Are you surprised? Because I am totally… out of my mind… completely shocked and surprised.

Yes, yesterday Allan blindsided me… and proposed to me. I cried my face off. But I said yes!

Watch the video below if you’re interested. We were about to head out grocery shopping when suddenly grabbed me in a big bear hug and told me that he loved me. He then grabbed my arm and pulled me outside onto the patio. To my surprise there was a camera set-up and rolling and Allan brought us to our favourite corner of the patio. He started reading an amazing speech to me that completely blew me away. I was crying the entire time and couldn’t stop crying for about an hour afterwards. He pulled out a gorgeous artisan wooden box that he had purchased (somehow behind my back) while we were in Tofino with my favourite Tofino chocolate and a shell that we had collected together on a beach in Tofino. He asked me if I would marry him and through my tears I said… “Of course!”.

It’s still sinking in that we’re engaged. I seriously cannot believe it.

Believe it or not, the only thing that was NOT a surprise was the ring! Several weeks ago, I found out inadvertently through my mom that Allan had hand-written my dad a formal letter to ask for my hand in marriage a few weeks ago. My dad and Allan went out to dinner where my dad gave Allan his blessing and surprised him by offering an heirloom ring in the family. Since I had already found out about the scheme, Allan showed me the ring and asked me if I loved it. I did… it was everything I had ever wanted in a ring — yellow gold and a beautiful solitaire diamond. I didn’t want to see the ring when it was finished so Allan had picked it up without me.

We always knew that we wanted to be together, but we had discussed not getting engaged for several months. I’m usually good at guessing surprises and figuring things out… but I got completely blindsided on this one! I could not be happier.

We’ve known each other for four years and have been dating for three years, so I’ve known that Allan was the one for me for a long time now… so I shouldn’t be surprised… but I totally am. He means everything to me and he’s the man I want to spend the rest of my life with. I’m incredibly lucky to have such an amazing man.

We’re extremely happy and just enjoying the moment. We’re not setting any dates in stone yet, but aiming for around September 2011 for the wedding.

We spent the entire evening yesterday breaking the news to our closest family and made sure to tell our closest friends by phone so they didn’t have to find out by Facebook status update. It’s all just a blur right now! Will this turn into a temporary wedding blog? Haha… I guess that remains to be seen…

Well, it’s back to reality after an amazing long weekend in Tofino to celebrate our three year anniversary! We stayed at Ocean Village Resort and arrived Friday night to some beautiful views.

Ocean Village Resort is a number of cabins with gorgeous beachfront views, basically right in Tofino on Middle Beach.

Our cabins worked perfectly for our surf weekend… cozy, a full kitchen, hot shower, great views, and close to the beach.

Not to mention that they don’t charge extra for long weekends unlike everywhere else in Tofino and they are quite reasonable.

Great location! They are doing some renovations for summer so I’m looking forward to seeing what they are going to be adding in or updating.

They also have an indoor salt water pool and hot tub which I thought was rad since I’m not a fan of chlorine.

Unfortunately I didn’t take many photos this weekend, especially not while surfing since we were just trying to enjoy ourselves so bear with me here.

On Saturday we spent some time exploring Ucluelet…

Then it was off to dinner at the Spotted Bear Bistro with our friends Liv and Rob. Wonderful company, good food.

Then we headed out to surf that night with Liv. Not too bad… small waves at Chesterman’s and a gorgeous sunset. Too bad we were super rusty after a winter away from the surf!

On Sunday we headed out with a number of friends to the Clayoquot Island Open House… on a boat!

This island is amazingly beautiful… maintained by two people, completely private, except for the open house that they host once a year. The gardens are stunning… they are fully self-sustainable with solar power, full vegetable and fruit gardens etc…

We had a lot of fun exploring with friends.

I loved that they grew their own mushrooms to eat!

So many beautiful plants and flowers.

Time to head home!

Then we had our special 3 year anniversary dinner at our favourite restaurant in Tofino, the Pointe Restaurant at the Wickaninnish Inn.

We ate way too much food…

I had the scallops and dungeness crab (a custom order I always get when I am there), Allan had the tuna in a miso broth, for entrees I ordered the Sloping Hills Pork three ways (so good) and Allan had the lamb two ways… we split an order of the pea and marscapone ravioli with our mains. The ravioli was incredible.

Then we headed out to surf again… this time at long beach with Greg. The waves were HUGE and while I caught one amazing wave… it was way overhead and much too big for our first weekend back in the water… so we dropped Greg and Sanazj off at our cabin so they could take a hot shower and then headed out to North Chesterman’s at around 10:00 PM and surfed till about 11 PM. Yeah, it was reaaaaally dark. Surfing by moonlight pretty much.

In the morning we woke up and surfed North Chesterman’s again and checked out of Ocean Village. We caught some amazing waves and the conditions were fabulous. Best surf session of the weekend.

Overall an amazing weekend… a great anniversary with the best man in the world, and we can’t wait to get in the water again soon!