A last minute business trip came up and I had to head down to Phoenix the week before Labor Day. I wasn't sure if I was going to go Mon-Wed or Wed-Fri but ultimately decided on the beginning half of the week. Thank goodness for this, that really would have impacted my labor day plans :)
I got home Wednesday night and Matt had wine waiting for me and dinner prepped. It was exactly what I needed after a few days out of town. He told me he had a surprise for me that weekend - we were flying to Phoenix and staying at a boutique hotel in Scottsdale for my 25th birthday. I have been begging him to go to Scottsdale (it's a short flight from here and I love AZ) and hike Camelback mountain. I was so excited we were finally doing it! Matt handed me a folder with information on the hotel, a variety of restaurants in the area and our potential hike on Camelback. He had planned this trip months prior; I can't believe he kept a secret for so long.
We flew down Friday night after work. He asked me not to look at my phone (i.e. stay off Facebook). It only took about 1 hour for me to break that promise. Little did I know he was trying to hide me from Facebook since my brother was proposing to his girlfriend that night and he wanted that to be a surprise for later (we didn't realize my brother was proposing that weekend, Matt found out 24 hours prior to this and I had no clue). We got to the hotel around 9pm and went straight to bed since our alarms were set for 4:30 the next morning! We planned on getting up early and heading to Camelback on my birthday morning, hoping to be to the top by sunrise around 6:15. We were dreaming. We pulled up around 5:15 and it was absolutely PACKED. There was not one parking spot remotely close to the mountain so after driving around for a while I got super frustrated and we decided to nix the idea. The sun was rising and I was taking pictures from the side of the road - I didn't want to miss one of the few sunrises I was actually awake for. We found a park a few miles away and we decided to watch the sun rise from there. I didn't know this at the time, but Matt's original plan was to propose on the hike as the sun was rising, so he was scrambling after we couldn't find a parking spot.
Sunrise from the road
We got to the park and Matt was wearing his hiking socks, hiking shorts, a plaid hiking button down shirt, hiking boots and his 28L hiking backpack with a camelback inside. Mind you this is a normal city park... that is flat. And has no hikers. I thought it was so weird he brought the hiking backpack but I didn't want to bring it up, so I just let it go. Never occurred to me a ring could be in there!
After talking on the bench for about 30 minutes and taking pictures of the sunrise, we decided to head out (I was getting antsy and hungry). Of course my clumsy self dropped the camera cap on the ground so I went to pick it up... and saw Matt on his knee when I turned around!
Picture in the park right after we got engaged
I was absolutely shocked when it happened - I had NO clue it was going to happen at 6:15 in the morning in our hiking outfits. It was the perfect moment. We asked one of the few people in the entire park to take our picture just minutes after it happened.
We went back to the hotel and I ran into the reception shouting "We just got engaged!!". I asked the receptionist (who was just finishing the night shift and was a tad grumpy) if we could have mimosas delivered to our room but he informed me the bar didn't open for another 15 minutes, so we had to wait. I guess asking for alcohol at 6:45 in the morning is not normal.
We called our family the rest of the morning then headed to the grocery store to get some champagne and drinks to lounge by the pool. We had the entire pool to ourselves the whole weekend, it was absolutely incredible! Despite the 110 degree weather, it was the best weekend of our lives :)
Pool all to ourselves!
The Hermosa Inn
Before dinner at Lon's
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