It all happened around Christmas time. Patrick and I usually exchange our Christmas presents a few days early, instead of with our families. Wednesday, December 19th, Patrick decided that was the day we were to exchange our gifts and have a "date night." Patrick picked me up from my house at 12pm that afternoon. At this point, I did not suspect anything. As soon as we got into the car he let me open my first present, it was a Tom Tom navigation system. He told me he had the WHOLE day mapped out. Next, he gave me an envelope to open after he gave me the Tom Tom. In the letter he wrote something sweet, and at the bottom was a longitude and latitude that I had to punch into the Tom Tom to find out how to get there. We ended up doing this for everything we did that day. He had envelopes for each "adventure". We ate lunch at the pancake house in Birmingham because we have talked about going there for so long and we hadn't done it yet! We sat and talked there and had so much fun. He mapped out our next place to be the McWane Center. We really had the best time going through the exhibits and acting like kids again! Patrick acted more like the kid in all the hands on exhibits. After we left the McWane center, he gave me another envelope of a place to put in Tom Tom. Our next place to visit was the Vulcan. Patrick parked and said I have another present for you to open. He gave me this beautiful picture frame, and at this point I just looked at him, and said "thanks", not knowing what was next. (There were no pictures in the frame, just the models no one knows haha.) He told me we were getting professional pictures made. This was perfect because I had been begging him for months for us to get pictures made. This was an ongoing problem to find time to get some made. When I got out of the car, I realized the "photographer" was one of our friends! She has her own business, and is a professional photographer and I had wanted her to take our pictures for so long. I still didn't suspect anything. She began taking pictures as we were walking up the hill to where you could see all of Birmingham, just under Vulcan. She told us she wanted us to walk to the railing and take some pictures there. What I didn't know was that Patrick had prearranged every detail. He told the photographer that he wanted to propose while she was taking the pictures. He told the photographer that during the shoot that she should tell us to look at each other, hold hands and act like we were talking to each other. When the photographer did this, we looked at each other, hand in hand, and Patrick started talking about the future. He started talking to me about how happy he was, and how the past 4 years have been wonderful. He told me he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. He then proceeded to get down on one knee and asked me to marry him! At this moment, I couldn't believe this was happening. I immediately said yes! The whole time that Patrick was proposing, our photographer was snapping a thousand pictures. These pictures I will cherish the rest of my life. We spent the rest of the afternoon taking the most amazing pictures. You can look at them on this website: Click Here . After finishing the pictures, Patrick took me to dinner at my favorite restaurant, Twenty-six in Downtown, Birmingham. It was the perfect ending to a perfect day! He didn't tell anyone except his parents and he had asked my dad's permission. We met all of our family at the end of the night, and showed them the ring and had the best day of our lives! If I sat down and tried to come up with how I wanted my engagement to be, it couldn't have ever been as perfect as this day was. I'm so blessed and lucky to have Patrick in my life. I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with him.