Engagement Day

Today's blip is a wee bit soppy as it marks the day I proposed to Emma. I tried to choose just one photo to reflect the day but couldn't so I've cheated and chucked a bunch of them in one collage!
The proposal itself was the culmination of 1 week's planning, treasure hunting, cleaning, plotting, hiking, driving, and just general scheming behind Emma's back in order to make Saturday 22nd go to plan. Fortunately Saturday went off without a hitch and Miss Macaulay is now Mrs Ferguson to be, with the wedding planned for this September!


The proposal......
I arranged with Emma earlier on in the week that we would spend Saturday out geocaching (http://www.geocaching.com/) which essentially is a mix of treasure hunting and orienteering. The game
basically involves finding a bunch of tupperware boxes that have been left by other geocachers in various spots. You do this by downloading the location co-ordinates into your phone. However these co-ordinates will only take you to the general area of the box so you need to solve the hints/clues that are also provided in order to find the box itself. Inside the boxes are normally a few knick knacks such as keyrings, playing cards, toy figures etc, and a notepad for you to sign and say you found it. When you find the geocache you would swap whatever you had with you with one of the gifts in the box.
It's a good wee game and we've done it a couple of times, but.................there would be one major difference with our geocaching activities on Saturday..... I would secretly visit the boxes the day before and place carefully selected items for Emma to find - 4 separate gifts in total. The gifts themselves would provide a clue as to what the 5th geocache would be, but hopefully she wouldn't realise till afterwards that there was a code in the first place.

Friday arrived and I managed to get a few hours out of work to place these gifts in preparation for Saturday. I very fortunately managed to find all 4 of the geocaches in good time, and managed to place the gifts either in the tupperware box or in the general area of the site (some were too big for the tupperwares so I had to be creative) I also got a call from the jewellers on Friday and thank god the ring had arrived!! Later that Friday night Emma got the shock of her life to find me hoovering the house....... I told her the dog made a mess but again this was a wee fib in preparation for Saturday! Sorry Murphy!

Saturday and we set off for the first geocache in Daviot Woods. Emma could not find it which was rather annoying and me being very aware that my timings were crucial, magically stumbled upon the first geocache. Emma took out the tupperware box and found a keyring with the Letters E & M with the last person signing the notepad being Margaret E, so perhaps as Emma says the initials were M & E.

Second geocache found, this time at the findhorn viaduct and one of the gifts in there was a purse shaped like a sheep, infact a female sheep which is a Ewe, i suggested we should take it as Emma's niece would love it.

Third geocache was at Docharn wood at the site of an old house which is now more or less ruins. We found the geocache, nothing exciting in the box but when we had a look round the old house there was a random magazine on the roof (see collage), when we pulled it down it was a marie claire magazine - recent issue too!

Fourth geocache was near boat of garten in a forest area. Again we found the geocache no problem, nothing too exciting in there as it was a small box (which couldn't contain much, certainly not a DVD - see collage!) but the last person to visit the geocache was Will Smith!!

The fifth site we went to was Newtonmore train station, and indeed the place where i would get down on the one knee. Newtonmore whilst not the most romantic of places or picturesque, does represent a special place for us and we have always had a wee chuckle when passing the signs for it as we always wonder if we'd be together had she decided to go home on the train that day instead of visiting me!

On arrival I gave Emma the last clue, and predictably she bolted out the car to find the geocache, unaware that the clue was fabricated and there was no geocache. She went straight for the desired spot that I had planned to do it (luckily) and I had enough time to get there whilst fidgeting in my pocket whilst she scrambled looking for a tupperware box that didn't exist.

When i got there I told her I found the geocache at which point i heard her tut with disappointment, however when she saw what I was holding she changed her tune!

The day had went exactly to plan, and fortunately she hadn't cracked the riddle during the day, leaving me to spell it out on the journey home......
4th Geocache: Will
2nd Geocache: Ewe
3rd Geocache: Marie
1st Geocache: Me

Second surprise of the day concluded when we got to her folks house, walked in the door and there is both her family and my family (up from Fife) standing there with champagne! She eventually clicked as to why I had spent most of the week on tidy up mode.......... can't have my folks thinking im anything but tidy when they visit!

Great day and great family meal that night at Zizzi, and then night over at the Kingsclub Hotel.

Now for the wedding plans..................