I've Got 2 Tickets to Paradise!

This is not meant to be braggy, but it might come out that way. I just can't wait!

Tomorrow night at midnight, Kurt and I are leaving on our second honeymoon to St. Kitts. "Wait a second," you say, "y'all have only been married for 6 months! Why do you need to go on a second honeymoon already?"

Well, I'll tell you. But after the pics. It's a very long story. And also, we'll actually do stuff on this honeymoon. 'Cause let's be honest, no one does as many activities on their honeymoon as they should.

So, St. Kitts is actually the nickname for St. Christopher, a small Caribbean island located in the Leeward Islands. Together with Nevis, it makes up the country of St. Kitts and Nevis. We are SO stoked to get out of Provo and into paradise.
So here are some pics as a preview for you and me.

Our hotel, Timothy Beach Resort. It's cute!



Ooooooooooooooh baby, the beach. Mm-hmm!!




You just can't beat that sunset!




Nevis is only a boat ride away!



Oh man, oh man. I can't wait. And here's the story behind this trip:
For all those who don't know, Kurt and I started off our wedding with stress and near disaster. I'll start with two weeks before the wedding: My passport still hadn't come in, though it was supposed to. I called the Passport office and was told that they were very busy but they were gonna expedite my password and there was no reason it wouldn't be there by our wedding day (we were leaving on our honeymoon the day after our wedding). Originally we were supposed to go to an all inclusive resort on Cozumel island right off the coast of Cancun, Mexico. Right around this time, also, Kurt started to get a toothache on a tooth on which he'd had a filling replaced right before leaving Provo.The next Wednesday Kurt's tooth was hurting him so bad that my mom made an emergency dentist appointment for him... he found out he needed a root canal, and thankfully they were able to get it done that day. But we didn't know if he'd be able to get a crown before we left on our honeymoon... Thursday we started decorating for the reception. I called the passport office again that morning because my passport still wasn't in and they said it still wasn't done and to call back later that night. In the afternoon Kurt found out he was able to get a crown put on his tooth that day, so phew! But he wasn't feeling very good that night, not even 48 hours before the wedding.I called Thursday night and found out that my passport was finally finished and they were gonna overnight it on Friday and that it should hopefully get to me on Saturday. If not, we'd have to schedule a new honeymoon... It didn't come. Between my ceremony and reception I cried as I finished packing my suitcase, because as far as I knew, we weren't gonna have a honeymoon. Kurt reassured me that he would book a new one the next morning and that we would still have a honeymoon. It doesn't end there. First off, we weren't able to get a getaway car in time, so my parents took us to the hotel... two hours after the reception ended. We were stuck at the cleaning up of our own reception. And we lost the guest book. The next morning we rushed to the airport an hour before our original flight to cancel it. Then we went back to our hotel while I crashed (running on about 10 hours of sleep for 3 nights) and Kurt booked a new honeymoon. He got lucky and got us the best room in probably the best hotel of Key West, The Gardens. The last night of our honeymoon we stayed on a key further north, at a sweet cottage village type thing called The Moorings. Amazing hotels. Key West is fun. But when we got to the airport to fly to Key West, we found out we could only have one checked baggage each, and we each had two. (The Key West airport has a short runaway and wouldn't be able to stop with too much luggage; sweet). So an hour before the flight takes off we were taking stuff out of our suitcases that we wouldn't need on the honeymoon and had my dad come back to get it. See, we had to move from Charleston to New York, while making stops at our honeymoon, other reception in Washington, and training in Atlanta in between. We finally got to Key West and had an awesome time at the best hotels just about ever. We stayed in The Gardens Hotel in Key West and The Moorings Village in Islamorada. Seriously awesome hotels. Anyhow, so we flew out of Miami on Friday. It took as an hour to get across Miami because of traffic. Then we sat in the plane on the gate for about thirty minutes after boarding. There was a tropical storm coming across Miami and when we looked out our windows into the rain we saw all of the luggage for our flight on the tarmac, nicely covered with tarps except a few suitcases... ours. Our suitcases--containing my wedding dress and Kurt's tux--already had puddles of water on them and we watched for 20 minutes while they sat there on the tram, completely uncovered. We connected in Charlotte and took off an hour late there because of catering. When we got into Phoenix (second connection on the way to Spokane) everyone on the plane had missed their connections... including us. It was already 9:30 pm and there was nothing else leaving that night. We got put up in the ghetto Clarion motel and, on top of that, we were told we weren't going to be able to fly out of Phoenix the next day until 10, which would put us getting into Chewelah (where the reception was, an hour from Spokane) until 3:30... and our reception was from 1 - 4. We were going to miss our OWN reception. When we got to the airport Kurt looked up flights to Spokane on Expedia and found 6 flights that would get us there before the reception.. US Airways had lied to us. Finally after he was on the phone with US Airways for an hour they agreed ("out of the goodness of their hearts", bullcrap, they should've done this in the first place) to get us on one of those earlier so flights. So nice.... >:O Also, at this time we started to get to bed and found out that a bottle of ibuprofen I had in my suitcase had opened up and since my suitcase got wet, the pills had disintegrated all over my clothes. My clothes were all stained, my blow dryer was soaked through. The only good news was, although my wedding dress was soaking wet, it wasn't in that suitcase and so wasn't stained. We got about 3 hours of sleep before heading to the airport. We got to our reception in Chewelah 5 minutes after it started. My dress was wet, my hair was in some style I invented in the car the hour from Spokane to Chewelah, and Kurt's tux was wrinkled. But we made it!
It doesn't end! That night we set to washing all of my clothes, and thankfully the stains came out of most of my clothes, but not my favorite pants or shirt. That sucks. At 11:30 we were still doing the laundry (had like 2 more loads left) and Kurt decided to check on our flights to New York for the next day. He discovered that United had booked the flights for the day he actually booked them on. Some sort of glitch. He called and they couldn't fix it right then. We had to scramble to find flights 6 hours before they left. We finally got one for 6 the next morning, which meant we had to get up at 3... I still had laundry to go, so I got about an hour of sleep. We were exhausted. When we got to the Spokane airport we discovered that Expedia hadn't sent our reservation to the airline and five minutes before we needed to be checked-in, Kurt was on the phone with Expedia getting a confirmation number. We got to New York and headed over to the Marriott we were staying in. It was like 5 in the afternoon but we were so tired we just wanted to crash and not wake up until the next morning when we had to fly to Atlanta (to get reimbursed by Kurt's company for his flight, we had to fly from New York to Atlanta). But at the hotel we discovered that Expedia hadn't sent them our reservation again and it took 30 minutes to get it straightened out. I was falling asleep with my head on the front counter during this whole time. Finally we got it figured out and were able to go sleep. The next day we flew to Atlanta.... and discovered Kurt's sunglasses, which he left in the hotel room but called about them about 10 minutes after we left, had already been stolen. I gave those sunglasses to him for Valentine's Day. Awesome. So we got to Atlanta, and everything was fine there, mostly. Except I had to spend all day by myself in a hotel room while Kurt was at training. Oh well. On Friday we were supposed to fly back to New York and stay there for good, thankfully. However, that day there was some computer glitch in the national air support office thingy and we got stuck in the Atlanta airport for 6 hours before boarding, and then on the runway for 45 minutes before we finally took off. When we got to New York we got in a taxi and drove through Harlem to get to our apartment building. Our apartment building is basically in Harlem. We got to our room to see a bare, non ac'ed room. It was dirty. It was hot. We opened the windows, and could hear people fighting outside and the subway going by every 10 minutes. Our bed was actually two twins pushed together... I wanted to cry. But we managed to make it a home and had a great summer!