Memorial day weekend is often a time for family, BBQs and of course honoring those who have served our country. But for Luke and I it will also always signify the anniversary of our engagement. That’s right a year ago today we got engaged!

Luke and I had just graduated two weeks earlier with our Masters degrees from APU. Our many friends and family wondered if Luke might propose at our graduation BBQ that afternoon in front of everyone. Fortunately, Luke knew that this would not work for me. I wanted our engagement to be an “us” moment. I wanted us to be able to share the news with family, friends, and facebook on our terms and in our timing.

So back to Memorial day weekend. Many times over we had been invited to Morro Bay to stay with my grandparents for the weekend.  And finally with our Masters degrees over we drove the four hours north to their beach house.

Friday we decided to take some time to ourselves. We pack up some picnic lunches and headed to Montana de Oro State Park. It was a sunny windy beautiful day. Driving through the eucalyptus trees and past the dunes we parked near a trail that followed the cliffs down to the ocean. We took a few relaxing moments to enjoy the view and walk down the trail.

We stopped at a look-out spot where the waves crashed on large rocks on the cliff below. Luke turned to me and said he had an important question to ask me.

Now we had brought up the conversation of engagement and timing many times in the past few months. So when he asked me, “are you ready to get married?” I just had to double check what I was hearing.

Luke joked about saying that ” cheesy line” but before he could launch into it I stopped him. He followed this up by  teasing, “I can get on one knee if you want”. I told him no. He understood that I didn’t like the attention and knows I don’t like being put on the spot so he didn’t expect and immediate response. I took a second to take in the moment. After what was probably an eternity for Luke, I finally said “You knew my answer would always be yes”.

As you can imagine that was followed by a kiss, a twirl, and a big hug. We stood there enjoying the view and the moment until we realized that we were hogging the look-out spot. Not wanting a crowd we decided to walk on down the path and contemplate the huge step we just made towards our future.

Now we knew that the picnic lunch in our car just wouldn’t do. So we drove to Lynn’s Easy as Pie for lunch in Cambria to have quiche and pie to celebrate.

We then drove back into Morro Bay and toured the Morro Bay Rock. Parking near the docks, we decided it was time to call our parents and share the news.

When we got back to my grandparent’s house we told them the good news too. The rest of the weekend was spent looking at vintage rings online and talking about dates.