How it all Began.....

Dustin and I met back in October of 2007. My friend Emily was dating Dustins roommate, who had brought me over to the guys' house to meet everyone one Saturday. Dustin and the guys had been working on a project in their garage for a long time and when Emily and I showed up, and they stopped right away to come hang with us. That night we went out for pizza and a movie with his roommates and Emily, then had a BBQ the next day. Dustin asked to take me out on our first official date Monday, to Carrabas, a nice Italian restaurant; it was like an awkward 21 questions night. Haha. I had just ended a relationship, so I was not up to dating anyone, and it took me a while to open up to a new guy. There was a lack of communication at first, so he thought I wasn't interested after our first date and I was wondering why he did not text me on his phone after. So, a few weeks later, I was talking to Emily and asked her why he never talked to me after. She said he thought I was not interested. At that point, I was ready to start dating again and so Emily told Dustin I had been interested. He called me up and the dating process began! :)

It's Official!!

So it's finally official!

Lyss and I took a week long road trip to visit a lot of her family. We first stopped and saw her grandparents in Placerville for couple days and had a blast, and "Wow, can her papa cook! Then we stopped in Antioch to see her Aunt and family and had a lot of with her cousins. On the way to Santa Rosa the next morning we stopped at the Oakland Temple. We had planned on getting married in Oakland and I had never been to the Temple, so she wanted to take me there. She has a really cool picture of her out on the ledge that overlooks the Bay and we had said that we would take one there together. So she climbed out on the ledge while I set up the camera. I had to get the ring from my bag to my pocket without her seeing, but it took me a bit to fit the box in my pocket. Then I had to hide the buldge and hope she doesn't realize what was coming. I set the timer and ran to the edge and climbed over the railing, again trying to hide the ring box... After the picture was taken we stood on the ledge for a bit and talked. I was trying to start a conversation to lead to the proposal. It was windy and cold, so she kept trying to get down so I asked her to sit down and that we needed to talk and that something had been bothering me about her for a while and it needed to change before our relationship went any further... I drug it on until she just said, "What is it!?" I said, "Your last name." I got down on my knee and popped the question... And of course she said YES!

The Ring

The Ring is 1.03 Ct. in total weight with a 3/4 Ct. suspended Princess cut Center, leaving the underside of the diamond visable. It has 42 small round cuts on the three bands. The center band goes underneath the Princess cut diamond, called bridge over water.

Alyssa and I had gone to a dozen jewelry stores or so hunting for the right ring... her style evolved everytime we went to a new store. After we went to Wilsons and found this one, she would always compare the rings that we were looking at to this one... I knew that this was the one. Taylor and I spent 2 hours picking out the right diamond. I signed for it and then picked it up with Dad on the 24th while Alyssa was at her final day of school.