And we're engaged . . .

Early one Saturday morning in February of this year, Erik proposed. It was simple, sweet, and I'll keep the words he used between the two of us. He popped the question, we talked for a couple hours -- he caught up on the sleep he'd been losing with the stress of proposing the "right" way -- and we spent a quiet weekend together enjoying the knowledge that we were getting married. Then Sunday night we let the world in, started calling family and friends, and I started thinking about the details.

But before we get into that, let me give you some back story:

Erik and I met in the fall of 2001 when we each entered the creative writing Masters program at Wichita State University. That year we took writing and lit classes and started teaching college freshmen Composition 101. At the time, he was dating someone long distance, and we were both just getting to know our fabulous fellow classmates. (Check out this photo of the group! Erik  and I are in the forefront about 7 months before we started dating.)

Fast forward to the end of the school year, his long-distance relationship had ended, and, in addtion to hanging out with our group, I found myself spending some one-on-one time with Erik, going out to dinner, grading papers, watching Cartoon Network, etc. Around May, we officially crossed the "friends" line and started dating. We've arbitrarily come up with May 27, 2002 as our dating anniversary -- which, coincidentally is close to our wedding date May 29th, 2010. (So, if you're doing the math along with me, that means we're getting married on our 8-year anniversary!)

Anyway, like all new couples, we spent every waking moment together that summer and braced ourselves for the fall when Erik would be moving to Tallahassee to get his Masters in Humanities from Florida State (he had changed his major and been accepted before we started dating). A year and a half of VERY long-distance dating followed, with each of us racking up airline miles, cell phone hours and, of course, daily e-mails in our inboxes.

In January 2004, I moved to Tallahassee to be with him. I got a writing/editing job, he finished his degree in the summer of 2006, and we both agreed that we wanted to move back to the midwest. We've been in Iowa City, IA for over three years now and really love the town. And since we're back to the present day I'll end this post for now.

I'm going to try to post regular updates about the wedding planning and stick to chronological order (for lack of a better idea), but feel free to ask me questions, leave comments, etc.