Twelve Years!

 

Twelve years ago today, Ryan army crawled down a hallway to hide under the WBCL studio windows and surprised me with a marriage proposal. I never get tired of sharing the link to that magical moment, so here it is if you’ve never seen it – or haven’t seen it in a year. 😊

            Today I wanted to reminisce about the ways we have celebrated engagementversary over the years. Big thanks to the blog for keeping track of all the details for me!

2013: We did it up big this first year and sponsored part of the day at WBCL, since the station had such a huge hand in making the day possible at all. We went out for dinner at Jefferson Street BBQ in Converse and then went home and watched Dumb and Dumber (Ryan’s pick). We ended the day with coffee at home and cookies from The Cookie Cottage in Fort Wayne – an extra special cookie shop to us, since our wedding cookies came from there!

2014: Our Marion house was on the market this year, and our Realtor had an open house on our engagementversary, which was a Saturday that year. Since we were booted out of the house for the day, we started our adventures by wandering around the IWU campus, watching the homecoming parade, and touring a new building. Then we drove to McClure’s Apple Orchard, near Kokomo, which we had heard such great things about and wanted to check out. Unfortunately, we had terrible service, but we did enjoy coffee and apple dumplings – and took this picture which became the thumbnail for our podcast when we started it!

2015: This was our first day to serve on the coffee crew at our church, so we began the day by heading to church extra early to brew and serve coffee. (We did love that adventure for about a year – and then we moved to a new church in a new town.) Ryan watched the Colts play, and then we went to Matter Park (one of our favorite places in Marion – and the location of some of our engagement photos) to play frisbee. My first time playing it, actually! We ended the day with coffee – and more coffee!

2016: It was a lackluster celebration, but reportedly we still had a lot of fun! The engagementversary landed on a work day again, but by this time we lived in Kokomo, so Ryan got to come home for lunch and we got a bonus meal (of leftovers) together! We had company for dinner, and if I had to guess…I am betting it was a Tuesdays at the Table night.

2017: This was one of my favorite engagementversary celebrations ever. This was the year we did the alphabetical dates, and on this night, we honored the letter R with a Romantic Rendezvous and a Rooftop Rotating Restaurant. 😊 We went to the Eagle’s Nest in Indianapolis and had a fancy dinner in a restaurant that rotates slowly, giving us spectacular views of the city at sunset. It was SO MUCH FUN. I absolutely adored it!

2018: This year’s celebration came just days before we learned about Ryan’s mom’s brain tumor. We were dog-sitting for Deuce (remember him? Blue Heeler?) and the day fell on a work day. I made Ryan homemade lasagna for lunch and chicken marsala for dinner, and we had a special treat of our favorite cupcakes from J. Edwards in Kokomo. (I miss J. Edwards.) We took Deuce for a walk and enjoyed every minute of just being together.

2019: I found a place in Howard County that had a corn maze (Kendall Farms) so after work, we headed that way to play all the games intended for kids and make our way through the corn maze. It was fun! We had a gift card for Outback, so we had dinner there, followed by a walk in the park, but alas, it got dark so early that it was a walk in the dark park!

2020: We were working at WillowBridge for this engagementversary and were actually on duty that day. Ryan made us lattes before church, which made my whole day so happy, and then after church, we managed to sneak away for a little bit and use a gift card to DeBrand Chocolates (LOVE THEM!) to share one of their famous sundaes and enjoy some coffee. This was another of my favorite outings we’ve done, because let’s just face it: any day at DeBrand is a good day.

2021: This was the year we were not only working at WillowBride but also dog-sitting for Phoebe (remember her? Mini goldendoodle?) so we had to get a sitter for her! The sitters got a sitter. Thanks again (still!), Wayne and Shari, for bailing us out that day! After we dropped her off, we tried to recreate our original engagementversary day. We went to WBCL and walked the same halls Ryan crawled through to propose to me. We tried to go back to the same restaurant where we had lunch on the original day, but alas, it had closed, so we got B. Antonio’s Pizza, instead! YUM! And when we picked up Phoebe, sweet Wayne and Shari had gotten us roses!! It was a fun day of reminiscing.

2022: You’d think that ten years would be the grandest celebration of all, but alas, we had become puppy parents ourselves since the last one, and life was no longer our own. Ryan went to work, and after he came home, we took our sweet Lexi Grae for a walk on the Bluffton riverwalk. Then we stopped for Blizzards to take home with us and enjoy while we watched some of our favorite shows. It was low key, yet sweet!

2023: Yesterday I told you about our church’s night at Steele Farms, which fell on our monthiversary this year. Well, last year it fell on our engagementversary, so that was our date night! We hung out with our church people, had fun with photo opps, went through the barns to see the animals, and went through the corn maze!

            And now we’ll get to add one more celebration to the list. To be honest, we haven’t even fully planned it, but whatever we end up doing will be a fun way to spend time together, and I celebrate that!

            Happy engagementversary, Ryan Shaffer. Thank you for asking me to be yours. It’s been my favorite adventure! I still say yes! (Twice!)