When I realized I was dating the woman I want to marry (so convenient!) I knew I couldn’t simply propose and hope for the best. This is a woman who takes Fun to the extreme.

She initiates Waltzes at the supermarket for no reason at all.  No, a traditional fancy dinner and sweet ring (it is sweet)  just wasn’t going to cut it.

About a year ago it hit me:  what activity do we already enjoy that by it’s nature involves surprises Dancing with strangers’ pets, yes, but how does that help us?  No, the answer is clearly GEOCACHING!

GeoCaching is a kind of global treasure hunt using GPS coordinates.  I’ll bet $5  that no matter where in the world you are, a cache is hidden within a few miles of your location.  Unless you’re on a boat or somewhere boring.  Cheater.

I knew I couldn’t do this alone:  I’m effort-averse and if I announced I wanted to go roaming the countryside for hidden caches Dawn would immediately know something was up.   So I enlisted Michele and her amazing daughter Kori to help.

That was key:  nearly everything that follows appeared to be prompted by them and not me.  I’m just along for the ride, not planning any surprises at all and if I could whistle I’d totally be doing so right now.

Dawn knew I’d bought the ring (she chose it) but didn’t know when I’d do it, so she was had her guard up.   I let slip “why was I so worried about the ring getting here by Friday, I’m not going to Texas until next week!” to make her think I’d be asking her there.

It worked, muahahahahaha!

For my part I took an Altoids Mini tin, sanded all the paint off, superglued a good magnet to it, then wrote up a fake “geo-caching log”.

I had fun with it:  the first letter of each name on the log spells out “Nob Nalla Baby Dolla, love you”.  She didn’t notice at the time but it’s a cute easter egg.

I’d previously asked Dawn to keep Sunday, March 4th clear as I expected to have a few hours of work at the office.   That work would “vanish” when I got there, leaving us the afternoon free.  Fortunately (?) when we got to the office I discovered I didn’t have a new key and couldn’t get in, which was an unscripted but perfect way to “suddenly” have time to visit Michele.

Michele had texted Dawn the day prior that she missed us and would love company.   Unknown to Dawn, Kori and Michele spent the morning scouting geocache locations and came up with a top candidate:  their local City Hall has a Train Museum with tons of caches.   So we visited and Kori successfully lobbied for us to go caching.  It was a near thing, Dawn was tired, but when she heard there was an antique store she was in.

We got to City Hall and visited the antique store.  While there Kori said she needed to grab her phone from the car but secretly ran and hid the fake cache on the front of the trains caboose.  We then casually headed over to begin the hunt.

Oddly enough Dawn found the cache after about 20 minutes of inspecting the caboose, I don’t know how Michele, Kori, and I missed it…

Then the best part:  she doesn’t open it.   At this point I’ve spent a year thinking about this plan, hours spent planning and sanding and trying to keep all of this secret from a woman I spend %80 of my time with… and she’s playing on her phone.  I took a deep breath and refused to get upset.   5 minutes go by.  At this point Michele, Kori, and I are looking at each other.  Kori finally says “well you found it, are you going to open it?!”   Dawn says “course, I just need to tell people online we found it first!”.

Then she gets a bloody nose!    At this point I’m wondering if the universe is trying to tell me something.   She cleans it up and finally opens the cache.

She turned away from me to do so, it was perfect.   I slid the ring box out of my inner pocket and dropped to one knee behind her.  I saw her scan quickly through the names

(missing Donald T. Duck and OJ Simpson) and then turned the sheet around to sign the back. Then she saw my note about loving her and to turn around.

I don’t recall the exact wording but I know she interrupted me to ask Michele if it was really happening.  It went something like this:  ”Dawn, I’ve loved you since our first date when you beat me at trivia.  You are beautiful, funny and my best friend.  I love you with all of my heart and want to spend my life with you. Will you marry me?”

She responded with a grin in her eyes “do I have to give you an answer now?  Shouldn’t we think about this?” before asking “is this really happening?”

I answered “only if you want the ring now… and yes.”  and she laughed and said “You need to put it on my finger!”  To which I replied “Not until you say yes dammit!”   She then said yes, a ring was placed, kisses were had, and lots of hugging and crying ensued.   Not by me, I’m a Man, but I will admit to a certain fondness for how it went..

Of course the only proper way to celebrate a successful surprise is to have a second one lined up and that will be in part 2.. where I reveal a small surprise to save the big one and the Lazy Dog wins my admiration forever.

To see me on my knee:  

For your amusement I present the full fake cache log: