Al picked up the ring from the jeweler after work and it must of been burning a hole in his bag!!

The kids and I were already eating dinner at the table (stuffed peppers to be exact). Al came in from work and sat down at the table and just started what to me seemed a normal conversation.

He asked how we should introduce ourselves as a couple to people we don't know and we discussed how it can feel weird and awkward for both us and the people we meet.

He then got up and over my shoulder he said "well I think we have a solution to this problem," and he opened the ring box and sat it next to me at the table. I looked over my shoulder and he was grinning and I told him to be traditional, and he did. He got down on one knee and said "Jennifer, will you marry me." Of course I said yes.

It was a great moment because Jalen was there and he was vey excited for us and starting clapping and Regan just wanted to know why daddy didn't get her something!! :)

My thinking going into the proposal was that I wanted to make it "real" to our situation and not do something stereotyped that just wasn't me.  I thought about going on romantic dinner or something like that but I felt like that would give it a phony feel that didn't fit who Jennifer knows me to be.  Now with that being said, I decided to use the fact that we have had many emotional discussions on the difficulty of introducing ourselves to people as "girlfriend/boyfriend" to open up the discussion that would lead to the proposal.  So when I came in the house it was dinner time and everyone was at the table.  I didn't have much time to work with because we had a function at Jalen's school to go to in like an hour.  So I sat down and said "I think we need to figure out how we want to handle the situation that comes up when we introduce ourselves to people and determine what we want to do about it."  Like I thought, that started getting emotions going.  Now before coming into the house I had drove to the jeweler's and picked up the ring and I couldn't decide what would be the best way to bring it in the house.  I could leave it in my lunch bag but I didn't want to run the risk of Jalen getting it out of my bag and seeing it.  I put it in the front pocket of my pants but didn't like the bulge it created and thought that would be too visible.  So I ended up going with it in my lunch bag.  So after I started the "emotional" discussion, I figured that in order to preserve the shock value I wanted I needed to get up from the table and take my lunch bag to the counter behind her as if I was putting it away.  While I was behind her I stated "....well here's what I want to do about it", and at that point I reached over her shoulder and presented the ring.  Now I thought this plan was perfect and I was pleased at having come up with a way to propose that was true to my character, however I'm not sure Jennifer really appreciated the genius of it all.  Oh well, she still said yes and that gives me the rest of our lives to convince her just how brilliant that proposal really was:)