Our second (shorter) honeymoon

Hey ho neighbor. I'm pleased to say that life has slowed down to a more convenient pace (ie - I can no longer use the "chickens running around with their heads cut off" analogy to describe our life). I'm getting caught up on photo editing, we had a fabulous weekend in Coeur d'Alene last weekend, and this weekend we shot an AWESOME wedding at McMenamins Grand Lodge and then headed up to Sunriver to finish out the weekend relaxing, playing tennis, and hanging out with the fam. Blissful.

I know that Andy talked about how fantastic Coeur d'Alene was already, but I have to reiterate the splendiferousness of our trip. It could not have been more sublime. We arrived at our cozy B&B, the McFarland Inn, and began our weekend of relaxation. The inn is darling and was immaculately attended to. The owner lady wasn't the most pleasant person in the world, but she may have been a little pissy (there is no better word to describe it) because she thought we were arriving on Saturday, instead of our planned Friday. Somehow, when we reserved the date, we had a bit of a miscommunication about this important detail. It was fortunate that she had our room available when we showed up, but she was in poor humor with us the rest of the weekend. Either that or she's normally just a grouch. Fortunately for my low tolerance of grouchy people for prolonged periods of time, we didn't see her much the rest of the weekend but for a few moments every morning when she brought us some of the most fantastic breakfast we've ever had. And how can you be annoyed with a grouchy person when they're serving you yummy food??

Friday we wandered around downtown Coeur d'Alene and browsed the little shops, strolled along the world's longest board walk (see photos below in Andy's post), took some snapshots of the Coer d'Alene resort where we stayed the second half of the trip, listened to an awful drumming band jamming near the waterfront, and gleefully indulged my obsession with playgrounds - especially ones that are designed like castles!

Saturday involved sleeping in until 9am, eating aforementioned fantastic breakfast, renting kayaks for an hour and rowing around the lake, swimming in the lake (which was awesome and the perfect temperature for swimming), and then renting sea-doos and doing silly things with them, like trying to throw each other off and into the water. Fun!

Afterwards, Andy and I got cleaned up and he took me out to the nicest dinner at a floating restaurant! It would have been perfect, but I had an upset stomach and the food didn't settle well with it. We headed back and collapsed into bed exhausted around 11PM.

The next day, we took much slower. We got back massages, enjoyed checking into the Coeur d'Alene resort where we got upgraded to one of the nicest rooms in the place which is normally like $500 a night (woo hoo!), and talked about our goals in life, our values, and other important things. It was so awesome to sit and refresh ourselves with what we're looking forward to, what we value, and so on. Many of the things we discussed, we both felt/knew subconsciously to be true, but there is sometimes so much value in discussing these feelings and assumptions out loud. In the evening, Andy convinced me into a trip to Cabelas which I happily harassed him about. Considering that he "loathes" shopping without a purpose, his request went awry with what I know of his personality. So, I've modified my perception of his personality; It's not that he doesn't like shopping, he just likes shopping for things that interest him (and apparently home decor and women's clothing are not one of those things).

This trip was our first chance since Christmas to take a break and relax. We've been so busy that we really haven't made time to just have fun together. It was so refreshing for us to do this and it made us determined to include more time just for the two of us to have fun together.