Texas

Last Wednesday, Child and I went to Texas, to escort her grandmother down to Corpus Christi to see an old friend who was in the hosiptal. After we dropped her off there, Child and I drove up to New Braunfels, northeast of San Antonio, to visit her other set of grandparents.

They had recently bought a house on the Guadalupe river, and we stayed there for several days. One of the highlights was going inner-tubing on the Comal river. At one of the parks in New Braunfels, they had a "tube-chute," which was a narrow, curving channel that the water was forced through, making and exciting ride for inner-tubers. You could float all the way down the river, and get out at several stops before you left the city.



It also seemed a popular destination for beer-drinking inner-tubers, which just seems a bad idea to me. Granted, the river wasn't exactly white-water, but mixing drunkeness and water just doesn't seem smart. A couple police evidently thought the same, and were posted at the bottom of the chute checking for underage drinkers.


On Sunday, we left New Braunfels and went through San Antonio to Castroville, where my grandparents on my dad's side live. We visited with them for a couple hours, as well as some other relatives who live right by them. That was a fun visit, since I haven't seen them for about five years.

After that, we drove back to Corpus. On Monday, Child and I visited the beach on Padre Island, where the water wasn't nearly as cold as I thought it would be. I'm not a huge fan of the ocean--it's cold, salty, and wet--but the visit was actually enjoyable, to my surprise. It helped that Child was there. :)


We flew home this (Tuesday) morning.

Engagement

Wow. Got some serious catching-up to do.

First things first, I'm engaged, as of three weeks ago or so. The wedding's on July 6, reception on July 7.

To propose, I had an evening planned out. I started by taking Child three roses, and told her the best part of each day was seeing her.

We went and played some Frisbee Golf, then I gave her three more roses and told her the funnest (yes, not a word) part of each day was playing games with her. After that, we went out to eat, then I gave her three more roses. We were meeting a couple of her friends up the canyon for a bonfire that evening, so I told her we just had time to do a geocache.

(Geocaching is using a GPS unit to find a cache or treasure that someone else has hidden and posted the coordinates of on the internet.) Previously, I had hidden my own geocache up the canyon, near the park where we were meeting her friends for the bonfire.

I told Child I had already programmed the GPS coordinates in, and gave her the GPS unit to follow. We hiked up in the mountains for a few minutes, and eventually found the cache (a peanut butter jar). When she opened it, there were a collection of easter eggs, all with little slips of paper inside. On the top of the cache, there was a note that said, "You know how this works. You must choose something to take, and leave something in return." (In most geocaches, there are a handful of little trinkets, and you can take one of them and leave a trinket in exchange.)

Each of the little slips of paper had things like, "Move to Alaska," or "Become a progessional puppy-killer," things I knew she didn't like. She figured out pretty quick at that point that it was my cache, and said, "But I don't want to choose any of them." I told her I had another option, and pulled a final egg from my pocket with the ring inside.

The thing she had to leave in return was her answer, and she said Yes. :) I love Child...