Wedding Festivities!!!

Wow!!!  We have been married for 19 days now!!!!  We are doing really well....getting back into the swing of everyday life (back to reality....uuuggghhh!).

Our wedding was everything that we ever dreamed of it being!  It was perfect!  We enjoyed every single second of it all!  The only regret is that we didn't eat the food at the reception.....we heard it was great though!  The rehearsal and rehearsal dinner were great too!!  We had a great time chatting and catching up with old friends and family, and warming up our dancing shoes!  The day of the wedding was absolutley beautiful (the Lord was really looking out for us....the weekend, and even days before and after, were rainy and cold......and March 21, 2009 was sunny, blue-skied, and cool-not cold).  The ceremony flew by....probably because Chris was so anxious with his "I Will" (he said "I Will" before the pastor even finished reading!!...and I was laughing so hard I was doubling over and didn't think that I would be able to stop!), but it was so much fun!  After the ceremony we headed over to the beach for pictures before the reception at the aquarium.  The pictures turned out great, we took them just before sunset!  The reception could quite possibly have been the most fun I have ever had!  It was so fun to celebrate with all of the people that mean so much to both of us!  It was the best day of my life, and sadly it flew by!!!  I wish I could do it all over again!  You can see all of the pictures from the wedding on our facebook profiles, and at our photographers website (www.ellenleroyphotography.com, password: allison).

The Monday after the wedding, we took off to Costa Rica!!  We had an amazing time there too!!  We spent the first four and a half days in Tamarindo at the beach.  We stayed in our very own bungalow, personalized with LOUD howler monkeys in the trees directly above it!  The Capitan Suizo, where we stayed, was really nice and right on the beach!  We spent hours lounging on the beach and around the beachside pool.  We went scuba diving at the Catalinas Islands, about a forty minute boat ride from the resort, past Playa Grande (a famous surf spot).  We went down to 75 feet, and saw lots of fish, starfish, lobster, sting rays, and eels.  The currents were pretty bad, making the water extra murky...but we had so much fun.  On our first dive, Chris got stung in the mouth by a jellyfish when he surfaced.  On the second dive, I got stung on my hand on the descent and got stung really badly at about 70 feet, just before I was getting ready to come up....I was surrounded, and if I hadn't been in a wetsuit, I would have been a giant sting.  Even so, it was an awesome first-time experience for us both!!!  The next day we took a long walk, about 6 miles one way to Playa Grande to watch big-wave surfing.....but it wasn't quite what we expected.  The waves were pretty small and not many surfers at the time that we were there!!  But we collected a lot of gorgeous shells along the way!  We also went surfing just outside of our resort one afternoon....and it was awesome!!

After glorious days at the beach, we started the four hour drive to Arenal.  This is the most active volcano in Costa Rica, which is surrounded by tropical rainforest.  We stayed at the Tabacon resort there, which is set on thermal hot springs and waterfalls heated up by the volcano only miles away.  The water was so hot we could hardly stand it with our sunburn!!  While in Arenal we went repelling over cliffs and waterfalls (one wall was over 170 feet!).  We had a lot of fun doing this, our guides were really passionate and fun!  The next day we went ziplining over the rainforest canopy.  We went on a total of 8 ziplines; one was about one half of a mile long, and another was more than 600 feet over the rainforest canopy!!  It was super exilerating, to say the least!!!!!  We saw lots of monkeys, iguanas and even a few toucans while there too!!!  After a few days there, we made the  three hour drive to San Jose, the capital city.  It was quite different than the other places we had been and driven through.  We definitely preffered the rest of the country over San Jose.  We had the greatest time in Costa Rica, and surely did not want to come back!!!!  It was the perfect "ending" to our wedding experience!