From Single to engaged in 30 days...

The year after my dad died was a really rough one for many reasons, not only did I lose my father I lost most of my family too. We had a big family blowout between our family and my Uncle Don's family. This isn't my story to tell so I can't get into detail on here but it wasn't pretty and it was very hard on me. I have never ever felt so alone in my life. I had been dating a guy that I went to high school with but was a couple years older than me for about a year, he lived in Anaheim and the long distance thing just wasn't working for me. I tend to be very, very fickle and one day I just woke up and said "this isn't working, I am not happy" and I left. He wasn't happy but it's the way that i usually handle things so that was that.
I was pretty happy being single for the next 4 months, just kind of dating and having fun with my friends. Then one night I was at a party with a girlfriend and started talking to this guy, we knew that we had met before and had a mutual friend but hadn't really ever had a conversation. Anyway to make a short story even shorter, we ended up hitting it off and started dating right away. We spent the next 30 days together, (pretty much any free time we had we were together). Then one night we had our first fight... it was a doozie, we were both really upset and we were getting ready to go to dinner with my mom so we quickly made up and got over it but it really bothered both of us. We were driving to the restaraunt to meet my mom when he looked over at me and said "why don't we just get married." Yep that was it, my romantic proposal. So I said "really?, ok." We then went to dinner and told my mom, I thought for sure she was going to freak out and tell us we were nuts. Nope, she was all for it. "When do you want to do this?, do you want to go to Vegas?" I could not believe how all for it she was. So then we went about planning and we were married a very short 3 months after that. Totally crazy, I know. But for us, it worked, I am not saying this is the best plan for everyone but it just seemed like the right time for me, in the midst of all the chaos that was my family I found a soft spot to land... I found my husband. I can't tell you that I knew right away that this was going to work and I can't tell you that if I was ever put in that position again I would do it, but at that time it was right. We have made it work now for almost 16 1/2 years. We have two kids and we are still pretty darn happy. We definitely have our moments like most couples but we know we always have each other.
For the longest time I thought it was such a silly story that I couldn't tell my kids the real story, I remember telling Allison when she was little that when her dad proposed to me we were at a football game and at half time the jumbotron read "Nina, will you marry me?" I just couldn't bring myself to say "your dad and I were driving down the street and he said "we should get married". Now they know the truth and I think it has ended up being a pretty cool story in and of itself.