I am making an exception from my blogging hiatus* to share a very exciting life update: I’m engaged! To Luke!!!

He asked me a few weeks ago while we were on a getaway to Lena, Illinois. We’d been there once before to camp and visit the brewery, but this time we rented an airbnb that used to be an old school house. It was pretty cool!

It’s renovated on the inside to feature a lofted bedroom, but still has the original stone walls of the old school house and a few photos around of the days when it was a school.

I’ve been wanting this for awhile, but I was still so surprised and excited! Luke asking me to marry him is one of the happiest moments I’ve ever experienced in my life. And the ring is so special. It features a diamond that originally belonged to my Nana (my mom’s grandmother) that my Mimi (my mom’s mother — no women in this family go by Grandma!!!) had made into a necklace, and then that necklace was passed to me. I gave it to Luke sometime last year and said he had the option to use it — and I’m so glad he did! The blood line of these women is STRONG in this one (me), haha!

The stone is surrounded by other diamonds as well as some sapphires in a wave design because I love the water. I JUST LOVE IT SO MUCH. I love it more every day, and I look at it about 20 times a day, ha! I also just got that baby insured!

My life has been a bit of a blur since then, complete with a wonderful beach vacation with my mom a couple weeks ago. Yes, that’s right — she’s going through chemo but was well enough to take our trip, and we had a BLAST.

So yeah, I’m pretty happy these days. Yes, the world is absolutely crumbling around us, but if it’s still somewhat standing in a year-and-a-half, I’m getting married!!!

We opted for a long engagement because I really love fall weddings, and this fall would just be too stressful I think to pull together in time. So next fall it is! We did already book a venue and I’m so excited — we both are! We put down a deposit with our own money, and I don’t know, we might be adults now?!

It’s all happening! Xoxoxoxoxo

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*So while it’s fairly normal for me to go months without blogging, lately it’s been a bit more purposeful than usual. After I shared the rough Christmas we had and my fears about my mom’s diagnosis, somehow that blog got back to my parents.

Sigh… I’m almost 40. So this is all a bit ridiculous. But I did not intend for my parents to read that. I sometimes choose to send select blogs to them, if I think it’s something they might get a kick out of. And my dad is internet-savvy enough to find my blog if he really wanted to, but they’ve always just respected that boundary or at least been too lazy or busy to bother looking it up.

So it came as quite an unpleasant surprise when my dad quoted part of my blog back to me one day when I was home earlier this year, and everything came to light.

I’ve had time to process, to think about how when you put something out on the internet, you can’t control where it goes from there.

I do know who sent it to them. I’m not connected to this person on social media. So it’s been passed around somehow. Whatever. Likely it wasn’t malicious, but I don’t like that someone sent them a blog more or less ABOUT them. Bad judgment call. Not my intention. Not happy about it.

So, that’s that.. for now!