So a bit of a confession first: Melanie is a snooper, like BAD. One day I left my e-mail up and for whatever reason i left for work with it still up, not thinking - because what could be so wrong in my e-mail, right? Well apparently I didn't think about Kay Jewelers sending me a confirmation e-mail about the ring i bought a couple months before being resized, polished, checked, etc... So the snoop - i mean my lovely wifey, opened my e-mail that said "Kay Jewelers e-receipt" which was for exactly what I just mentioned...HOWEVER! It only said $0 balance, and didn't mention anything about it being a "ring" or anything - WOO! But it gets worse. Detective Melanie called her Bestie, Detective Jessica Reader and they began the hunt through my e-mail together to see what they could snoop out together. Turns out (several pages and hundreds of e-mails deeper) they found another E-Receipt from Kay (the one from my actual purchase) that said the amount of money I paid up front and what was left on a payment arrangement, what made it worse was this time the e-mail included some kind of UPC code that is specific to the ring I bought. They continued their snoop session and found a few possibilities of what the ring looked like!

When I found all this out; i was horrified that the whole surprise portion was done for. So in retaliation when she came clean and told me, being the super mature man I am: I made her butt wait an extra 6 months or so before I proposed!  I started devising this elaborate scavenger hunt type plan involving some friends of hers and her cousin to be involved in, made some clues up, made some puzzles for her to beat to get to the next location, etc. (Completely stole the idea off Youtube, by the way!). You're probably like, WOW that sounds great, hope you got a video of that, right? Nope, that got ruined by someone who couldn't keep a secret. So being the super mature guy I am here: I made a plan on the fly, that only I knew of.... No one could mess up.... but me!

I waited until her birthday: Melanie was asking about getting a kitten around that time to call her own. I made an arrangement with the head of a cat/kitten rescue agency and went to Petco to buy one of those little engraved collar tags. I was able to explain to the ladies at both Petco and the Rescue my intentions of rescuing a kitten, putting a custom collar on her with a question on it, and proposing literally that night (Melanie’s birthday night). I showed them the ring as well, since I couldn't keep that portion completely to myself and I got some interesting responses back like "Let me know if she says no, boo." SO I RUSHED out of there, kitten in hand, custom collar in the other with a jacked up looking version of "Will you marry my daddy?" engraved on it...and sped home (i was almost 45 minutes late for our little date night at this point, oops)

So when I got in the door, the cat would stop meowing, I hurried up and asked Mel to shut her eyes and hold her hands out, I put the kitten in it, and grabbed my light-up-ring-box in the other and opened it behind the cat where she couldn't see. I asked her to read the collar......It was in my pocket, my dumb self-forgot to put it on. So i figured; no going back now, "Melanie Rose Krutz, will you marry me?"

her response? "Babe, HAHA THE RING AND THE BOX IS UPSIDE DOWN!!!!  YES!"

WOO!