For those interested in how I asked Robyn to be my wife, this post is for you.

We began the evening by going to Souplantation. Ritzy, eh? Well, we both love going there and the food (at least the first half) tends to make us feel healthy since it consists of a salad with veggies for the most part. Also, in a positive turn of fate, we got to the end of the buffet line and the sign actually said “Please seat yourself” instead of “Please wait for someone to seat you” which meant it was not super-crazy busy, despite the parking lot situation being as crappy as it always seems to be.

After dinner we went home, as we are wont to do after dinner. I suggested we take a walk due to being stuffed with salad, macaroni, cornbread, and frozen yogurt, in the efforts of helping my digestive system work better. She acquiesced and we took our usual route past our house, down residential streets, and into eastern parts of Tierrasanta where a large canyon laid. As we walked I kept looking for a good spot to stop and do my thing, undeterred by both the rampant darkness and rumblings of homeowners in their garages or fellow walkers on the sidewalk. We came around a bend and up a hill when I finally saw where I was going to get down on one knee and change my life forever.

And then I saw two people walking their dogs on the other side of the road.

“Maybe we should keep going to that next light,” I proffered. Robyn went along with it.

The light was on the other side of the road, a good place for us to turn around and head back, but I stopped her before we made our way across the street and said I needed to do something first. Dropping my left knee to the ground and looking up at her somewhat bewildered face, I began with “Now, before I do this, I just wanted to say something first.”

My eyes locked on hers as my hands began “saying” things that seemed trite in spoken English, and yet somehow less so when done in ASL. Sign after sign flowed out over the course of three sentences, and except for a few that went unrecognized and were verbally reinforced, I spoke in silence. Finally, I removed a small box from my pocket, opened my mouth, and asked “Je t’aime de tout mon coeur. Veux-tu m’épouser?”

“Oui,” she replied, and the ring was taken out, placed on the appropriate finger, and we embraced. Woot!

“By the way,” I added, “There’s a message inside the box, too.” I showed it to her, but she didn’t recognize it, to my initial dismay. “It says ‘With love, Mike’ in D’ni. I know it was a stretch, but I figured you might still find it neat.” She smiled.

We crossed the street, hand in hand, and I may have giddily smiled on the way home a few times.

Upon returning, Maggie leaped off the couch and squeed. Then, we made synchronized LJ/Twitter posts, asking questions that, while seemingly ambiguous, were pretty much a bald-faced announcement of our engagement to the Internet. Flurries of replies and messages flooded in and the attention made us heady with excitement. Robyn called her mom and dad, who live in our time zone, and I called my mom and dad, who do not. My dad picked up, eventually, and I gave him the news through his groggy consciousness. My mom never picked up, but I talked to her the next day (i.e. today) and all is well. The grandparents, aunts, and uncles come next, which will happen tonight.

Wedding details are TBA for now.

And that’s our story.