The Story behind my header picture....

I'm in the middle of giving my blog a little makeover, so you'll have to bear with me as I play around. : )

I wanted to share with you a story that is near and dear to my heart. This type of story is near and dear to any newlywed, engaged, or long married lovely lady, it's my proposal story.......

It happened in the summer of 2006, in a little town called Rome.....no, not Rome, Georgia, but rather Rome, Italy. My future hubby was the soccer coach of a group of 20 or so 17 year old boys at a private soccer club. Having had his life center around this universal sport, future hubby wanted to give the experience of a lifetime to these budding young men. And what better experience than to take them to Italy for the chance to play in a tournament against other young men from all different parts of the world.

As we were preparing to leave for the trip future hubby and I were at the mall one day picking up a few things when he turned to me and said, "I think you should go and buy yourself a nice black dress for the trip, we'll end up going out to dinner one night, just the two of us." And proceeds to smile at me. This is totally it, I thought, it's going to happen in Italy the most romantic country in the world!! My heart was all a flutter and I quickly went to pick out the most beautiful little black dress I could find, from White House Black Market of course.

To confirm what I already thought was going to happen, future hubby's parents were flying in from Scotland to spend the majority of the trip with us. Just more fuel to my fire. We arrived in the beautiful italian region of Tuscany and stayed at a gorgeous hotel right on the ocean. Perfection. And then a funny thing happened.......nothing.

Practically the whole trip went by and the boys played some great soccer, we watched the soccer world cup unfold in the country that would, in the end, win the world cup. And we saw some of the most beautiful and famous sites in history, pisa, the coliseum, rome, florence, michelanglo's david. But no dinner just the two of us and no proposal. Needless to say I was highly dissapointed.

We moved on to the last part of our trip which ended in Rome. We had two days left of the trip and the boys were done with the soccer tournament so we all headed into Rome to the Vatican. You can't enter St. Peter's Basilica without your shoulders covered and you can't wear shorts so I put on some tennis shoes, some sweat pant capris and a t-shirt......and we headed to St. Peter's Basilica. I have to say that it was one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to and probably will ever go to. You get a very profound feeling when you walk through the doors at St. Peter's.

I was in awe and didn't notice that the rest of the group was no where to be seen, it was only future hubby and his parents. We were walking around and headed to the front of the basilica and into one of the many little chapels they have. Once again I didn't notice that future hubby's parents and stayed back and it was just FH and I that walked into the chapel and took a seat.

We were just sitting there looking at the amazing art work on the walls when FH started telling me a story......he said the following to me, "You know I came here two years ago on another soccer trip with the club and I actually came into this very chapel really early in the morning, there was practically no one here because it was so early. And I prayed to God, I said I have everything I could want in life, I have my health, I have a great job, I have a great place to live, but there is one thing I want, I want someone to share it with, because without someone to share it with it doesn't mean anything."

(now at this point of him telling me the story, I'm thinking oh you're so sweet and literally nothing more!)

He turned to me and said, "And then literally 1 month after I got back from that trip you walked into my life and I knew that God had answered my prayer and sent you to me and I knew that I would bring you back here to this very spot where I prayed for you and ask you to be my wife." At that point he turned to me and got on one knee. SHOCKED. That's how I felt, of course I said yes, and we both turned and said a little prayer. FH parents were watching the whole thing and when we walked up to them his mom just started crying and that's all I needed to set me off crying too.

Low and behold the whole group that we were with, about 45 people, were in on the secret except for me! And two years later, I married that man, who took me to Italy to propose to me where he had prayed for me.

And the picture behind my header is the little chapel where I was proposed to and will forever be one of the happiest days of my life. I hope you enjoyed my little proposal story.

Future Hubby and I standing outside of St. Peter's right after he had proposed