Ever since Richard came back from his trip to Europe, I've been dying to go myself, so our honeymoon will be a trip to Ireland. However, what with building the house and planning the wedding, neither of us had any energy left to plan a honeymoon, so that's tentatively planned for next spring. I say 'tentatively' because this depends on the job situation (for both of us). But regardless, we wanted to at least go *somewhere* after the wedding, just to get a chance to relax and be just 'us' for even a short while.

So when we left the reception, we went to Napa. Okay, if you want to get technical about it, actually, we went home first to change, stopping on the way to cut off the cans and pans and shoes our friends tied to the bumpers. There was a laughing battle with Azzie over who got to play with my veil (I won). The 'Just Married' sign blew off on the freeway halfway there, and it was so late and we were so incredibly tired and the stairs in the bed and breakfast were far too steep.

The day after was marvelously lazy and unplanned and slow and just what we needed. We slept in as long as we possibly could, snuggled under mounds of blankets because even though it was the middle of July, that room was incredibly cold. We poked through doors and drawers and cupboards, exclaiming over everything. Look, they left us robes! Any idea how to work the jacuzzi tub? Mmm, chocolate. Lots of it.

We were tired. Completely and insanely tired from everything that had gone on before. We walked, slowly, hand in hand around downtown Napa. We sat - in fact we did a lot of sitting. We watched a flock of baby ducks skitter around the mud bog down below us as we ate lunch. We lounged in a grassy park and listened to a duet play celtic music.

We did all the cutesy things, kissing on corners and swinging our clasped hands like two school kids in the beginning of a crush, and finding ways to refer to each other as husband and wife. We poked around in little shops and sipped coffee on the swing in the gazebo. We took a long nap and discovered each other in new ways all throughout that slow, spontaneous, lazy day.

The next morning we'd planned to eat breakfast there and then go home, slowly. It turned out a bit more rushed than we'd planned, because Richard's asthma took a turn for the worse, and that cold and sore throat I'd been fighting off was kicking in with a vengeance.

But still, even though the word sounded foreign and odd to my tongue (and still sometimes does), it was wonderful to say "my husband" when we checked out that morning to someone else for the first time.