The weather turned out way better than I could have ever hoped for, amazing for a summer famous for nonstop rain (the chance of rain for the day all week was 0%! I didn’t even look out the window right when I woke up because I was that sure that it would be perfect.) The tent looked beautiful, the farmer left the wheat in the field which bordered all sides of the yard, and the night ended with a crazy fun and wild dance party, just me and Kent’s style! Our dj was wonderful and stayed for longer than we’d booked him for. It pays to hire friends of friends to do these types of things for you!

Buuuut, since I don’t have my pictures back quite yet, I’ll stop talking about the wedding and start talking about the honeymoon! We  spent our first day and night in Los Angeles, then spent twelve days in the Hawaiian islands of Kauai and Maui. It was a completely amazing vacation and I still miss it every day!

Here are a few pictures and a few highlights!

We didn’t have time for much in LA except a quick tour of Hollywood boulevard, Rodeo Drive, and the beach. We rented bikes and biked from Santa Monica Pier to Venice Beach, because, well, we didn’t have time to walk it! Kent made fun of me because the bike I rented was SO squeaky which he thought was a pretty typical thing to happen to me. Whatever, it was the only one with a basket!

Now in Kauai! (It always takes me at least three tries to spell that, even after being there.) The guidebooks told us to try shave ice at Jo Jo’s. It’s an amazing Hawaiian dessert made by shaving a huge rotating chunk of ice and then flavouring it with whatever you choose. I loved it and had it many times during the trip!

On our last day in Kauai we treated ourselves to a helicopter ride! I love Kent’s hair in this shot.

Before take off! We both got really motion sick on the helicopter and Kent even had his “Aloha bag” out (which is forever what I will call barf bags and you should too!) but thankfully for the rest of the passengers on board, didn’t have to use it. After the flight we just collapsed on the ground for a while then had to go for recovery drinks, although we had “happy hour” drinks every day, come to think of it. You Americans love your happy hour! Kent says it’s just as popular here, but I don’t believe him. If every bar/restaurant here had amazing drink deals every afternoon I’m sure I’d do a lot more afternoon drinking!

The Napali cliffs… nothing more beautiful than a helicopter ride in Kauai. I learned on this ride about a group of waterfalls called the “Five Sisters Waterfalls.” So neat!

Kent fell in love with snorkelling. It was like being inside an aquarium, way cooler than I expected!

Ohh, just a new friend we shared a plane ride with! Kent told everyone back home that he was going to Hawaii to meet Dog the Bounty Hunter so it could not have been more hilarious that he actually did meet him! Dog’s response to Kent asking for a picture? “Okay, ready, shoot.” He was no-nonsense! But it was really great of him to pose for pictures with a bunch of people while trying to get to his luggage.

We took a boat ride to Molokini crater and another Hawaiian island, Lanai, for some amazing snorkelling. The boat was awesome, they served us breakfast and lunch, the crew was so fun, and it had an open bar! We went with the Pacific Whale Foundation, which I definitely recommend.

Kent’s sister and her husband bought us a bike trip down the crater in Maui as a wedding gift! We were driven to the top of the crater on a bus and then we biked down. It was really cool and a bit scary with all of the hairpin turns. I loved the views from this spot, with the sheep in the field and the ocean in the background.

Of course we had to go to a luau! The food was amazing, especially this pig which was cooked underground. We ate with a cute newlywed couple across the table from us who were from Utah.

We went all out on the last night since we cooked/picnicked almost all of our meals on the trip and went to the nicest restaurant we could find. It was SO worth it, one look at this picture can probably tell you why. I love that Kent is a chef and trips to nice restaurants always feel a bit like research.

That’s it for the pictures, although I have many more that you can see if you have me on facebook. Here’s a few side stories that the pictures don’t tell, for the people who have seen all of these already:

1. Kent bought a speargun our first day in Maui from a super great local guy at a surf shop. He gave Kent a flier with the best places to spearfish which quickly became our bible. We found that the fish in Maui weren’t quite as plentiful as in Kauai and they were smarter, so he never did catch one but man did he love going out with that spear. He has always loved fishing but has definitely caught the fishing bug since returning from Hawaii.

2. On the flight from LA to Hawaii, there was a contest to figure out exactly when we’d hit the halfway point, keeping in mind wind speed and all this other stuff that went right over my head. Guess what? Kent won! Luck was on our side this entire honeymoon. When they announced his name on the plane I laughed so hard… and I was the only one that clapped, along with maybe two other people. The prize was a Hawaiian cd which became our soundtrack for the trip every time we drove (which was a lot.) After a few days this song was basically on repeat the whole time. Listening to it brings me right back! 

3. I’d never heard this before the trip, but in Hawaii people kept asking me why I had a Hawaiian name (Micaela). After thinking about it, we realized that Hawaiian words are full of vowels, and m, c (and k), and l are common consonants. That’s probably why I loved all the Hawaiian words so much and our drives often consisted of us repeating our favourite Hawaiian words over and over again. (”Lahaina!” “Haleakala!”)

I’m glad we had such an awesome honeymoon even if it means that our trips for the next year or two will be nonexistent (well, they should be anyways!) Posts to come on the wedding and on married life, which is pretty great. Last night Kent surprised me by picking me up on my walk home from work and had a picnic packed and we had dinner by the lake! Really though, nothing has changed since we still live in the same apartment together, except that we laugh every time we say “husband” or “wife.”

Kent and I started this year out in an interesting way. For as long as I’ve known him, Kent has been a water rat. He is not afraid of diving right into the water, no matter how cold. His dream has always been to do a polar bear swim on New Years Day. For those of you who don’t come from arctic temperatures, polar bear swims happen all over the place on January 1st in Canada. All of the absolutely insane people who want to participate go to the beach and run into freezing cold water. Us normal people wait until July. Our friends Dane and Michelle came along to cheer Kent on. For them and I there was no question – we knew there was no way we were going in there.

We arrived in Port Dover, where the swim was happening, and Kent and I went into a store where all of the future polar bears were waiting. The temperature was negative 10 degrees celsius. Kent got dressed in his bathing suit and robe and they listened to a pep talk where they were told that if you don’t put your head under, it doesn’t count! Everyone started chanting “THE WATER IS WARM! THE WATER IS WARM!” over and over. They were also told that the lake had frozen over the night before and there was a hold cut into the ice which all the polar bear swimmers had to jump into! I hugged Kent a lot and told him to be careful.

I tried to watch Kent jump in but there was so much bumpy ice that was really hard to walk on, and soo many people, that I couldn’t see a thing which was disappointing. Definitely not a spectator sport. Here’s what I did see.

I spotted him with the other swimmers before they went in… and didn’t see him until:

After he was already finished. Smiling, which is a good sign!

The crowd.

Finally inside! Celebrating the fact that he is a full fledged polar bear.

Kent said he probably would do it again next year, but he definitely doesn’t have me convinced to do it, even though he took it like a champion.

Would you ever do a polar bear swim?

See Part 1 of the honeymoon Here!

November 8, 2008 (Mic’s birthday!)

The picture above shows the vendor’s booths that crowded the area at the entrance to the resort from the beach.

My confession about the beach: We never actually swam in it, we stuck with the pool. Oceans freak me out a bit, I saw a star fish in the water, and there were lots of little crabs and I’ll admit I was a bit scared of what else was in the water. We took lots of walks on the beach though, waded a bit on the water and checked out a few sunsets on the beach. Like this one.. that wasn’t a really amazing sunset, but still pretty nonetheless.

Here’s a shot of a wedding on the beach (on the left left), complete with 4-wheelers cruising past.

Below: The gorgeous sky.

The honeymooners

November 9, 2008

Our adventure to Lake Arenal and Arenal Volcano

Early morning breakfast at the “19th Hole” restaurant.

Beautiful views from breakfast!

After a long drive we arrived at Lake Arenal to take in some views.

Our tour guide for the trip. Showing us some of the plants in the rainforest.

Huge tall trees!

In the middle of the walk there was an aboriginal hut and a presentation and they showed off their creations. Kind of weird but nice to get a bit of history on the walk.

There was moss all over the trees.

We saw a Costa Rican farmer on our drive to the Volcano from the rain forest.

Our driver stopped the bus here on this 2 lane bridge and said okay everyone hop out and take pictures! Cars were whizing past, it was kinda funny. But a great place to take a picture of the volcano. It was a bit cloudy so we couldn’t see the top.

Baldi Hot Springs

We went to Baldi Hot Springs, which had great views of the volcano. They had 16 different pools with varying temperatures. The closer you were to the volcano the hotter the pools were. The grounds had beautiful gardens and many paths all over. They were building a few new buildings when we were there. It wasn’t busy at all. We really enjoyed ourselves there.

This one was soooo hot. I so wanted to sit on those chairs, but I couldn’t handle even putting my feet in!

Each pool had a sign telling you how hot the tubs were. We didn’t find these signs to be correct at all. Sometimes the sign would say the pool was supposed to be really hot and it wasn’t at all, and other times it said it was going to be cooler and it was really hot.

Below is the view of the volcano from the hot springs. We were quite lucky to be able to see it this clearly, we heard that often people are really disappointed on this tour because they don’t get to see the volcano at all. After we left the hot springs resort we drove for a few minutes and went to a spot that we could see lava eruptions from the top (small but still neat). Then we had a LONG drive back to the resort.

Part 3 still to come!

(smiling faces at 5am in the morning.)

November 4th (Day 0) / November 5th (Day 1)

We left home on November 4th and stayed in a hotel in Toronto because our flight was early early in the morning on the 5th. We flew to Houston, Texas (our first time in Texas!) where we had a 6 hour layover. It was long, but since the Huston airport is large it wasn’t unbearable.

We arrived in Costa Rica at night, which was a bummer because we then had an hour drive to the resort and couldn’t see much scenery in the dark. The check in building at the resort was at the top of a hill and it was neat because the building has no walls. We were brought to the wrong room first and that began the confusion of their room numbers -we were 224, we were brought to 244 and they messed up our room numbers many times. We were tired after a long day of flying, and not being great at sleeping on airplanes, so we went to bed.

November 6th (Day 2)

The next morning we were excited to get up and see the resort! We went to breakfast at the buffet (which we loved, they made really good omelets). There was lots of food to choose from, and some interesting breakfast choices, beans and rice for breakfast anyone?

Then we walked around the resort a bit and got ready to lounge by the pool for the day.

It rained on our first full day at the resort, a quick heavy rain. We stayed under the tiki until it was over, which wasn’t too long. Then we headed to the beach to check it out! It looked neat after the rain. The next few days we did more relaxing and exploring of the grounds and were jealous of the golf course that looked so pretty but was too expensive to play at.

The beach after the rain, and a risky timed self portrait where I had to run fast through rocks, I thought i was going to fall.

November 7th (Day 3)

Above- A view of the the buildings that houses some of the restaurants and a bit of the pool and ocean.

Below- a view of the golf course and the condos in the distance.

The tree below begins the zip line over the pool, more pictures of that later.

Target practice!

November 8th (Day 4)

Such a serious boy.

Me, looking burned already.

Next up: Exploring the beach at sunset and our first tour outside of the resort!

So according to dreammoods.com, the first part of that dream means that my two states of mind are meeting. The sand symbolizes the rational and mental processes, and the water symbolizes the irrational, unsteady and emotional aspects of myself. There was more sand on the beach than usual…does that mean that I’m going to become really smart? And there was also a huge moat on the beach separating me from the ocean, so I really have no idea.

The second part (Er’s wedding), symbolizes a new beginning or transition in my current life. Interestingly enough, dreams about weddings are usually negative and highlight some anxiety or fear (perhaps about me being the only sister without a boyfriend for Valentines day? Not like thats a new concept or anything). Alternatively, wedding dreams reflect issues about commitment and independence. So that’s my dream in a nutshell, haha.

If you’ve had any weird dreams, feel free to comment with them! -LB

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Read more about our weird dreams!