Vacation

Christina and I celebrated our second anniversary on August 18, 2009. Our romance had humble beginnings in the summer of 2006 when I charmed her during the course of her summer visit to Louisville, KY. We bonded over serving children in our neighborhood, reciting lines from Michael Card songs and The Princess Bride, and picnics with tree climbing. We still roll pretty much the same, but with Christina now 8 months pregnant, there's less tree climbing.

So, for our second anniversary, Christina surprised me with a special "daycation" to Cincinnati, OH. We left mid-morning (we're not punctual leavers) and spent the afternoon exploring and picnicking at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden. It was great and afforded us some awesome pictures, including many of me mounting, subduing, and imitating animal statues scattered around the premises. Christina was a real champ, enduring 5 hours of pregnant park walking with breaks on the train and tram.

From the zoo, we traveled out of town to the nearby 1861 Inn, a bed and breakfast in Batavia, OH. The house and setting were gorgeous, and the hosts were exemplary. We got the home tour and history, poolside drink and snack service, our bed turned down and our pillows "truffled" while we went out for dinner, juice and coffee delivered to the room in the morning, and a breakfast including a warm peach / blueberry dish, blueberry scone and English muffin (for me), and baked eggs with spinach and ham before we hit the road. Wow! You seriously can't get a better deal than that. We highly recommend the stay and are already plotting to take friends back with us. (We also loved the comfy bed, claw foot tub, and movie selection... we watched Hitch. )

On the way home, we couldn't help stopping by the West Chester IKEA store just north of Cincinnati. We picked up an Expedit storage unit for Eowyn's room and managed to fit the box in our trunk. The drive home was happily uneventful, and now I'm plugged back into the internet and almost hard at work. We were very excited to find our "blog tour" copy of North! Or Be Eaten waiting for us when we got here. Christina's already half way through it and I can't wait to dive in, too. For those interested, this is the second book in the Wingfeather Saga by Andrew Peterson for which we are building a fan site called The Wingfeather Wiki. It rocks!

Many thanks to my bride for a wonderful trip! I love you.

It's amazing how far we can travel over land in a weekend and not feel awful when it's done. I guess after my recent trip to Hungary, it's also amazing to think how far I can go and still be in the same country.

Christina and I took a nice little vacation up to Altoona, PA, a town lost somewhere in the middle of Pennsylvania. It was a pleasant drive to a pleasant location for a very pleasant purpose. We were there to see my older brother get married to his e-Harmony fiancee (how cool is that? way to go web 2.0!). We didn't know we were also going there to see the hills covered in bright splashes of orange, red, and yellow as the trees displayed their finest Fall colors.

Christina's much better about posting pictures, so I'll defer to her post about our trip. From me, you'll only get these musings on the States we drove through...

Ohio was a giant field of corn crawling with combines circling around a large sentinel tree.
West Virginia was a town stretched out in a valley on a river forded by a green painted bridge.
Pennsylvania was a roadside stand selling apple cider and maple syrup on a hill splashed with color.

And now... we're back home.

A couple days ago Ryan suggested that I should start blogging here. That sounded reasonable, and now that I'm on vacation, I feel like I've got stuff to talk about.

The count right now, is that I've been up for just over 23 hours. I woke up at 5 this morning to gather the travelers and catch the flight out of Louisville International at 7:30. After some connecting flights to Chicago and Los Angeles, we finally arrived in Honolulu at 4:30 Hawai'i time. For those of you keeping track at home, that's a 6-hour time difference.

In short, Hawai'i is amazing. As was recently said, "it's like someone set the thermostat outside to 'perfect'". Used to a long Louisville winter, I couldn't agree more. Of course, the locals say they think it's kind of chilly, but that's their prerogative. Even after dark, it's still a pleasant 70-something degrees.