Thursday, June 23, 2011

Our History Revisited

Our Anniversary was this past Sunday (also Father's Day), our first whole day in Petén. Since we spent that day dealing with rats, of which we have killed 9 inside our house as of last night, we were thankful that we celebrated it while we were in the States.

We decided to celebrate before we left because we wanted to revisit the spot where Jimmy proposed. It was under a gazebo right on the water next to the Bridge of Lions in St Augustine, FL.
He proposed in December at night, so it was all beautifully lit with white lights at the time.

Just for nostalgia sake we decided to eat at the same restaurant we did 7.5 years ago right before we took a walk and Jimmy proposed. In order to understand why this restaurant was special you have to know the whole backstory. At that time we had only been dating for 6 months and I was still planning on starting nursing school (I had been finishing up some random prerequisites that I was lacking) and Jimmy had been planning on starting deputation in the Fall, single. We were both still talking about going to 2 different mission fields.

Well earlier that day I had been over at my parents house. For some reason my dad was real smiley and made the comment to me, "Your ship has come in!!" What does that mean? I thought something strange was going on. It turns out that Jimmy had asked my parents' permission several days earlier and they knew that he was going to ask me that night. By the way, we now know that all 4 of our parents are incapable of keeping any good news a secret. That has been proven several times over the last 7 years!
{The restaurant where we ate}

The restaurant that evening was very cold. Being polite Jimmy offered me his jacket and I took it. Then remembering what was in his jacket pocket, he immediately snatched it back. That was it. I knew at that moment there was only one thing that could be in his pocket that would make him act this way... a ring. He was all nervousy anyway, that was another clue. So then I started getting nervous! After dinner we went for a walk and that is when Jimmy proposed under the gazebo, on one knee. It was very sweet and unexpected until a couple hours before it happened!

Here is a word of advise though, when involving a restaurant in some memorable moment in your life, don't pick a new place, go somewhere tried and true! We don't remember it being all that nice of a place but we thought that maybe it was just our nerves the first time.
It is on a pier and looks all nice and quaint. I think its that once you walk that far to get to the restaurant they know you are not going to walk all the way back without food. The place is just awful and expensive. The workers look dirtier than the sweaty tourist that come in there to eat.
The best part is their claim to fame. See the sign behind our heads. It says, "Feed the fish while you dine." There are NO fish. There were none 7.5 years ago and there still aren't any today. They bring you old bread and you are suppose to lift up this trap door by your table and drop it into the water below. Birds don't even come by and eat that bread! So our special restaurant is just as bad as we remembered, but it was still fun reliving it. We did agreed that twice was enough and we will just keep it as a nice memory and not revisit it again in the future!

We had a wonderful time walking around St. Augustine just the 2 of us. I am so thankful for the mate that God gave me! We definitely wanted to remember this date, so we picked up our traditional souvenir, a Christmas ornament. It is a wood cutout of the Bridge of Lions.

3 comments:

  1. What a great story!

    Ben proposed to me in December too.

    ReplyDelete
  2. For over seven years I have felt guilty thinking I took away from Jimmy proposing to you that night. Now I just found out that you didn't know what "your ship has come in" meant. OK, No more guilt feelings here! Thanks for the great story.

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...