Nikki and I started dating back on December 6th of 2002. We were both from the same home town but never met each other until we were living in different states attending college. Nikki and I met through common friends back in our home town but it was not until junior year of college that we finally got to know each other well.

Once we finally started dating we had a long 4 hour drive long distance relationship. Which quickly shrunk to 1 hour when Nikki transferred to Eastern Illinois University, only about 70 miles from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.

The long distance relationship continued once I graduated in ’04 and moved to Maryland. Nikki still had one more year of school to finish up before she was done. But, as soon as she graduated in ’05 she moved out to Maryland with me - which marked the end of the "long distance" part of our relationship.

Once Nikki arrived - scratch that - once Nikki’s stuff arrived, it was obvious that my apartment was no where near big enough for the both of us. I already had a motorcycle in parts in the dining room; which made it tough to fit in Nikki’s 7’ fake Christmas tree. Merging our stuff was not going to happen in the apartment. That’s when we started looking for our next place; either a house or a larger apartment.

Fast forward a few months and viola: we own our first house!  Now I have a garage and Nikki has an attic, perfect!

Still Nikki and I had yet to tie the knot.  I speculate that this delay was due entirely to me, especially since Nikki had plotted out our life plan in a manner she thought would make sense to me, in Excel. Well I am not one to rush things but better late than never I finally proposed to Nikki on 11/26/2008, Thanksgiving Eve.

Nikki’s family was visiting us in Baltimore for Thanksgiving. Since we will not see them for Christmas we decided to exchange gifts early. Nikki and I had already bought each other a camera for our joint Christmas gift so she was not expecting anything else from me. Well, once we finished exchanging gifts with her family I said there was one more gift, but I would need her father’s help to carry it in from the garage.  Nikki was immediately angry at me as we promised not to buy any more gifts (I love that part).

Well Tom and I headed out to the garage while Nikki and Sue guessed at what the gift might be. In truth there was no heavy gift in the garage. I just wanted to make sure it was ok with Tom that I ask his daughter to marry me. He said yes.... One down, one to go.

Before I go on I should say that Nikki is an expert at deception and she learned it from the best: her dad.  As we entered the house Tom put on a show pretending to be straining while carrying a heavy gift. We had Nikki close her eyes. When she opened them I was down on my knee with a little box in my hand. We have a tradition of guessing gifts so I asked her to guess this one. She was too excited to talk so instead she hit me with a pillow. Go figure. That’s when I asked her to marry me. She simultaneously said yes and tackled me to the floor.

Here are some photos of the proposal thanks to some quick camera work by the Sweeney family.