The Proposal: from Paula's perspective

As a little background… as Eliot mentioned, he had hurt his back earlier that week. So, keep in mind he’d been stuck in bed for about 5 days at this point. I’d told him before that if he couldn't sleep to call me back…

So, I get a phone call at about 4:45am Saturday morning. Eliot said he was anxious to get out of his house, and was tired of being stuck inside, and that he couldn’t sleep. (Which I find out later, is all part of the plan…) He wanted me to come get him and go see the sunrise at the beach. After about ten minutes of convincing (and 9 more minutes of sleeping) I got up and went to get him. I had been stuck in bed for a couple weeks earlier this summer, so I could definitely identify with the feeling of needing to get out and just do something. So, at this point, I didn’t expect what was coming next…

When I got there, he came out to the car with a backpack packed. I didn’t think much of it, because the last time we did this, we were lacking a few things.
**Story behind this: Earlier in the year, when I was home for a weekend, Eliot called at about 4 in the morning, and was at this spot on the beach already. He couldn’t sleep and decided to go out there, so he called me and I got up and joined him. It was awesome… so, so pretty out there, and one of my favorite things we had done so far!
AND... to back up a little more, this is the same place on the beach where we were when he asked me to be his girlfriend almost a year ago.
And, it has always been my favorite place on the island.

Anyway, he came out with the backpack full of stuff, and got in the car. When we got there, we laid out a blanket on the boardwalk and watched the sunrise from there. (By the way, it was an awesome sunrise! We’ll have to put more pictures up soon.)
The sun was close to coming up, we stood up, and he asked if I would take a (short) walk with him. So, we got up and walked a few steps down the beach to the same place we were standing when we started dating. He started off by repeating some of the same conversation from that night… then continued, and got down on one knee. It was perfect, I can’t even describe. He asked, I said yes (of course!) and that was it!

Afterwards, we found some people on the beach to take our picture, and of course told all of them what had just happened! We got some Starbucks through the drive-through (and got to yell “We just got engaged!!” in the ordering speaker.) Then we went to Epworth (another significant place) and made some more phone calls. At this point, it was about 7:15 in the morning, so we ended up making a few wake-up calls. But they’ll forgive us, because WE’RE ENGAGED NOW!

It really was perfect.

Paula