Today I asked Stacey to marry me...

So I've been carrying this ring around with me for over a week now... wait, scratch that - I've had it in my desk at work so I wouldn't give it to her right away. I've actually only carried it around for a couple of days.
We went to our favorite Chinese restaurant last night for our year and 5 month anniversary where we noticed our Chinese Zodiac place-mats. It seems that the Ox, which is me, should marry the Snake, which is Stacey. We chuckled about it for a minute or so and I fingered the ring in my pocket thinking, "Well this is fitting. Maybe now would be a good time to... No. Despite how "fitting" the conversation, I'm not asking this woman to marry me over a plate of Sesame chicken, no matter how good it is".

So I waited. She actually tore out that piece of her place-mat and slid it into my pocket to keep with me.

My next opportunity I was thinking of would be tonight, out and about with friends, some of whom brought us together. That's cool, right? Well, as fun as that sounded, I also wanted it to be a personal, couple moment. But since I didn't have any other cool ideas, it looked to be a Cabo Fish Taco proposal. Hmm... Maybe we should re-do it there tonight any way and possibly get free food...
Anyway, I was trying to think of something last night while I was lying in bed and I remembered the sunflowers! We had read an article in the Charlotte Observer earlier in the week about a guy who had all these sunflowers. (Sunflowers are Stace's favorite, if you didn't know) http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/local/15054866.htm So after cleaning the house while she was at work playing catch up after an awful week, I looked up the article, found an address and mapped out some directions.

Say it with me: Sweeeeeeeet.

So Stacey gets home and we pile the camera equipment into the car and head out, directions in hand and a little flutter of butterflies in my stomach. We followed the directions to the tee and ended up: no where. I mean they couldn't have been even close. Note to self: When part of the directions read "Left onto Local Roads", immediately toss said directions into trash can and start over. HOWEVER, my wonderful fiancee noticed a road with the name we were looking for along the way so we back tracked and low and behold: 2 acres of sunflowers.

To my dismay, it seems the peak was last week or so and the flowers had wilted a bit, most of the petals had fallen, etc., but two full acres of sunflowers is impressive nonetheless. So we were walking along the outside of the field (you can't go in) when I walked up behind her and held her. She was sighing and smiling and I started talking about being an Ox and her being a Snake... She turned to look at me with a "what?" expression and I bent to one knee and opened the ring box.
"Will you marry me baby?"

She didn't actually say "DUUUUUH!", but it was pretty close.

We're looking forward to talking with everyone and truly appreciate all the support we've already been given by friends and family.

Here are a couple of pics of the ring, and my wonderful fiancee. We apologize, but in the midst of it all we didn't think to get more shots at the sunflower field of actually US.