Wednesday, February 28, 2001, I had called my father to tell him about my scholarship for Spring/Summer terms at BYU. He wasn't home, so I left a message for him to call back. Nathan came over a little later that night and said he had also tried to call my dad. I had a pretty good idea why he was calling. We had been talking about getting engaged for a while and he had been teasing recently about maybe waiting a while. I knew he had no intention of waiting. My father returned my phone call while Nathan was here. I told him my news and he asked me if I knew why Nathan would be calling him. I said I had a good idea, and handed the phone to Nathan and told him it was my father. I then ran downstairs and turned on the bathroom fan so that I couldn't listen in on the conversation upstairs! The next day Nathan called my dad again to tell him of his plans for the proposal.
After that, I knew the proposal couldn't be too far off. I expected it that weekend. Friday night he and I and Gayle and Michael went to Temple Square to see the Testament movie. I thought that might be a good opportunity for Nathan to propose, but no. The next morning we went to the Timpanogos Temple and again I thought perhaps now, but no. I expected it would come that night or Sunday evening. Nathan and I had been planning for a while to go to Barnes and Noble on a date sometime. He had asked the day before if we could go on Saturday after the temple. So on Saturday March 3, 2001, after attending the temple, we each went home to change and I fixed some lunch for us. Nathan took forever. I finally got him away and we left. At B&N he suggested we split up and look for the books we were interested in sharing with one another. He found his within a few minutes, but I took longer. At one point, I spotted my roommate, Christianna and her friend there. I asked them what was up when I noticed they had a camera out. She kind of passed the question off. I thought it strange, but noticed also that they both had on some funky animal bookbags and I figured it was just some crazy BYU photo scavenger hunt or something and forgot about it. I met Nathan at a picnic table in the children's area and we started looking at our books, he showing me a map book, and then I showing him a cake book, etc... I had noticed that he had a large dictionary in his pile. Given my love of words and word origins, I thought, "That's neat, why didn't I think of picking up a dictionary?"
As we looked at our books, I noticed that my roommate and her friend were hanging around, somewhat close to us. I really started wondering what was up. After about an hour of this, Nathan came around the table to my left side and pulled the dictionary out of the pile and suggested we look at that next. I agreed and he opened it to a page that had a rose petal and a highlighted word. I read the definition; written in was a reference for another word. I turned to that word to find the same thing. I followed this word hunt excitedly, knowing that this must have something to do with a proposal. A man and his little girl came and sat down right beside me. In my head I told them to "go away- I'm getting proposed to! Go away!" They must have seen what was happening, as they quickly left. I came to the last word of the hunt, which referred me to "ring." I turned to the R's and to my surprise, the dictionary pages had been cut to make room for a black velvet jewelry box to sit within them. Nathan took the box and got on one knee. Opening it to reveal the ring I had chosen, he asked me if I would marry him. Heart pounding, eyes filling with tears, and smiling, I told him "yes," and he slipped the ring on my eager finger. As we embraced, my roommate took pictures and then as we went out to his car, Nathan gave me flowers from his trunk.