Honeymooning Part 4: King's Island

And, finally, the fourth and final day of our honeymoon. We spent most of it at King's Island, and since they usually frown upon taking pictures on rides, we don't have a lot to show.

This is Nathan on the Zephyr (the big swings), our second ride of the day. Nathan isn't a big fan of rides, so we started out with the smaller ones. I managed to get him on two coasters: the Backlot Stunt Coaster (formally known as the Italian Job) and Flight Deck (formally known as Top Gun).

We spent a lot of the day at the Boomerang Bay water park. While I find the gigantic water slides much more terrifying than a roller coaster, Nathan loves them. I still went on all but one of them with him. The Awesome Aussie Twister left me with chest pains, but I survived.

Now that King's Island's kids' park is Planet Snoopy, I was really hoping to get my picture taken with the "real" Snoopy, but the only member of the Peanuts gang we saw was Linus.

Snoopy loves me.

 

After leaving the park we stopped at Big Boy for dinner, where we got to pose awkwardly with the statue.

The next morning, we left our motel and headed back home to start the next adventure: living together. It has been a learning experience, but still a lot of fun. I hope to start chronicling our new journey on this blog, so stay tuned if you'd like to hear about it.

Honeymooning Part 3: Meatballs, Golf Balls, and Eyeballs

We started out Tuesday by visiting the amusement park known as IKEA and ended up buying a few small things that we couldn't live without.

And of course we also spent some time dreaming about some larger things for which we have neither the money nor space right now, like this work space that's big enough for both of us.

I was pleasantly surprised by how good the food was in the IKEA cafeteria. I wasn't expecting much, but I wanted to try the Sweedish meatballs, and the chicken fingers and chocolate cake caught Nathan's eye. It was all really great; even the french fries were much better than those of most fast food restaurants.

Woman! 

Man!

Down the road from IKEA is a miniature golf course called Golf Mountain. It was the first time we had done miniature golf together, and Nathan turned out to be kind of a mini golf master.

"I am king of golf mountain!"

"Why am I so bad at this?"

But clearly we were both winners.

Our final stop for the day was Jungle Jim's International Market, where you can buy any kind of food you could possibly want!

...as well as some that I definitely don't want!

Here's what we ended up with in our shopping cart. I was most excited about finding Bourbon cremes, a British biscuit (or cookie) that I haven't been able to find those anywhere in the States since my trip four years ago. I also got Black Currant Ribena (a British drink). Nathan wanted to try 3 imported cheeses along with alligator, elk, ostrich, and lamb. We haven't had the elk yet, but the ostrich was my favorite of the other three by far. It has a beefy taste but it's leaner than chicken (and that's not just how they market it either - we put it on the Foreman and not a drop of grease came out!). We also picked up raspberries, a bird feeder, and some peanut "mutter" treats for Nenya.

It was definitely a fun and tasty day!

Honeymooning Part 2: Cincinnati Zoo

Before we went anywhere on Monday, Nathan decided to iron my shorts for me. Hehe, I love this guy.

We spent most of the day at the Cincinnati Zoo...

Where you can rent a red panda! Not really. But this sign cracked me up for some reason.

 

We got to watch a cheetah running demonstration. It was pretty amazing considering they didn't even reach their maximum speed.

 

And of course we had to add to our collection of photos with rhinos...

May 2008 - Photo by my cousin Rachel

October 2008 - My first date with Nathan

October 2008 - Proving that he's as crazy as I am

June 2010 - Married but still crazy

Honeymooning Part 1: On Our Way

While I'm waiting on my wedding photos, I'm going to do a series of recaps of our honeymoon.

This is me after the reception - the first photo that Nathan took of his wife. I was unbelievably tired at this point. We stayed at a hotel just minutes away from our wedding venue that night and left for our honeymoon the next day, which was a very good decision. Even though we only went two hours away and the reception was over by 6:00, I don't think we could have made it that night. Getting married is tiring!

Pretty hotel  toilet paper!

On Sunday, we went back to Nathan's apartment so he could get packed for the honeymoon. Why didn't he get packed ahead of time, you ask? Because I told him not to. He had so much to do in the last couple days before the wedding that I figured we should put off as many things as possible.

And of course he couldn't leave before he balanced his checkbook.

So I decided to work on mine too.

And then we were on our way!

To Ohio!

Our honeymoon accommodations weren't the fanciest, but since it was about $30 a night cheaper than most other places, we had a little extra money to spend on food or whatever else we wanted.

On our first night there, we went to Walmart to buy some random stuff that we needed.

And then we went to IHOP. It was Nathan's first time there. While we were eating, it started storming outside, so Nathan got to do this:

And that concludes our first day and a half of married life!

We're married!

Yep, it's true!

I kind of neglected this blog for the last month of wedding planning. It wasn't so much that I didn't have the time to write as it was that I didn't have that many interesting things left to write about. But never fear, I haven't abandoned this blog completely. I hope to write several posts about how the day went, and I also want to try continuing with posts about our life as newlyweds. Thanks to all who read this blog during the process of planning our wedding and provided feedback. 

For now, I'll leave you with a few more of my dad's photos: