Our walk along the beach to try and de-spazz before dinner.
WE’RE ENGAGED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I was totally surprised. Even though I had a feeeeeeling he would propose to me. When it actually happened, I was not all expecting it at all. But let me back up…
That morning, we woke up and packed our stuff for our much-needed weekend “break from Prison Break” on Lummi Island, Washington. We had made reservations to eat at this restaurant called The Willows Inn. Which is, in short, a bad-ass restaurant that’s one of the top places to eat in the US, that we were told we had to try, and which we had been dying to try. Since we ended up staying/working two hours away from it in Vancouver, we realized we could make it happen!
But first, we had to drive across the border… Our border agent, of course, asked (seemingly) a million gruff questions. Then asked how we know each other. Mike said, “She’s my girlfriend.” And then added, “we live together.” As if to give it more gravitas, which I thought was adorable.
Then we drove all the way to the ferry station that would take us to Lummi Island. We arrived about 30 minutes early. So we walked along the beach of Lummi Bay, and we found a ton of GORGEOUS oyster shells. We collected a bunch of them. I figured I could use one for a jewelry catch-all — which is really fortuitous, given what would happen later. Laden with oyster shells, we wandered back to the car and it was time to drive onto the ferry.
It took minutes to go shore to shore, but they were fun minutes!
Once off the ferry, we immediately spotted the place where planned to have lunch — basically the only other restaurant on the island. We had an incredible burger, with a side of “bacon jam” and “ocean view on a clear and sunny day.” While we scarfed down the burger, I stared at Mike and thought of my mom’s tale of how nervous my dad was on the day he proposed and realized, “there’s no way he’s going to propose to me tonight. He’s not acting any different.”
I’ll learn later that Mike’s nerves didn’t hit him until we got back into the car and headed for The Willows Inn. Looking on the map, our drive was just a straight line around half the small island — basically, just follow the water and then you’re there. Mike immediately took a random left turn, for no real discernible reason, and then had to turn around and get back on the main road. He admitted later that he made that weird choice, because he was starting to get nervous! How cute is that!?
The Willows Inn restaurant on top, and front desk at the bottom.
My first look at the Willows Inn… holy shit, you couldn’t ask a Hollywood production crew to build a more idyllic restaurant setting. My thoughts at this point were, “he’d be an idiot not to propose to me here. Hell, if he doesn’t I WILL!”
This is where the magic happened.
After checking in, gathering all the information, we headed to our “offsite” lodgings.” It was an adorable free-standing, two bedroom house, with a super-modern kitchen and windows for DAYS. It was, in a word, awesome. I immediately spotted my special anniversary gift for Mike, that I had sent to our room, sitting on the kitchen counter. Excitedly, I ran to it and started opening the box. Mike was like, “hey, can you not mess with that right now?” I shot back, “I just want to open the box and make sure it’s right.” “Oh, okay,” he resigned. But… there was something in his voice, something that wasn’t in fitting with his usual imperturbable self. So I, reluctantly, turned my focus from the gift towards my uncharacteristically needy boyfriend, who said, “I have a question for you.” “Oh yeah, what’s that?” I asked, my heart immediately fluttering.
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