The mood was set. I picked up the ring and took it over to have it appraised at a second place, which checked out fine to my relief. After that I was off to the grocery store were I bought some nice flowers, some chicken breast, some fresh green beens and a few redskin potatoes. The next few hours a blur. Spent mostly searching www.wine.com to see how to best serve the red wine I had purchased and fretting over which cloth napkins to get. I also took about an hour looking up recipes online and excitedly chatting with a few friends on AIM for moral support.

She would be home at 9:00pm so I had to start prepping the food around 7:00pm. I started with the potatoes. A little olive oil, some basil, thyme, salt/pepper and an hour in the oven did the trick. After that I prepped the basil chicken and set prepped the fresh green beens to be steamed. Twenty minutes before 9:00pm I put the wine in the fridge to chill accordingly. Wine.com recommends red wine be served at 65 degrees (cell temp.), which can be accomplished by a quick 20 minutes in the fridge. The food was all set – just a little cooking had to be done.

It was then that I noticed I didn’t have a corkscrew for the wine. After a frantic run to the local Kmart I was all set with a corkscrew and some nice white cloth napkins. Now the waiting, otherwise known as the “freaking out” stage. She arrived a little after nine and was quite pleased that a quiet candlelit dinner was waiting for her.

Towards the end of the dinner I told her that I had ended up getting her a Christmas gift. Because we had decided that we would buy a foster child gifts for Christmas instead of buying each other gifts this year, she was pretty upset. It was at this point that I pulled out the ring, got on one knee, and said it was ok she hadn’t gotten me a Christmas present because I was hoping she would make me the happiest man alive by saying yes.

I got my Christmas present – she said yes!