Christmas Is Still Wonderful As Long As You're in Love

Once upon a time in a park on a swing way back in December 2009, a dashing young man proposed marriage to a beautiful young girl. That was a whole year ago. About six weeks later, they were married.

Since then, they have lived the first ten months of "happily ever after," but they had one regret. They wanted to get a picture in the park where they got engaged. As the anniversary of their engagement approached, the young man had an idea. What if they went back to that swing and took a mom with them to take a picture. This idea grew into another wonderful surprise.

So the young man and his beautiful bride, along with her mom, set out for the park. It was very cold, and they had to climb over mounds of snow just to reach the correct swing. The girl sat down on the cold swing, and the young man knelt down in the snow as if to simulate last year's proposal, only this time, he pulled out a box with yet another ring, a stunning blue topaz set in silver. He asked her to stay married to him forever. It was very romantic! The girl was overcome with surprise, and the mom (who was in on the secret all along) photographed the whole event.

Overcome with excitement, the girl shoved the ring onto her right ring finger because, of course, she wears her wedding ring on her left hand. Everything seemed perfect...at least for a while. But then..

A crisis occurred. Oh no! (Warning: if you only like happy stories, you should stop reading now. Remember, you were warned!)

The young man went home to play videogames with the girl's brothers, and the girl and her mom headed out to shop for Christmas groceries. With loaded shopping carts, they proceeded to the check-out when the girl attempted to remove the ring. It wouldn't budge. Not at all. Apparently, her right ring finger is slightly larger than her left. The finger had swollen up below the ring, and the harder she pulled, the more swollen it became. They arrived home and tried every online technique to remove rings: she elevated her hand above her heart for an hour. The young man iced her finger and applied cream, oil, and butter. He even tried wrapping dental floss around her finger to make it small enough to pull off the ring.

Nothing worked.

By now it was11:00 p.m., and it was obvious we would need to find someone to cut off the ring. The girl was very sad. Her beautiful new ring would need to be cut off her finger. We called the fire department, and the nice firefighters told us to come right over. Even they tried to remove the ring without cutting it, but to no avail. They used their "ring cutter" and cut off the ring.

I'm trying to find a way to make this story end happily. What can I say? That the ring can be repaired once they get back to Utah where the young man bought it? Indeed, it can! That Christmas is still wonderful even when slightly unfortunate things happen? Indeed, it is. Most importantly, that the young man and his bride are still madly in love despite this incident? Indeed, they are!