Haley is Engaged!

My little sister, Haley, got engaged this past weekend!  We all knew that it was coming; we just weren't sure when.

We are all very excited for her and have already begun the wedding planning.  It looks to be that there will be a wedding this coming spring.  Can't wait!  

Congrats to Haley & Dalton :)

More Engagement Photos

Riley and I got our CD full of engagement photos this past weekend. When I say a CD full of photos I mean full.  Our photographer gave us 2 CDs with a total of 129 photos, so many pictures they wouldn't fit on one CD.

Now we will struggle to pick out our favorites, but such a wonderful problem to have :)

Here are a few more for your viewing enjoyment...

Engagement Photos

Riley and I had our engagement photos taken this weekend.

We originally planned to take them in the late summer or early fall. With Riley's internship in Concordia this summer and the possibility of me having a job change, we wanted to get them done.

We won a free mini session with Kayla Stallbaumer from Capture. We wanted to turn our mini session into a full session so we could use it for our e-pics. Kayla agreed to do this for an additional cost of $60. So we set up a date (Friday, March 30th) and met in Manhattan.

Kayla was wonderful to work with and we had lots of fun. When we finished the session, Kayla told us that she didn't want any payment at all, she wanted us to win the whole session. Talk about generous!!!

Anyway, enough rambling... here are a few photos from our preview. We will get the rest in about 3 weeks.

Announcing Our Engagement

Riley proposed the day before the last day of school before Christmas Break. (Does that make sense? Read it slow, that helps me!) I was excited to share my news with my students.

When my 8th graders came in, I handed each one of them a word scramble and let them solve it. The first person in my class to figure it out was a sweet girl named Carly. I'll never forget what she did. She looked at me, she looked back at the paper, she ran up to me and asked, "Is this for real, Ms. Wellman?!" So priceless!

I had SO much fun seeing my students' reactions to my little secret message. I have 6 different classes and they all had such fun reactions. They were so excited for me!

One boy, sitting at the back table, came up to me at the front of the classroom and high-fived me and said, "You Go Girl!" Of course, all the girls wanted to know the story with all the details; they oooed and awwed. They all wanted to see the "Bling" and made the connection that he must be "rich" because his name is Richling and he got "big bling!" :)

It was so much fun and a great way to end the semester before enjoying Christmas break with my fiance.

It's Not Official Until It's Facebook Official

As everyone knows, nothing is official until it's Facebook official, at least in today's world. I was very excited to make our engagement official by announcing it to Facebook. I couldn't do it right away because we had to make sure that all of our family knew. I had to work the following day, so I went to work and gave Riley that responsibility. While I was at school teaching, Riley made sure to tell the last few family members that we didn't want to call so late at night the prior evening.

Once I got the okay from Riley, I was ready to post!

My big announcement said:
Riley always gives me a hard time about my lowest grade in college, which was a B+ in Marriage and Family. Well, apparently a B+ is good enough for him because he proposed!!! :D

The Proposal

This is definitely a story I don't want to forget...

On Sunday afternoon, I helped Riley to load his car to head back to Manhattan for the week. I watched him drive off, thinking he was headed back so he could work the next day. Little did I know, he had surprise plans for the following day. Instead of going to Manhattan, he went back to his parents’ house.

The next day, I was staying after school to help students with missing homework assignments. At about 4:00, I turned on my phone and saw a text message from Riley saying, "Do you have a warm coat with you?" Needless to say, I was confused so I text back saying "At school? Yes." Riley sent a text saying "Well put it on and lets go!" More text messages were exchanged with me questioning what they heck was going on and Riley not giving any details. I knew something was up, so I got my things ready to go and rushed my last student out by 4:30.

When I reached the school parking lot, Riley was there waiting for me. He asked for my GPS and put in an address, but wouldn't let me see where we were going. I started looking around the car to try to figure out where they were going. In the backseat of the car were several of my coats, a pair of jeans, tennis shoes, boots, and gloves.

Riley drove me to Kansas City. I requested that we eat at Taco Bell on the way because I was starving to death. (We laugh a lot about this choice now, because Riley took me to Taco Bell for our 5 year anniversary last year.) I really had no idea where we were going the entire time as I'm not familiar with Kansas City. He ended up taking me to The Plaza. The drive was rainy, but he was hoping it would turn to snow so they could take a horse carriage ride and he could propose then. Instead, we walked around The Plaza looking at the Christmas lights in the rain. I had an umbrella so I was quiet content, but Riley did not. Eventually after a cold and wet walk, we stopped in front of a fountain. Riley got down on one knee in the pouring rain and asked (twice!) if I would marry him. I said YES!

Perfection--Yes!!!
(My best friend proposed with a gorgeous ring in the pouring rain.)


Chaos--Yes!!!
(The rain ruined his snowy carriage ride plans.

The check engine light came on in his car and we had to stop at a gas station in the ghetto so he could get a quart of oil.

Nobody would answer my phone calls to tell our news.

The weather back home was getting bad, so the drive home was a bit stressful and very long.)