Surprise Guest Blog: Remember Our Honeymoon?

Hi Sue!

SURPRISE!!!

First of all, you'd better change your auto-login settings on Blogger if you don't want me doing this anymore...

I'm battling my latest bout of insomnia while you're snoozing away, and I was thinking to myself how you do a great job of documenting everything that goes on with our family from the little day-to-day things to the bigger milestones on this blog.  But what I was thinking of tonight (I guess it's technically "this morning") was where it all started from, specifically our honeymoon, and it was making me smile to myself.  As these memories are now flooding in and preventing me from sleeping, I thought that maybe I'd better write them down to share them with you and get them off my mind.  I considered an email, but then I thought I wanted something a little more permanent... so I apologize to the regular readers out there if this is a bit out of character for this blog and doesn't scratch the same itch, but I wanted to write it to share with the author here who does so much to make things so great for me and my kids (and hopefully helps brighten her readers' days).

I love you,

Jim


To anyone who's interested, Susie and I were married in May of 2006, and we were fortunate enough to spend a week at Daytona Beach after our wedding.  I say "fortunate" because, despite the modesty of the honeymoon location (by modern standards), like most things in our life, we couldn't have done it on our own.  We were blessed to have my cousin Joel set us up with a free week at a friend's oceanfront condo, and he included airfare to and from Daytona as our wedding present.  Susie's parents paid for our rental car while we were in Florida, and so all we had to do was cover our expenses - even we could do that!  Alright so you get the setting - here are some of the memories that are in my head:

• At the airport heading to Florida, we were such young-and-in love fools, we played cards on the floor of the terminal while waiting to board, probably annoying a lot of people.  Haha.

• I think Susie slept on the plane, I watched 2 hours of Led Zeppelin concert footage on her laptop.  Rock!

• The first night we got to Daytona we went for a walk on the beach first-thing.  I jumped in the water and came back soaking wet like an idiot, but I was just so happy to be at the ocean, in Florida, with my beautiful new wife.

• Susie was obsessed with catching lizards hanging around the condo.  She made me take pictures.

• We went skydiving!  Susie's primary fear: she was worried she would lose her new sneakers.  She did not.

• We ate at some NASCAR themed restaurant in Daytona.  I remember sitting there and being newlyweds laughing at the fact that we were looking at each other surrounded by race-cars, trophies, steering wheels, etc.  How romantic.

• We went to some mom-and-pop horseback riding session.  It was actually a lot of fun.  People were like "you came HERE on your honeymoon?"

• I fondly remember walking into the condo (I must have been out getting food or groceries or something), and seeing my new wife face-down passed out on top of the covers upside-down (based on how you would normally sleep) at around 2 in the afternoon.  I took a picture.  She was dead to the world.  She napped a lot that trip.  I'm boring, I guess!

• I remember building things with Susie in the sand - Conrad Castle and the evil Mount Wagner.

• The condo was being re-painted, which made for some interesting views - aka tons of dudes hanging on window-washer-style scaffolding outside our window.

• We found unprotected WiFi about a mile away from the condo at some hair salon, so we would stop in the parking lot there once a day or so to check our emails.  Imagine not having constant internet access, and only seven or eight years ago!  Technological growth is truly amazing.

• My favorite memory of the trip was the morning that we decided to wake up and see the sunrise together.  Not just because it was romantic (and cold, lots of wind), but because instead it turned into freaking out and realizing all of the crabs were coming out of their holes for the night all around us. What an adventure!

There was a lot more but I'll leave this list at those highlights.  I know that people spend a lot of money and go to really exotic places on their honeymoons and sometimes I feel bad or jealous that we couldn't, but when I think back on it, I'm happy.  I'm happy because all of those experiences were about us being in love and learning about each other and not being distracted with works of art or jungles or learning some new language in a foreign place.  It was about US and we had a chance to get away from everything and just be in love on our first grown-up vacation together.  I love you a lot, Susie.  Every day is a new adventure, and I'm glad we're going through them all together.  Keep blogging about them!

To anyone that made it this far, I'm handing the reigns of the blog for the foreseeable future back to my much more talented wife.  Thanks for reading, and pardon the interruption!