“Don’t wait for the perfect moment. Take the moment and make it perfect.”

This last week was a truly momentous week in my life. My son Dalton proposed marriage to his girlfriend and she said YES! In the weeks leading up to the proposal my son and I spent a ton of time planning out every perfect detail and getting everything prepared and ready to pull off the most romantic proposal ever!  We ran through the plan over and over again to make sure we hadn’t forgotten anything. Then we prepped all of our friends that were scheduled to come down to Lake Powell with our family for the week so that they could all participate in helping us pull off our perfect plan. We literally had it all perfectly planned…

And then as so often happens to a perfect plan, life took over. Leading up to the trip it seemed that everything that could go wrong did go wrong. It started with several people who had initially been set to come down with us on the trip had unexpected issues come up that made it impossible for them to come down and they had to cancel.  Next the news hit of a massive toxic waste spill that had occurred from a mine in Colorado which released over three million gallons of toxic waste and chemicals into a river that was heading right for Lake Powell and was expected to arrive at the Lake at the same time we were supposed to arrive. I was like, “You have to be kidding me right now!” Each day we came closer to leaving a new problem seemed to crop up to try and thwart our big plans. Then we found out that our son’s girlfriend had gotten word that she got the job she applied for at her University as a teaching assistant, which was great news, except for the fact they wanted her to start training the week of Powell which meant she was going to have to leave the trip early which would mess up all our plans. I literally felt like everything was falling apart.

Then my son pointed out that come heck or high water he was going to propose to this girl no matter if we could make things perfect or not! And so we decided it was time to dig in and not let all these problems stand in our way. We were going to do the best we could with whatever happened and this proposal would happen one way or another. We found friends that could come down and help us last minute, and I called the University and explained the conflict with the training session for her new job and they sweetly offered to move the training so she would be able to stay on the trip. And the toxic water was believed to have dissipated enough not to be a danger to us on the trip. It actually appeared that things were going to be alright.  We were even arrange to have her parents come down to be brought out to the houseboat to surprise her right after the proposal and we were super excited about that.

The plan for the proposal was to take her up to the helipad on our houseboat for a candlelight picnic, then walk her to the edge and get on one knee while we would have 80 LED light up helium balloons released into the sky to mimic floating lanterns like the movie Tangled as he proposed followed by fireworks when she said yes. All of this was to be captured by a Go-Pro camera attached to my husband’s flying drone.  But the night before the proposal my husband was practicing flying the drone and it crashed into the Lake and began sinking…really?!?!….really?!?!?…. Once again we went into action and my husband arranged for a friend at Powell to bring another drone out to him in time to film the proposal.  Finally the moment came and everything was perfect until the wind suddenly picked up…but gosh dang it we still pulled it off…and maybe every detail didn’t come out as perfect as we planned, but my son took the moment and made it perfect…and it was perfect. It really was.

I want to congratulate my son on picking an amazing young lady to become his wife. She is an absolute doll and together they are a perfect couple. And I want to thank everyone who helped us make this occasion so special.

The lesson I took away from last week was that it’s good to plan and prepare for things, but we also have to be able to take whatever comes our way and decide we will take the moment and make it perfect, whatever it is…

Here’s a photo of their perfect moment:

Have a fantastic day everyone!

~Amy