Realizations and celebrations

When it comes to height, I've always seen myself as average. I'm 5'3" and on days when I want to be really spunky, I can be 5'7" although the days when I feel spunky are few and far between since I've discovered how much I love the flats. I surround myself with people who are similar to height and Marijn fits perfectly with me for height...not too tall where I hurt my neck trying to give him kisses so it's just right. However for the first time ever, I felt like a midget!

I went to Marijn's school reunion (their version of high school but starts at age eleven instead) which is celebrated every ten years because the class sizes are really small. So I was dragged to the event, meeting his classmates, his old snogging partners and his old teachers. While standing around everyone, I felt short but it didn't seem to bother me. Everyone was at least six feet tall so there was some height difference between me and everyone else. However that did not make me feel short. The restroom made me feel like a midget! After using the water closet, I went to wash my hands which stood at a decent level for me. I looked up to do the standard hair/makeup check and to my surprise, the mirror started at my forehead. Even standing on my tippy-toes, I could barely look into the mirror! This is a school where eleven years and older go and I could not even reach the mirror! I wish that I had my camera on me so you could see the difference. Dutch kids are tall! And I, a twenty eight year old grown woman, cannot see my own reflection in a kids high school mirror. Sigh.

On the celebratory note, I've inched closer to being an actual adult and accepted a beautiful proposal from my now fiancé. It took me a few days before I was able to say that word out loud. Marijn laughed at me but I think that at the same time, he was trying to get used to saying it out loud too! We've been talking about our future for awhile now so in the back of my mind, I knew that it was coming but there's such an amazing feeling when the dream finally becomes a reality and we've made it official.

We spent a couple of days in Barcelona, enjoying the time with my two beautiful college friends. We enjoyed plenty o' bottles of Cava with a delicious home cooked meal and ended up with the best mojitos on the Ramblas at about 2am. We stumbled back to our lovely four star hotel near Placa de Catalunya and passed out quite quickly upon our return. It was a really long and sleepless night since I was pretty sick starting at 4am which continued through until 11am. Being the great gentleman that Marijn is, woke up at noon and told me that he would pick up coffee. He came back, waking me up with breakfast in bed and beautiful red roses. Waking up to the smell of coffee and breakfast though didn't make me feel too pleasant but that was offset by the next few moments.

For me, it was the perfect moment, the two of us in our hotel room sharing this moment. Some people wonder/day dream that this moment will be a huge and elaborate affair but that's not something I would have dreamed of. We got to share this moment with just the two of us as we sat together feeling this euphoric wave come over us as we took the next step to make our lives connect on a deeper level.

Now it's time for the fun of planning! We haven't settled on any dates yet but things are starting to take shape. We are leaning towards a Spring wedding in the Netherlands followed by a Fall wedding in Los Angeles. I believe that once we get the dates set everything else will fall into place. We really are excited about this and can't wait to throw some kick ass parties! Weeeeeeeee!!!