Eric saw her pretty blue eyes online and just had to meet her. Jaime wasn’t interested in yet another disappointing first date. But her friend, Saba, cohersed her into going. Little did they know, it would be the last first date they would ever have to go on. And then there was that date at Target…

10/2018 - On your marks, get set, GO!! 11/2018 - First Operation Christmas Child boxes 03/2019 - More dating...this is great! 05/2019 - Colorado trip with Mamma Hammond for Kathryn's wedding 08/2019 - Dealt with first major surgery, together 09/2019 - Started couple's Bible study "Kingdom Marriage" 10/2019 - Dealt with second major surgery, together 01/2019 - New Year's in Wimberley 02/2020 - Dealt with third major surgery, together, this has got to stop 03/2020 - Fun at Andrew's wedding 04/2020 - Start of our first World Pandemic 05/2020 - Spring biking together 07/2020 - He said "I love you!" 08/2020 - STILL doing couple's Bible study "Kingdom Marriage" 09/2020 - Started working on future house plans 02/2021 - Surviving the week-long Texas freeze together 04/2021 - Saying goodbye to Trinity kitty 06/2021 - Proposal! She said YES! 09/2021 - Week-long trip with Mamma Hammond to Emily's wedding 12/2021 - First Christmas together, in Florida with the whole family 02/2022 - FINALLY finished couple's Bible study "Kingdom Marriage" 05/2022 - Wedding planning, wedding planning, wedding planning...

Expectations are BIG. -Every- guy knows it. You either have a great story for life, or fall into the mediocre and maybe even "that's lame" class of proposal-man. Fortunately Eric asked many friends for advice, and all fervently recommended the only "not lame" option he put on the table. Even more fortunately, Eric actually listened...thank God for our friends!! First things first: a ring was required. After a failed attempt to engage an "artiste" for something which turned out truly terrible, we found a great company which made the perfect ring. In a pretty platinum setting, Eric's diamond is flanked by 2 smaller diamonds from her mother's wedding ring; it also includes 2 sapphires that represents how Eric was mesmerized by Jaime's blue eyes. ;-) So the big day comes, and Eric panics when the gate to the oh-so-important location is locked. He desperately (in his head) makes plans to jump the fence, drive over the fence, or drive thru neighboring yards to reach the objective. Fortunately, while he was panicking inside, Jaime called around and located a key....whew!! After all the drama, followed by a couple of hours relaxing on a beautiful sunny day on a private park down in the Blanco River, Eric swam up to Jaime and popped the question. Now, you might ask, what kind of fool brings a super expensive ring into the middle of the Blanco River?!? A fool in love, is all I can say. She said "YES!" and we -carefully- and -safely- put the ring on her finger, and now we look forward to the rest of the story...