Happy Anniversary: The Honeymoon!

Matt and I spent just over a week in paradise, aka Costa Rica, for our amazing honeymoon. We flew to San Jose, and our amazing hotel - Gaia Hotel and Reserve - had a van pick us up and take us to the hotel. It was a three hour drive, supposedly through the mountains and along the Pacific coast. We flew from Detroit and had a layover in Miami that was supposed to be about 3 hours. Well, 3 hours quickly turned into 6 hours, when customs refused to release our plane. Apparently, it had just come from the Dominican Republic, and...they found drugs everywhere. Haha! Kind of funny, but not really when you've been up since 3am.

So, we got to Costa Rica 3 hours late, and our lovely 3 hour drive along the coast occurred in the dark. Which was a total bummer. We were exhausted yet starving, and arrived at the hotel at around 9pm. We immediately ordered a giant room service feast and ate in bed. It was amazing. But it was so dark that we had no idea what anything looked like outside our room! We had a great night of sleep, and then woke up ...

...to beautiful blue skies...

...and the rainforest outside our windows, with the Pacific ocean in the background. Amazing!

Daily breakfast was included in our reservation. They had the most amazing breakfasts EVER! This was my favorite, and I ordered it almost every day - it was so cleverly called the Costa Rican breakfast. Scrambled eggs, Costa Rican rice and beans, with caramelized plantains and sweet Costa Rican sour cream. AMAZING.

This was Matt's favorite...vanilla pancakes I think? I can't remember anymore.

We then relaxed with some coffee...and I'm pretty sure we both fell asleep again. :)

Wedding ring!

Matt enjoying his first of approximately 5038527 pots of Costa Rican coffee.

Later that day, we finally emerged from our room and took a little hike around the nature reserve owned by the hotel.

The walk didn't last very long, though, and we quickly went back to the pool deck to enjoy some happy hour tapas.

The food there was really, really incredible!

The next day, we went to the public beach. Matt had never seen the Pacific Ocean before!

Then we returned to play in Gaia's amazing infinity pools.

We did a lot of this during our honeymoon...sitting around and reading.

View from our balcony

We also went to the Manuel Antonio National Park...which was incredible! We saw lots of stuff, like....sloths...

...monkeys...

...and this beautiful orchid. Did you know that orchids are in the vanilla family? Or wait, vanilla is an orchid...? Ahh, I can't remember. :)

One of the beaches in the park...so lush!

We took a big hike around the park from one beach to the other.

We made it! The other beach...

Aww.

The tail end of what was possibly the world's greatest shrimp burrito

Nice dinner at the hotel - we ate there for 98% of all meals. The food was incredible.

We also went zip lining through the rainforest...I was petrified at first, but we ended up having a great time!

The hotel bar...where we enjoyed many a mojito and mango daquiri

Hotel restaurant/lounge

Hanging out in the pool on our last day. Sniffle.

Our favorite pool bartender made us some special last-day mojitos. They were STRONG. We would go float in the pool every afternoon and drink a mojito. It was so much fun!

Well...this sure was fun for me, although uploading all these damn photos took 100 years. Haha! We don't really have any big anniversary plans today - we went out to dinner on Friday to celebrate. But I am making ribs in the slowcooker, so let's hope those work out okay!

The clock is ticking

As I think back on our engagement, I remember thinking - our wedding is six months from today! In July, Jenn sent me the fabulous "your wedding is 100 days away" card. Then it was three months, then two months, then one month. Now it's 19 days. How crazy is that? I wonder if I'll be counting up after the wedding? We've been married one week. Two weeks. 19 days. Two months. Three months. 100 days.

Something tells me I won't be doing this. But - the countdown has been so much fun! I feel pretty calm with only 19 days to go. Of course, this doesn't really surprise me. The problem, of course, is that my stress rears itself in other ways. Take, for example, the absolutely crazy

wedding nightmares I've been having! None of them make any sense, and most of them involve someone forgetting to take me to the actual wedding. This is probably pretty unlikely. Sunday morning, I awoke after a really, really nice long night of sleep and said to Matt, "I had a million wedding nightmares last night." And you know what he said? "Me too."

Now, that's how you know things are getting out of hand. But only 19 more days, and this will all be over! All the planning, the fun, the blood, sweat and tears. Plus, I get to wear my new ring! In case you don't remember how fabulous it is, it looks like this:

Sigh. Gorgeous. Anyway. Another exciting thing about being married (besides, of course, being married, which is pretty exciting in itself) is the fact that we are going to freaking COSTA RICA!!! Three weeks from today, we'll be there. It has been pretty hard to think about because thinking about the wedding takes so much time. But, feast your eyes on THIS:

In case you're wondering, these are photos of the suite we are staying at for our honeymoon. The hotel is called Gaia Hotel and Reserve, recommended by my good friends Cassie and Dave, who honeymooned there in June of 2007. It is in Manuel Antonio, on the Pacific coast of the country. On Monday, November 10th, we will fly from Detroit to Miami to San Jose, Costa Rica, where a nice hotel driver will take us (in his air conditioned van!) the three hours to the hotel. I've been told that the drive goes through lush rain forest and then hugs the Pacific coast for the last two hours. I'm pumped, even though I'm pretty sure we'll be completely exhausted by that point. Thanks to our slightly more forgiving return flight schedule, we'll get to take a tiny plane from Quepos to San Jose when we fly back to Michigan.

In other news, I went for my final fitting today and the dress looked amazing! I am so thrilled. I also got to pick up my Spanx, which was definitely an experience. I tried them on with my dress and everything looked great. Not really sure if they make that much difference, but my main concern was the fact that you could see the little dip of my belly button through my dress. No thank you. Add some Spanx Power Panties, and...voila! No more belly button!

So, that's that. Things are wrapping up. I guess after the wedding I'll have to change the name of this blog to something more appropriate, and - since I'm pretty sure I won't be able to stop blogging, you'll have to read about my mundane life. Start preparing yourself now...my life returns to the mundane in only a few weeks!