This past Saturday was a very big day for our family. Mentally, I had been a little MIA for the past week or so … getting ready, emotionally, for the weekend!

Our daughter, Marissa, got engaged! She is my firstborn … and a truly magnificent daughter!

This is Marissa and her handsome fiance’ Jeff.

And this is their engagement story … as seen and experienced firsthand by a proud, excited, and loving mom.

On Thursday, April 24, 2014, Jeff flew in from San Francisco to take us to dinner and ask for Marissa’s hand in marriage.

He was so sweet and said the most beautiful and wonderful things about our beloved daughter. After we said, “yes, of course,” Jeff explained his proposal plan and asked me to be a part of it. What an honor!

You see, Marissa and I have been fans of the television show, The Amazing Race, ever since its debut in 2001. We’ve always thought that we’d be the perfect duo to run the Race and that certainly we would be the winners and take home the $1 million prize money!

Jeff created an “Amazing Race San Francisco” for us to run… unopposed … so we’d be sure to win! He had 15 envelopes containing clues and challenges for us to complete.

We began at 9:00 Saturday morning and hit the ground running.

Jeff put so much time, thought, and effort into this endeavor – it truly blew me away! He even had the forethought to have me take a photo of Marissa at each “pit stop” holding the corresponding numbered envelope and then post it on Instagram and Facebook. Each post included the hashtag #amazingracesf, so that he could follow our progress as we traveled from one side of the city to the other – over a period of about seven hours.

It also became a great way of letting their unsuspecting family and friends know that something very cool was happening and that something even bigger was on the way!

And yes, you can still log on to Instagram or Facebook, put in #amazingracesf, and see the whole event as it unfolded.

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