On March 23, 2013, I experienced the greatest surprise of my life. Jed and I were staying in Wilmington, NC for the weekend to escape from the snowy and frigid cold weather we had been having in indiana (where we lived at the time). Jed was (at the time) interviewing for a Fire Fighter position in Wilmington and had woken up early to take an exam. I woke up a little later and decided to take a walk alone down the beach towards the pier to kill time until Jed got back from his test. He returned back a little later than I had expected but I didn't think much about it. We had some lunch and then he suggested we take a walk down the beach. I agreed (even though I had just gone on a walk) and we made our way out to the shore.

 Once we got outside, he asked me which way I wanted to walk. I told him I'd rather go the opposite way that I had been earlier that morning (away from the pier) so we began walking that direction. We had been walking for about a mile when I (out of the blue) had a sudden urge to walk up on the sand closer to the dunes. It was the strangest feeling-I just really wanted to walk over to the dunes... I remember Jed looking shocked that I wanted to walk over that way and I just thought he figured I'd probably want to just walk along the water instead.

We made our way over to the dunes and along the way I noticed Jed started to seem like almost nervous. I was like, "Are you OK?" He said he was fine and just as we were almost to the dunes he ran over and pointed out a beautiful shell to me. I picked it up and he said,  "Wow, do you know what that is?" he exclaimed. I was just like, "No, a pretty shell? I wonder where it came from,  I've never seen anything like that in North Carolina..."  "It's an abalone shell! Like I told you about! How weird!" (The previous day on the way down to Wilmington he had told me a story about how they used to find these beautiful abalone shells when he was a kid back in Catalina).

 He looked at me wide-eyed (I thought he was just super excited about the shell) and joked "Why don't you dig around in the sand under the shell right there, see if you can find any hidden treasure?" I replied, "Haha...oh yeah let's see!" I started to dig just to spite him and was hoping I'd find a crab or something. Just as I started to dig I felt something glass..."Ooh! there's something here!" I thought I'd found an old beer bottle or something and was actually excited haha. I kept digging and pulled out a beautiful little glass bottle with a scroll inside. I noticed something catch the light as soon as I pulled it out of the sand and my mouth dropped...no way I remember thinking...how??? I looked at Jed and he was just grinning from ear to ear. I just thought, "no way this is for me...I must have found someone else's ring!"

Then he dropped to one knee and reached for my hand. I pulled out the scroll and handed it to him. As he read it out, I realized that this was it! He was proposing!! It was so surreal, but so natural all at the same time. I remeber just sort of gazing at him and all of the sudden heard, "Will you marry me?" "YES!!!" I screamed! Then I said, "do it again!" I had been in such shock and was so surprised I had missed almost everything he had so carefully planned to say on the scroll. He read it out to me again and this time I teared up. It was real. I still can't believe how he surprised me like that! I have heard a million propsal stories but he definitley topped them all!