Our Honeymoon

Warning and disclaimer. This blog is long. Aside from the fact that "pictures are worth a thousand words" (and we have included several) I (Jocelyn) can be kind of wordy, and when one hopefully gets married only once and gets only one honeymoon, that automatically makes it all the more important to note and record obscure details. There. Now you have been warned and can choose to only look at pictures and skim for the highlights :)

So after our wedding...

...we headed off on our honeymoon. Brian's sister and brother-in-law paid for our honeymoon as a wedding gift except for the first night which we spent at the Semiahmoo resort just a couple hours away in Blaine, Washington. On the last day of our honeymoon, both Brian and I kind of journaled out the week and the rest of this blog is mostly our journal and pictures.

Saturday, June 3rd 2006
Jocelyn--
After I threw the bouquet and we drove away in Brian's car with "the lovers", "kiss the bride" and "allez les elephants" (for the world cup) smeared all over our car in white and orange......We got to Semiahmoo in Blaine Washington after stopping at Wendy's in Marysville for a baked potato and hamburger. It was a very nice resort-- it took us a couple minutes to find because there were detours and stuff, so Brian stopped at a gas station and asked for directions (I have a wonderful husband that can actually do that!)

This is one of the very few pictures we have of near Semiahmoo. We kind of forgot we had a camera the first couple of days :)

Sunday, June 4th 2006
Jocelyn--
The next morning after a continental breakfast that was delivered to our room, we left for Beautiful British Columbia. We hit the border after we had been on the road for about 20 minutes. The border guard person was not terribly nice, but I suppose to have that sort of job, you probably have to be suspicious of everybody. She wanted to know what we were doing, what was in all the boxes (Brian's subwoofer, suitcases etc...), if we had any weapons or lots of money etc... Which is all fine, but she seemed to be in a rather interrogative mood. Anyway, we got through rather quickly, found the ferry terminal and switched lanes at the last minute which saved us a couple of hours in driving time and we enjoyed a 2 hour ferry ride.....


We got to Pacific Shores Spa and Resort a little before 4:00 and waited for 4:00 to roll around so we could check in (a.k.a. "made out" in the car until 4:00 came). So we went to check in, and they weren't ready for us for almost another hour, but we got free (and really good) orange juice, and then since we had to wait even longer, we got a $25 gift certificate! That was worth the wait. The lady at the desk who helped us said "perfect!" all the time.... I think her name was Tabitha. So after we got checked in and all our stuff out of Brian's car and up to our room, we were going to go into Parksville for dinner..... but he had left his car lights on and after we tried to push it down a very slight hill to start it, we had to go to the front desk and ask for a jump. I don't think that Brian enjoyed that very much, but it worked out fine. Two Canadian guys from the sales department came out and gave us a "boost" :) We went to "Smitty's" in town for dinner-- we had bumbleberry pie for dessert and then we got some groceries.

Monday, June 5th 2006
Brian--
On Monday morning I got up early and went to a free continental breakfast and listened to a man speak about the island for about an hour. It was quite long but it was nice to have some idea of what we could do. We went down the road a ways to get some swim trunks for me and we found a walmart there. When we came back we swam for a while and walked around.
Jocelyn--
I was tired, so I slept in. Brian however had the motivation to go to a free continental breakfast and listen to some guy talk about all the tourist attractions around. When he came back, I had a little breakfast in bed and since Brian had forgotten to pack his swim shorts, we drove to Nanaimo to find some for him. We discovered a Wal-mart and got him some trunks and also some other random stuffs. We also did some more grocery shopping in Parksville-- got blueberry scones, orange juice, honey corn flakes (those are good!) and rented "Shanghai Noon". Later that day we went hot tubbing (outdoors) and swimming (indoors) and watched our movie.

Tuesday, June 6th 2006
Brian--
On Tuesday we stayed around the resort and went kayaking. Later during the day we went out to eat at A&W. That was a lot of fun. The cashier guy accidentally threw a fork at my wife. :)
Jocelyn--
When I came out of the shower, there was a very nice looking breakfast all set up that Brian had very carefully laid out....


including milk, orange juice, croissants, scones, cereal, yogurt, fruit and my formula all prepared and waiting for me :) That was really nice and it happened all the rest of the week :) We hung out..... went kayaking...... we think we saw a sea lion, but we couldn't really get close enough to tell for sure :) We to A & W for dinner, and grocery shopping again probably. At A & W I had a salad and some of Brian's fries and he had a "grandpa burger" (3 meat patties!) I have to say though, that was the fastest fast food that I have ever been served-- I believe there were 4 people putting our order on our tray, we got extra salad dressing, and the cashier guy accidentally threw my fork at me :)


Wednesday, June 7th 2006
Jocelyn--
Wednesday was a really fun day. My husband really wanted to see some waves and it would be his first time to see the pacific ocean, so we did some homework on the resort computer and chose to go to Long Beach (west side of island-- we were staying on the east side). It took us about 3 hours to get there 'cause we stopped at a Wal-mart and bought beach towels and sunglasses (for me :) and kinder eggs to take home and give to people. The highway to the beach was very very windy and kind of bumpy/in not so great condition. I think that Brian liked it, even if his car didn't. We were on the road and Brian mentioned that he wanted something sweet, and then I saw a sign for "Coombs Country Candy" and about 2 minutes later, we stopped there and bought some tiger butter, some dark chocolate with M&M's in it and a "haystack" (coconut/dark chocolate). We definitely spent more money on candy/souveniers/stuff then normal, but hey, how many honeymoons do you go on?


When we finally got there-- after listening to Ace of Base multiple times and after I slept a bit, we paid $14 to park and went to find the waves. They were freezing! I only got in up to my waist, but Brian got soaked all over and was jumping around and thoroughly enjoying himself. I didn't stay in very long and just stood on the beach and watched him for a while. Some surfer/body boards? dudes wearing wet suits came up and asked me if I was from around here and since I wasn't, they informed me that the water was only about 10 degrees celcius and that one could get hypothermia from being out there for about 5 mintues and that was why they were wearing wet suits. I thanked them and felt justified in the fact that I wasn't a total wus in not staying out in the waves with my crazy husband :) After a while, he started building a sand castle/fort and I helped him for a little while and then just laid in the sun. I might have even slept a little while. Brian's fort turned out very nicely. He got a burn on his back working on it, but it was quite impressive when it was all finished.


Brian drove those curvy roads pretty fast on the way home and we made it in just over 2 hours. We had bought some meat and potatoes and foil and we made hobo dinners :) We also had a can of green beans, but no can opener, so Brian walked over to the restaraunt, asked them to open our green beans and made reservations for Friday. We grilled out on the barbecue down by the kayaks and had a lovely view and a really good dinner-- we were both pretty hungry, and food cooked outside with an appetite is always really good.


After getting cleaned up after dinner, we went for a walk and took some pictures next to the waterline. There was a nice path with cool lights every few feet and we just walked and talked and watched crabs and communicated until the bugs started biting me. Wednesday was a really fun day.


Thursday, June 8th 2006
Jocelyn--
Today, we were tourists. We went to Parksville to find a pub to possibly watch the world cup at and to go to the thrift store and whatever else we felt like doing. So while I was in the thrift store, Brian went and asked around about the World Cup for a bit, and I found nothing except a book for Schuyler. After Brian came back, we found some cool glasses and bought 5 for $1.25 and went over to a "Brit Foods" store and bought gifty things for people and a "Yorkie-- not for girls" bar. It had raisin and biscuit and chocolate and it was quite good :)


After that we went to "Lucky Loonies"-- a mostly dollar store. We bought a very cheap laser pointer for $2 and some postcards and then discovered a store next door that we just wandered into for the grand fun of being tourists....

We walked back to the car and then drove to the Mexican restaraunt that just happened to be in the same building as the 2 stores we had just been to. It was kind of okay food, but enjoyable anyway because I was with my husband :) We got a cookie dough blizzard at Dairy Queen for Brian, wandered into a bookstore and went grocery shopping again. I think we might have watched "Rush Hour" on TV, but it could have been a different night.

Friday, June 9th 2006
Brian--
Friday was a bit of a lazy day. We moved into our new room downstairs. We spent the rest of the day watching various TV shows. At 6 we went to eat at the expensive restaurant here at the resort. The food was good, but there definitely wasn't very much of it. We also got a desert there and the whole thing only cost 27 Canadian dollars thanks to the 25 dollar certificate we got for the room not being ready when it was supposed to be. It was nice to dress up together and go out. My sweet Jocelyn found a newspaper that showed that the World cup game I wanted to see was going to be on a channel that we would be able to have in our room, so we didn't have to worry about finding a pub.
Jocelyn--
We eventually got our lazy selves dressed for dinner at "the landing"...... We sat at a cute little table for two right next to their huge aqarium and also had a view outside and we shared a peach/apple upside down pastry thing with bourbon sauce that of course had a very cool impossible name. It was really good though :) That night I felt like a couch potato so I suckered Brian into going for a short walk with me, and then we went hot tubbing for just a little while. It was pretty fun being outside in the "mineral rocks" hot tub at 11:30 with my husband. There was a waterfall nearby and nobody else around :)



Saturday, June 10th 2006
Brian--
On Saturday the game came on at 11:30, so we watched that. Cote D'Ivoire lost to Argentina, but only 2 to 1. At least we got one goal. After the game we decided to do one more thing, so we drove down the road to some waterfalls and that was really good. We had a good walk and talked for 2 hours. When we got home we cleaned up a little. We made more hobo dinners and I still had a couple pieces of meat. It turned out very good. In the evening we went swimming and spent a long time in the pool.

Jocelyn--
I enjoyed watching the soccer game, but I really didn't want to spend all day, let alone our LAST day inside or watching tv, so we looked through some of our tourist information and decided to go to Englishman Falls. We ended up walking on some very pretty trail anywhere but near the upper falls, but I thoroughly enjoyed walking with my handsome husband and just talking about plans and school and just having him all to myself.

When we got back, we had our last hobo dinner and went swimming one more time.....


Sunday, June 11th 2006
Jocelyn--
We left Pacific Shores at about 10:00 and drove to Nanaimo to catch the ferry but we were really early so we stopped at wal-mart first. We got to the ferry and waited around for more than an hour..... took pictures.... goofed off.....

When we got on the ferry, we took my laptop up to the passenger deck and journaled for the better part of 2 hours....
When we got to the border, it took about an hour to get through with all the traffic.

The border crossing guard was a lot nicer (bored is more like it) but more thorough. He opened up the trunk, unzipped my suitcase and looked in it and had Brian take the box off of his subwoofer so he could see it was actually a sub and not drugs or something like that. Brian had picked a poppy for me at the ferry terminal and as we got close to the border, there was a sign that said we had to declare all plants etc... He wanted me to throw it out, and I didn't want to be a litter bug, so we decided to "declare" it, but we forgot. When we got home, Brian carried me over the threshold and once inside, we discovered that some fairys must have visited our house!


There were pictures from our wedding all over the fridge and lots of food inside the fridge, and our new quilt on our bed and wedding gifts in our living room and flowers in the kitchen.... It was a very sweet homecoming and we appreciate everyone who made it special