in the late 1870's, and like all men would, decided to lower one of their friends into the sinkhole armed with a candle. Excuse me, what? Yes, a candle. So the guy with the candle noticed the depth of the caverns and survived the descent, and Luray has since become one of the most visited caverns in the world. Many thanks to the courage of the guy with the candle.

Anybody else think this would be a cool place for an Avett concert?

The two neat things about Luray:

1. There was a electronics scientist who worked for the Pentagon that designed and created a stalacpipe organ, which plays a four-keyboard console by using stalactites instead of pipes. It took him almost 40 years to perfect all the notes (only two were perfect from the start, the rest were sanded until he was satisfied) and install 5 miles worth of wiring to connect them all. Nerdy, but seriously cool.

2. They have a wishing well at the end that you can throw in whatever change you have in your pocket and all the donations at the end of the year goes to a charity. The extraordinary part is that in the heat of some sort of argument, more than one soon-to-be bride has thrown in her engagement ring and called off her wedding at that spot. Crazy people. And they didn't want their rings back. Now, that's some kind of charitable donation. Hmm, I wonder if it's tax deductible?

The guides say this is several feet deep of change... Woah.

And just FYI, Luray has a garden maze of hedges. I declined to participate. Rolling under fences is so much easier than crawling through pointy hedges.

P.S. Sorry for the grainy pictures, but it's just a teensy bit dark down in the underground...

Midweek Musings

I know, it's Tuesday so it's not quite midweek... but I'm allowing it since I'm including Saturday in my update. That makes it okay, right? Right. 

So Saturday was epic. Only in the sense that if you're a Mississippi State fan like husband and I are, you experienced something that hasn't happened in a looooongggg time (try since this married couple was in the 4th grade. whoa). MSU won its second game of the season against Auburn making them 2-0 (I know that to other teams, that's not a huge deal, but to us it totally is). And if you know me well, then you know that I grew up an Auburn fan (season tickets and all), so the win was extra special to this girl. 

This was also the first MSU-Auburn game that I've missed seeing in person since I was in middle school. While the rest of my family was in Starkville battling for a win (or a loss if you're my Auburn alum parents), husband and I were stuck up here trying to soak up the game as best we could from a mere 15 hours away. The best I could come up with was to buy these lovely mums to mimic the beautiful flowers on Starkville's campus.

On another note of this memorable win, Saturday was the first MSU game for this cute little boy (my sweet nephew)! As you can tell, Tyler came very well prepared for those loud cowbells, and his crazy Aunt Kitty is super proud of his school spirit at only 10 months.

Sunday was quite possibly the most surprising day of all. On our way home from church, husband informs me that he wants to go shopping. Um, can you repeat that? Surely I misheard you... This is a dream come true! So we drove to an outlet mall nearby and we (meaning I) picked out husband some shirts and belts and a total swoon-worthy sports coat (yes, I have an unhealthy obsession with menswear... No, husband's friends, I will not be turning him hipster or indie. His best interest is at heart, promise, even though I totally saw an Avett-like plaid vest in the store and joked about buying it for him...). This picture doesn't do the herringbone justice (blame the weird fluorescent store lighting), but doesn't husband look dashing in it? 

A total mom move to take his picture in the store, but the coat was begging
for its debut picture. Can you blame me? I didn't think so.

Also, we saw this impressive vintage car in the parking lot. Whoever owns this car must love it a lot because it looked to be in mint (clever choice of words, non?) condition... Looking at it, doesn't it make you want an ice cream cone? Or is that just me? 

Today's exciting bit of news was that the new Avett album, The Carpenter, came out. And yes, I'm already listening to it over and over again... No shame.

Ah, it's nice to see artwork that isn't as frightening as the last cd.

And finally, today husband and I are joining a local gym. I'm strangely excited about it, even though I haven't done any regular weight training since high school sports. So fingers crossed I won't do anything embarrassing or awkward (but let's be honest, it's most likely inevitable)... You're welcome, husband, for being such good entertainment.