As Chris wrote, the final days leading up to the wedding were a blur of final preparations, but we managed to squeeze in a few fun activities and spend some time with family in between all the chores.
We arrived in Port Townsend late on July 3rd, so we were in town to celebrate the 4th of July. Most of the “celebrating” meant making wedding signs, assembling candy favors, putting photos in frames to display at the reception, and organizing boxes of items for each part of the wedding.
But in between, Chris made sure to include numerous cornhole training sessions with my dad and brother, and I got my nails done with my mom. For dinner, we had one of my parents’ favorite meals, chile verde, and my mom also made a delicious raspberry pie for dessert with raspberries picked that morning from their garden. Although it wasn’t the traditional 4th of July BBQ, it was delicious!
In the evening, we watched the fireworks at Fort Worden with my parents, Chris’s dad, and Chris’s sister Leslie’s boyfriend, who is also named Chris. Since Port Townsend is at such a high latitude, it doesn’t start to get dark in the summer until after 9pm, so the fireworks were not scheduled to start until 10 pm. We left my parents’ house around 9pm and walked over to the Fort, a route I have taken hundreds of times before. Over at the Fort, the parade grounds were full of people and there were tons of people on the beach and dock too. While we waited, we walked out onto the dock and watched all the people on the beach who were also waiting for the show to start. In past years the fireworks had been launched from a barge in the bay, so we kept scanning the horizon looking for the barge. We saw lots of fireworks from Whidbey Island, but nothing that looked like a barge…
But then there was an enormous boom from the beach and before we knew it the sky was filled with explosions of color! In typical Washington style, the oohs and ahhs were hushed as everyone enjoyed the show. Then, after the grand finale of sparkles, the show was over and we made our way home and to bed.
Thursday dawned bright and sunny, perfect for a mountain bike ride. I rode my brother Andy’s bike with my parents to Old Fort Townsend, while Chris drove his dad and two nephews Scott and Ethan to a bike shop in downtown PT to rent bikes and then out to the Fort. We met at the Fort gate and took off into the woods. The boys were relatively new to biking, and had never ridden on trails, but hey picked it up pretty quickly, especially with some encouragement from the rest of us to “pedal, pedal, pedal!” up the hills! We did a couple of loops around the trails, and then my mom and I took off for home while the guys kept riding.
As my mom and I were cruising back into town, we came to a “Y” in the road where we had to turn left about a mile from my parents house. I took my hand off the handlebars to signal and then clamped on the brake just a little too hard with my right hand. In a second I was down, feet tangled in the bike and skidding on the pavement. A second later I was up on my feet, legs shaking, helmet hanging around my neck. I brushed my hands down my thighs and saw a streak of blood on my pants from the heel of my hand. My elbow was worse, with a big road rash gash. A motorcyclist stopped and asked if I was ok, and I patted myself and nodded, although I sure didn’t feel all that great. After a couple of breaths, I picked the bike back up and shakily rode across the street to where my mom was furiously pedaling towards me. She wanted to stop and make sure I was ok, but I knew that I just needed to get home and clean up. We slowly rode home, where I took a quick shower, cleaned up my scrapes as much as I could, my mom bandaged me up, and then we headed off to get the jockey box. I was angry about the accident, since I’d been so careful to avoid tripping while running before the wedding, but I was also thankful that the crash hadn’t been worse. No broken bones or scrapes on my face!
Later that evening, Chris and I drove out to Discovery Bay where his parents and sister Leslie and her family were staying in a house by the water. We had a nice dinner and chatted for a bit, then we headed back into town where we met up with Chris’s other sister Jennifer and her family for dessert at Elevated Ice Cream. We finally collapsed into bed, exhausted with the last bit of daylight fading away after 10pm.
Friday was another busy day, full of all the last bits of preparation for the big day. Chris and I went for a run in the morning, and then launched into wedding prep. By mid-morning we were packing the car, loading coolers with soda, and getting ready to start the celebrations! Around 2pm we loaded up three cars with all the wedding signs, ceremony materials, reception decorations, popcorn, coolers, and BBQ supplies and headed out to Marrowstone. We stopped at the Vineyard to drop off most of the stuff and got a preview of the gorgeous flower installation being set up by our florist and wedding coordinator Tobey Nelson, then made our way to Fort Flagler, where the wedding activities began!