August 11, 2013
-
BYAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
The Daily News: Special Pre-School Year Edition!!!
1 Anybody lookin’?
2 I am excited to bring you this very special edition of the DN, because it is my proud pleasure to announce the engagement of my daughter Nicole to her longtime friend and confidant Matt Seymour! This summer Matt proposed to Nicoley in a surprise sunrise proposal on Kiva Beach in glorious Lake Tahoe.
3 Everyone was in on it except Nicole, who was somewhat annoyed that we were dragging her out of bed first thing in the morning to watch the sunrise. Normally she is an early riser, and the first to go to a sunrise. This morning just wasn’t hers; she was tired, and a tad cranky about being shaken awake.
4 This made all of it better, as we knew something that she didn’t: it was a morning designed to change her life forever!
5 Getting these pictures up here was a bit of a trick, what with a new laptop, Windows 8, and a broken-down Xanga.
6 It all somehow worked, even though it was all shot from an older iPhone 4. The pictures are undoctored, for the record. I love that this all got caught somehow in spite of the obstacles. The entire morning was nothing short of magical.
7 We arrived at the parking lot in the woods in virtual darkness, with dark orange and indigo hints of morning hovering above the eastern horizon.
8 Nicole wore a Disneyland hoody, red sweatpants and Tevas, an elegant and quite understated wardrobe for a life-altering event.
9 We walked up and down the beach, a slight morning breeze keeping it all real.
10 Matt traveled light. He had a wedding ring, black hoody, and a six-thousand-pound backpack on his person.
11 If Nicole HAD suspected anything, that backpack cleared all suspicions.
12 Waiting for a sunrise usually involves walking around, taking artistic pictures of sand, and twitching one’s head every minute or so.
13 Tahoe is a particularly fun arena for sunrise pictures, as a mountaintop could be graced in bright gold while the horizon might still be dark as a morning mist.
14 So Matt walked around with his backpack companion. The sun kept teasing, getting slightly brighter in the east, but still almost agonizingly slow.
15 Helene walked down the beach, turned around, and came back.
16 As the sun pushed further and further up, instincts took over.
17 Almost on cue, Caitlin suddenly dashed in front of Nicole with her phone out, coaxing Nicole to take some sunrise silhouette pictures of her, forcing Nicole’s back to Matt.
18 My eyes, meanwhile, darted to and fro, wondering if anything big was happening.
19 Within seconds, I saw Matt poised with the ring, and saw him give a visual cue by kneeling down. Nicole turned around and was instantly stunned.
20 I made a mad scramble for my glasses, gave up and started snapping pictures.
21 What we wound up with was a series of shots that caught the moment perfectly, along with a video that is somewhere, but that refused to upload on Facebook.
22 After “The Moment” we all gathered together in a sort of group hug. I saw the shadow and took a picture of it. It seems almost better than had I attempted to snap our faces.
24 What a fine morning. The birds, who seemed to have joined in on the conspiracy earlier, chirped happily as we all stood amazed.
25 Back at the Lodge, my sisters Linda and Gayle had set up a mimosa bar. Caitlin had made a paper medallion that said, “I Do,” along with and a banner that said “Congrats” in tiffany-blue and coral, THE colors Nicole and Matt will use as theme colors for their wedding.
26 When we got there, the party took off instantly. Gayle played Sinatra songs beginning with “The Way You Look Tonight.” Good thing it wasn’t “The Way You Look This Morning,” because we all looked like hell.
27 After lots of clinking glasses, the party moved to my cabin, where I made a breakfast that would have won me a championship on Chopped. Eggs, Potatoes, bacon, icy orange juice and hot coffee were the orders of the day, featuring the most amazing potatoes I’ve ever whipped up #tonsofbutter
28 Afterwards we all took it easy. Celebrity golf dominated the clubs, although the younger set managed to hit the town later in the evening, but most of the day remained mellow and relaxed, an absolutely perfect day during a true midsummer, complete with love, magic, and even a forest.
29 The wedding will be held July 12, 2014, a week before we again hit what has charmingly been referred to as “Mars.”
30 We call it Mars because we can’t be reached while up there.
31 So I thought I would kick off the school year a day early by sending out these joyous tidings!
32 We’ll see you all tomorrow, with a brand new string of DN’s coming at you each school day.
33 Fun sharing all of this, and a huge congratulations to Matt and Nicoley, and to their baby Rocket J. Dog, aka Rocky!
34 Hope you enjoyed this. See ya soon!
35 Peace.
~H~
