Prologue to a Honeymoon

Hello!

This is Aimee and Ryan.  We just got married! 

Well… ok, maybe it was  5 months ago already.  Seems like it was only a few days ago though.  Long term readers of this blog, may think, it seems like just a few days ago I (Ryan) was married to someone else.  Its been a crazy few years.  In only a short 5 years, I’ve moved across the country, watched my daughters change from girls to women, went through some pretty rough times, got divorced, got remarried.  But that’s ok! 

Ryan

Aimee as well has had her own extended dances with crazy.  Having lived far from “home”, dealing with her own divorce, and attempting to survive raising 3 boys on her own, she as well has had a challenging run for the past few years.  And that’s ok too!  A famous philosopher once said, “that which doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” (though then I think he went crazy and died from STDs…but that’s besides the point).  I think we can both say that we’ve emerged much stronger for our struggles.

Aimee

Little did we know as we were both finishing our own personal battles, that it would only be a short time later, that through the magic of the interwebs, some complex algorithms in the corporate offices of OKCupid.com were scouring through our personalities and characteristics to determine that the two of us may be pretty happy together.  They even went so far as to rank each of us as the best match in all of Nashville for the other.  We may not have listened right away, and continued casting our nets in less fertile waters, but ultimately decided to follow the advice of technology and analytics.  Well, apparently it was right. And here we are 20 months later, married, and on our way to our honeymoon, and we couldn’t be happier.  In fact, we can still both say with complete honesty that, other than when Aimee tried to break up with me after date number 2, (and I may have then said she was dumb to do that…)  we’ve not had a single fight or moment of dischord between the two of us in all that time.   Who knew?!?

The Wedding!

When we planned our wedding earlier this year we figured it would be lunacy to try and plan a honeymoon at the same time as planning a wedding, and at the same time as raising 5 kids between us between the ages of 8 and 20, so instead we decided to give ourselves a few months before having to worry about the honeymoon. 

We wanted to pick something cultural and somewhere not too touristy and crowded.  We looked at a globe, and looked into many different areas…isolated pacific islands, Cambodia (one of Ryan’s favorite destinations), Jordan,  Ireland… though it seemed like for a honeymoon, it should be somewhere with tropical weather and a beach should be involved.  What about Nicaragua?  I didn’t know much about it…except that after some turmoil in the last 40 years, things had calmed down and I believed it was a pretty peaceful country.  Definitely something different, and a bit more off the beaten path.  I asked Aimee, “you realize that would probably be a honeymoon that may lack hot showers, air conditioning, and would likely involve some mosquito nets.”  Her answer was that that sounded a lot more fun and adventurous than sitting in some touristy resort.  (and this is where my eyes turn into hearts and pop out of my head like Tom’s while Jerry is flying around me with cupid wings, and shooting me with an arrow with a heart shaped tip.)  Alright! Lets do it!

As mentioned in previous blogs, I’m extremely risk averse and while I do like spontaneity, I also like the safety net of a detailed plan to fall back on.  Also, we’re terrible at making joint decisions under pressure, and tend to waste a lot of time trying to.  Having chosen our destination, so began our researching and planning what we we’d be doing on our trip.  We booked flights for a 10 day trip, which seemed like plenty of time to explore a small country.  However, as we started exploring region by region of the fairly small country, we realized we’d definitely need to start narrowing down and being more selective in what we wanted to do.  The western one third of the country is fairly populated, and has a lot of activities.  The Caribbean side is much less developed, much less populated, …and much less governed.  Our guide book stated that local drug cartels have developed more of the infrastructure in these areas than the government (but went on to say, those uninvolved in that life generally are left unbothered).  There were a few popular touristy Caribbean islands on this side that we considered for quite awhile, but ultimately decided to stay in only a few regions on the western part of the country. 

As we narrowed down our activities in the last few weeks, I developed my usual hour by hour itinerary trying to fill in as many details as possible of every day.  Travel times between cities, walking maps, addresses and contact info of every hotel and activity we’d be involved with.  As mentioned I have my quirks…I tend to like extreme organization, and planning.  (have you ever seen my closet?)

Ryan's Closet Organized by Type and Color on Uniform Hangers

In the last few days before departure, Aimee’s own quirky sense of organization began to surface.  Aimee likes baggies.  Lots of baggies.  Everything’s in baggies.  She keeps her paperwork in baggies.  Notes to herself in baggies.  And she packs in baggies.   One for every day.  (each labeled with a post it note for which day the clothes In the baggie were for.)  No joke, as I was sealing up the luggage, I found a baggie for her baggies. It was full of baggies.

Hope Helping Organize Aimee's Clothes by Day

Baggies!!!

The day of our departure started like every other one.   Alarms going off at 5:30a, Aimee waking up the boys and getting them ready for school.  By 7:15, they were all out the door, and we were able to get ourselves ready, and off to the airport with a ride from her parents. 

We had a good amount of time before our flight took off, so we headed over to O’Charley’s at the airport and decided to have breakfast at about 10:00am.  I had my obligatory Starbucks in my hand.  Aimee, asked me if it was too early to have a Jack and ginger ale with her wafles. Hmm.   No, in fact I think that’s a brilliant idea!  It’s 5:00 somewhere….maybe not in Nashville, or Nicaragua….but somewhere.   I followed her lead and ordered a shot of Kahlua for my Vanilla Latte.

We finished up our breakfast-with-a-kick, and headed over to the gate ready  for a day that will be spent in airports that would ultimately bring us to our destination where we would kick off the ages old tradition of starting the marriage with some quality time away from our day to day.  Ten days with nothing to worry about besides enjoying our time together, whatever lies ahead.

This, is where our story begins!