How it started...

Our Honeymoon stories are incredible, as in you won't believe them. Grandma said yesterday, "When you told me you had stories, I knew they would be long, but I didn't know they'd be so..." And with that, she was speechless.

We stayed at the reception so much longer than we expected. But we were having too much fun on the most perfect day of the year with so many of the people we love, leaving seemed like it would cause the bubble to burst. It didn't, of course, but having never embarked on a honeymoon adventure before that moment, I had no idea what to expect.

We ran through a raining arch of lavender buds, all harvested, processed, and transported by Leslie from Washington state. After driving approximately 1.75 miles in a very nice Lexus, we stopped by his parents to change and pick up my car and then head to Indy. The plan was to order room service, go to sleep early, and be ready to leave the hotel for the airport by 3:45am.

We arrived at the hotel near 9pm, completely and utterly drained, but beaming. We had delicious food -- me, chicken; Kyle, steak -- and passed out shortly thereafter. 3am came early, and by 4:30, when we'd checked our bags and passed through security, we could hardly stand up. This day of travel turned out to be one of the longest of our lives.

Indy to Chicago, O'Hare, to Houston (for 6 hours), to Liberia, Costa Rica. We disembarked around 7:30pm Costa Rica time (somewhere about 2 hours off from Indiana time) and we knew that at least 1.5 hours of driving stood between us and much-needed sleep.

Our car rental company had this deal where they'd bring our car to the airport and we could leave it there when we left, even though they were based out of San Jose, a mere 4-hour drive from Liberia. Upon exiting the tiny airport, we found a man with a placard reading "Kyle Wilson (Lana)". We had to sign some paperwork, but with 10 minutes, we were on our way. This tiny man explained that we had to take him to the bus station in Liberia (not part of the original deal), but we did, because he'd just driven 4 hours to drop our car off and had to wait another 45 minutes for our late plane.

It was raining. Which we expected, but rainy, dark, strange roads in a strange car make for interesting driving. We were starving, tired, and cranky. Kyle got a burger and fries from a Burger King in a food mall in Liberia and off we went, North on Hwy 1 toward La Cruz.

At some points, the farther north we got, there was a green canopy over the road that you could barely make out in the darkness and rain. Once we found La Cruz (roughly the size of Upland), it was dirt, bumpy roads for the next 35 minutes.

At nine-thirty we unfolded ourselves from the little Geo Tracker, which we later dubbed oso rojo or the Red Bear. In fifteen minutes we were in our room, which was much bigger than I had anticipated. It's ceiling was hard wood with great lines. We had a king-sized bed and a full kitchen (not that we had anything to cook, but the fridge was nice to use). The balcony overlooked the bay, but we'd figure that out in the morning when the sun began shining around 5:30a.m.

Kyle immediately began unpacking his suitcase into a drawer and hung up some shirts; I took out my contacts, brushed my teeth and laid down, nearly comatose from the extensive day of travel following the most monumentous day of my life -- so many emotions and feelings and experiences. I could not handle them all and passed out shortly after collapsing on the bed.

Welcome!
Goodnight.