Honeymoon part deux!!

I know I promised, like a month ago, that I would post the second half of our honeymoon 'tomorrow', but obvs I lied. Not on purpose though! Obviously Christmas happened and then New Years and obviously we and everyone else was busy. By the way, I hope everyone had a MARVELOUS Christmas and New Years! The man had a nasty cold, but our five Christmases were successful.

I tried to throw a New Years Eve partay but no one likes me, so no one could come. Sounds pathetic, right? Seriously, no one could come (I kind of take that back, but only one person could come, so we hung out with him but ended up at someone else's house party... someone who had enough friends to throw a party). I wasn't even upset per se that no one could come, I was mostly upset at the vast majority of our guest list that never even responded to me... Shame on you, you know who you are!! Yeah, I think even my parents had a New Years Eve party at their house... really makes me feel like a loser. Thanks 'friends.'

ANYWHOZIT!! On to what was promised, like a month ago. Where we left off, we had a wonderful first half of a honeymoon; relaxation, sun, warmth, fantastic food. I forgot to mention that during our first relaxation day, we got a couples massage in our villa. That was quite an experience. But you pretty much fall asleep during, so it doesn't much matter if your significant other is there or not :) What I loved most is that literally every part of me was massaged, including my stomach, which was so weird but so nice, and I later read in a Cosmo or somewhere or other that tummy massages are the bees knees! I concur.

The next day (we're still talking about honeymoon part one, when we walked along the beaches all day), we took evening showers 'cause we were gross and sticky, and we found a little scorpion above our headboard!! Now, when I say little, it was still bigger than any scorpion I'd ever seen at my uncle's house in Tennessee... maybe 2 inches of body and 1.5 inches of tail. That's not small... but I'm sure at least someone reading this right now is like 'Pshaw! That's nothing!' So I say little. My hero came to my rescue and very deftly killed it. Please, no outrages or rantings from bugs' rights activists. I don't know how to deal with scorpions, and we didn't want to take the risk of getting stung way out in the jungle. I can't carry Kyle up those steps (I am not naive enough to think that a smallish scorpion would really take him down, it's called comedic over-exaggeration, people!)

ANYway, so I was pretty freaked out but I wasn't going to let it ruin the rest of our honeymoon, one scorpion is no big deal, right?? On to the next day! We went on a snorkeling trip to Tortuga Island! Not the one from Pirates of the Caribbean... The one from Costa Rica:

This was our fantastic and gorgeous boat ride to the island. Oh, and our guide liked to showboat:

We snorkeled (I'll come back to that) and then come to the island for lunch:

 Our guide, Juan (I think, his English was great but with a very heavy accent), he was awesome! Drove a boat like a pro, found starfish and puffer fish to point out to us in the water, and made us lunch on the beach!

 The only other couple on our trip with us, they were Swedish I believe, very nice, and it was great having such a small group.

Birdies!

Of course, we also snorkeled! This was another first for me. I had an awesome time, but also got my first jellyfish sting! (It was such a fantastic vacation of firsts)

Ewww... It didn't hurt nearly as much as I thought it would (I have always been terrified of jellyfish just because I've never been stung before, so I hyped it up in my head as the scariest experience imaginable... not so), it tingled a bit, stung a little like... you know when you burn yourself? Not during the burn, but afterwards when if you don't stick it under cold water the burn lingers? Does that make sense?? How about when you handle jalapeno peppers without gloves? I did that once, had to bathe my hands in milk... anyWAY, it stings like that, and I didn't know what was wrong so I got out of the boat and explained to Juan that I thought I got bit or stung to which he immediately replied "Oh, yeah, you got stung" like it was no big deal and whipped out this bottle of vinegar out of nowhere and spritzed my leg and voila!! No more sting.

That was a very long interlude, sorry, but the point is, I decided to stay in the boat and get some footage of Kyle snorkeling and some fish!

The loved us! I guess they get fed by tourists a lot. They followed us around and hung out by the boat looking for scraps. Several times while I was snorkeling, I turned around and they were right on my heels!

Anywho, I had an awesome time for my first snorkeling experience. Saw tons of fish, and even though I got stung by a jelly, even that part was exciting, and I'll no longer be deathly afraid of jellyfish! Don't get me wrong, I'm not looking forward to my next jellyfish sting, but I'm not terrified of it anymore either. It was fantastic though, going to the jungle and then taking a day trip to an even more wild jungle complete with islands and lots of gorgeous, tropical fish!

That night, we went back to our villa, got bombarded with bats (we were IN in the jungle, so the bats were everywhere, and I'm totally cool with that, because the alternative is jungle mosquitoes, but if you let them, they'll fly right into your villa... Not totally cool with that) and checked for scorpions again before passing out. We heard these little clicking noises, which is normal, the lizards make those noises, and they're very very good at eating bugs. But this clicking noise was louder and closer, so just for fun, I decided to go investigate. I turned the light on in the kitchen and immediately started laughing before going to grab the camera:

Needless to say, it's easier to go to sleep knowing this little guy's got your back. Everything was cool until the next morning when I went to grab my bathing suit off the dresser:

OK, still not huge, but I had to use the word "big" here. I mean, come on. I lifted up my shorts and there he was, chillin' on Kyle's pants, as proud as he pleased, ready to eat me. He was about 3 inches long in the body and 2 to 2.5 inches of tail. It's safe to say I freaked out, because I was very close to touching him, and I was not happy. Once again, my hero came to my rescue, although he was not happy about ruining his pants (I cleaned the spot, no worries). So major kudos to Kyle for saving my life, twice! Good to know that this is the guy I'm stuck with for the rest of my life ;)

So, not a great start to the morning but still a very wonderful relaxing day. Our last full day in beautiful, sunny, warm Costa Rica. We had breakfast the next morning:

 This is how awesome our breakfasts were, in this awesome little cabana with only four tables (the resort consists of FOUR villas, that's it, so at any given time, there's only a max of 8 people there). Fresh flowers every day, ridiculously fresh fruit, coffee, and OJ, pancakes or traditional Costa Rican breakfast of rice, beans, and eggs (drool!!) in this beautiful location.

 Every morning was wonderful, every day was wonderful, every night was magical. Relaxing or exploring, it was the best time of my life. Oh, say hi to Oscar, he cooked our breakfast every day and was awesome!

*Sigh* Then we had to pack up and leave (haha, I almost forgot, this was one of the most comical parts because Kyle went through every single piece of clothing and luggage to make sure we didn't have any stowaways... Let's just say I wish I had gotten video of my sexy husband beating clothes with wooden spoons!). Lastly I got some footage of our little biplane trip back to the main airport:

It was so much fun! I thought these little plane trips were going to be terrifying but not so at all! So the above video is our takeoff and this last one is our descent into San Jose and our landing. I thought it was so cool how this major city is made up of a bunch of huts and tin roof buildings. Definitely no sky scrapers or masses of telephone pole wires. The whole experience was so pure and old world. I don't think I could call it squalid and I certainly mean no disrespect. The locals didn't seem to need fancy suits or tall buildings or shingled roofs. The live off the land and the ocean and everything's so much slower and calmer there.

Kyle already wants to move there. He is not joking... Have I told you about the fish???

Let me get my bearings

OK, so this is one of those apologetic posts... sorry for that... haha

Let me explain, briefly: I promised before the honeymoon reception pictures from guests. I promised two days ago the second half of the honeymoon pictures. Then more people posted more pictures on Facebook. THEN I got a cold. THEN Ben e-mailed me telling me that our professional pictures were ready!

So, I have to get my you-know-what together. Oh, and get back to work! Let me get my head on straight, organize my thoughts and my jpegs, and man will I have a lot of awesome stuff to show you.

First- guest photos
Second- the second half of the honeymoon
Third- RECAPS!!! Whoo hoo!!

I'm not even commenting on the professional photos yet because I'll start spazzing (in a good way!) but SOON!

Kashley's BACK!!

Get it? Kyle and Ashley became Kashley?? No? Too much Ashley, not enough Kyle, our names don't go together well. If anyone can think of a better way to combine our names, let me know!
ANYWAY! We are back and settled. We even had a chance to go to Bed Bath and Beyond to buy out some of our remaining registry items. More on that later... maybe, I don't know if it's at all interesting to post about registry stuff. We'll see if I'm having a dull day in the near future.

You wanna' hear about our honeymoon?? I've been staring at these pictures for months! I mean, I've only been talking about it forever, right? Casa Chameleon looked too good to be true:

No way, right? Too good to be true, right? WRONG! It. was. awesome!!! Let's see, we relaxed, we swam in our own personal pool, we took a bath in the hand-sculpted tub for two, we listened to monkeys in the morning, we watched hummingbirds. We also tasted local fare, walked around the beaches and the town, went zip-lining, snorkeling, aaaaannndd we drank and ate... a... lot!!

Our personal chefs were fantastic, sweet, good at cooking! The managers were wonderfully helpful in planning our activities, and the locals were all really friendly. So, a quick run through with OUR pictures:

We arrived, Wednesday afternoon, plenty of time to settle in and take a swim in the pool:

Hello view!

Hello sexy! ;)

Hello jungle!!

Hello fabulous glass doors and spacious living room!!!

*Sigh* We had a very fabulous welcome dinner. It was fresh fish (sorry, I don't remember which kind of fish). Our chef Rob was phenomenal, a real professional. The meals at Casa Chameleon were pricey but admittedly the best food we had during our entire trip.

The next day we visited Santa Teresa, the closest town to our venue; a bustling surfing community. We had lunch, visited the beach, and bought some groceries.

Yes, by the way, the beaches were all this secluded, all the time! We couldn't believe it, we almost always had the whole place to ourselves, which, believe me, felt very exclusive and glamorous.

The next day we took a taxi to a nearby town called Montezuma; another little surfing area that's very hippie, very organic. Quaint:

 Hahaha, look at the man's silly face!!

 It was very sunny, I don't think we have a single picture of us without scrunchy faces. Oh well!

We were there to explore but also to go zip lining!

We don't have many pictures of the zip lining because we were wearing big gloves the whole time. I got a video though!

It was my first time zip lining and it was pretty awesome. No skill required, very tight regulations keep you from falling to your doom. Zipping millions of miles an hour through the jungle. Whoo whooooo whooo WHOOOOO!! Safe! Millions might be an exaggeration.

We also stopped halfway through to see some waterfalls:

I jumped in... it was fun:

The next day was a relax day. I think we did this just right; I don't think I would have enjoyed doing all our activities in the beginning or the end and then having all our relaxing days in the end or the beginning. We tried to intersperse them so that we looked forward to relaxing and then after a day or so of relaxing, we were ready to do some more stuff!

We woke up the next day to the melodious sound of the howler monkeys... Melodious? or Terrifying? You be the judge (turn up your speakers!!):

And in this next video, if you wanna' hear how they react to us, go ahead and skip to 1:35. Sorry I talked so much. I'm putting so many in because the sounds of the jungle in general were just too cool. All the videos are long and kind of annoying, but if you like listening to birds and monkeys and all that crazy stuff, we had so much great jungle all around us; give it a listen!

And if you feel like watching when I finally actually captured some, you can just watch this next video:

OK, sorry, like I said, you don't have to watch any, but I enjoyed listening to them, I like playing these videos and just listening to all the birds and monkeys outside our villa. It was a treat every morning.

We had a fantastic dinner that night of fillet mignon and seared tuna that just fell apart in your mouth. It was one of the best dinners I've ever had, I've never had tuna prepared that well. But, I've also never had tuna that fresh. It was a highlight I have to say. I just have to talk up our personal chefs again. Like I said, the dinners were not cheap, but this particular one was definitely worth every penny.

The next day, we went exploring again, just to the towns along the beach. We walked a few miles on the beach actually, which was also phenomenal; hermit crabs, fiddler crabs, little fish, tidal pools, fantastic rock formations. All around just a neat place (I usually hate the word neat, but in this case, it fits perfectly in my vocabulary as describing a place where you said 'wow' a lot):

Mal Pais, where the fishermen come and sell their catches of the day.

Neat!

Note the miles and miles of secluded beach again!

They don't like people (obvs) so we didn't get pictures of said crabs because every time you got close they ran away or huddled in their shells :) but also :(

I was, and am still surprised at the relatively small number of pictures and videos we did get. We spent so much time just experiencing it. I am happy we weren't over-encumbered by our camera/bloggie, but I also still feel that we came no where near capturing how awesome it all was.

So that was the first half of the honeymoon. Lots of large videos + pictures = slow computer. So I will dedicate another post to the second half tomorrow. For now, I hope this is sufficient since I've been away for so long. More tomorrow!!

And sunny again just like that!

Today is a disgustingly beautiful November day. Daylight savings meant that when we woke up this morning at the ungodly hour of 5:30 AM, the sun was already peeking above the horizon, and the weather man said that it was going to be close to 70 today! Craziness!!

And to think, yesterday we couldn't see the brake lights of the car in front of us it was so foggy.

Yesterday I was worried about the wrong ties and nobody being paid and not having a honeymoon and not getting a marriage license and not getting anymore of my DIY projects done and the girls not having anything for a coverup...

Then I paid the second half of the honeymoon (umm, I mean Kyle paid for it, I just did the legwork)

I went to the post office and sent checks for the baker and florist (checks that Kyle wrote)

 







And sent the aqua pashminas back so that hopefully the light blue pashminas will come in their place

And then I went home and put my back into paint scraping and the soon-to-be chalkboards are almost chalkboards. Pictures are forthcoming. I am ALMOST done knitting. I can't believe that it's coming to a close. I can't wait to show it off, it's always just been a big rectangle but the point is that it's going to look like and be worn like this:

 

To show just a few of the ways I could wear it (all courtesy of Etsy seller TickledPink, must credit her for the idea... but was not going to shell out $385 for one... mine cost me $78 in yarn... and a whole year of labor :D)

Finally, the most important on the list is on the way to getting completed; Kyle's divorce decree came in the mail yesterday! Now, Kyle had mentioned that he was a little embarrassed that I was just spouting off about his previous marriage and divorce on the blog like it was nothing. To be completely fair, he's probably right, because I do sometimes lack a sensitivity chip. I don't mean to throw it around like it's nothing. It was a not-so-fantabulous time in his life- in our lives- but it's a real part, not to be ignored, and I don't think it needs to be brushed under the rug. I bring it up also because there are folks out there, I am sure, who can commiserate. I'm not going to pretend our whole lives have been roses and nothing bad every happens to us. MOREOVER, and most importantly, I don't bring up 'the divorce decree' to bring attention to it, but to bring attention to how stressed I was about getting it in time. It's coincidental that it happens to be a divorce decree.

Could I have said something to the affect of "We got everything we needed to go get our marriage license" and never brought up his previous marriage? Of course, but oh well, what you see is what you get... like I said, missing sensitivity chip here, I guess. I was too relieved to get it to care much about whether or not anyone was judging us. And you lovelies wouldn't do that to me anyway, would you? :)

So, in a nutshell, yesterday, after I posted yesterday's blog post, got a whole lot better, and today I feel just as sunny as today is. Awww, how cheesy. Oh, I almost forgot; who else lives their life by the 10 day forecast? Probably no one. I reflected last night that my life is passing me by because I live for ten days from now... everyday. Well... we are officially ONE WEEK away from knowing tentatively what our wedding weather will be... WOW! That's my real indicator of how close we are to the wedding. Sooo, I better get to work.

Everyone enjoy the day!!