Five Years Ago

April 4th, 2003. Woke up that morning super hella-excited! My wedding day! Got dressed and met my parents and sister in the lobby of the hotel we were staying at down in Manassas Virginia. We drove down the road to the Cracker Barrel for a Southern Cooked Breakfast with Jake and his parents. Raced back to the hotel room for a fast shower and then Carol helped me do my hair and get dressed in my white gown. We drove to the office of the registrar general (I think) and purchased our marriage licence. Carol and Linda witnessed. While we were waiting we danced around in our beautiful dresses and suits. We took the papers over to the court house and met up with the rest of the wedding party: pregnant Rhiannon, Gage (her son), Cybil, and Bethany (friend of Rhiannon). We waited for the lady who was going to marry us. When she was ready, we all filed into her office and Jake and I stood side by side with Carol to my left and Linda to Jake's right. We said our vows. We promised to be true. We exchanged rings. We kissed. We were married! Outside the courthouse we blew bubbles and took pictures and danced around some more. We drove down the way to a park with a gazebo and a blossoming Cherry tree and Carol set up her tripod and took pictures of us all. I don't think we had lunch, but we went for supper at a restaurant where our parents bought us a bottle of champaigne but they only gave us one glass each and then didn't serve the rest of the bottle. I had boring linguini so if I did get some on my dress it wouldn't be so glaringly obvious. Jake and I stayed in the hotel that night.

April 5th 2003. My parents and sister left for the trip home. I stayed one more night at Jake's and helped him finish packing all his boxes into the Tracker.

April 6th 2003. Linda had decorated our car so in the morning we were surprised with ribbons and a beautiful "Just Married" sign and soap-writing on the windows about love and such. I loved it. Jake was not so enthused. He took most of it off right then, but we kept the ribbons on the rear-view until we sold it last fall. The tracker was packed to the gills with stuff and our honey moon was going to be the drive back to Sudbury. The weather was beautiful in Virginia. It started getting colder tho, and by the time we reached Niagara Falls NY It was freezing. We slept in a motel that was pretty scary on the American side so we could cross the border during business hours. Which we did.

April 7th 2003. It only took us 45 minutes to declare all Jake's stuff (itemized lists of all that was in each box really helped) and he received his first 3 month temporary visa. We were on our way again! The falls were beautiful covered in ice. We decided to stay in Niagara Falls Canada one more night before going back to Sudbury. The hotel was MUCH nicer, with NO hookers and NO drug dealers hanging around. We walked down Clifton Hill and by the Fallsview sidewalk. It was snowing and I only had a fleece wrap, no coat. Jake had a coat (well, let's face it, he had everything he owned with him!) and we both only wore shoes. We stopped in a souvenier shop and picked up fleecy ear/forehead flaps. They really worked! We shopped in the WWE store, played games of chance, had a good time.

April 8th 2003. We woke, repacked the tracker with our stuff, and headed off to Toronto to meet up with Mindi and go up the CN tower. We had lunch with Kim and Gloria at Lonestar Restaurant (my fav for their all you can eat fajitas) then after that we drove the rest of the way home to Sudbury.

Five years. Wow. It seems like less. Time is flying. I love you, Jake.