bxlx, me - celebrating 9 years married, 14 together

bxlx, me, originally uploaded by sproutgirl74 / jenifer lake.

today we are 9. on a friday in april of 2001 we had decided a courthouse date was in order. we didn't tell anyone, we didn't call the parents. we secretly worked on blessing invitations for later in june with the thought that we would drop them in the mail later that day announcing our little rendezvous with the courthouse.

we thought we needed a witness so we had flown in our dear friend jb from colorado to be that for us. alas, we didn't need one, but we were happy to have him with us anyways, especially since we didn't let on what we were doing that morning... 'hey john, ya wanna go for a bike ride with us?' he very dutifully snapped some photos for us while we ate at the donut dinette to celebrate the morning ride. then we were off biking along the water over to the courthouse. the mister rode me on his handlebars & i was in my daisy flip flops & vintage dress & he was in his flops & shorts. it was a beautiful spring day!

we had this super duper old man -- mr. tonnelson - marry us. he'd been marrying navy couples FORever in norfolk, virginia. he carried his little typewriter with him into the room, laboriously typed our names on a little yellow sticky & stuck it over where "do you, *jenifer* (insert yellow sticky here) take..." & then we exchanged plastic crown shaped candy colored rings from the 25 cent bubble gum machine with each other. john, wanting to be the perfect wedding host, bought us our 'wedding cake' -- a honeybun from the vending machine down the hallway :)

afterwards we biked back around norfolk, shot some photos at some iconic places (in front of huge navy ships & statues) & had a pizza & drink at a local greek pizza joint, orapax, where the waitresses are never very nice to you & they blast crazy greek music out into the hood. we three ended up back at our apartment all napping in one bed together. nice honeymoon right? i got to sleep with two men ;)

we popped the invites for our blessing backyard party for later in june in the mail thinking everyone would find out on monday, but, the ultra efficient norfolk post delivered a lot of them on saturday. i had taken a line from a.a. milne's book, now we are six, and typed 'now that we are five'...with a little request for people to come celebrate with us on the invites. needless to say, we received lots of messages on our machine inquiring as to whether we had just gotten hitched or not.

thus, we had to go find the parentals the next morning & tell all so they didn't find out from someone else.

that summer was crazy: blessing ceremonies, broken ankles, quit jobs, graduate school, move across the country to SF... all stories for another day :)

happy anniversary mister, hope we get 9x9 more :)
xxx.