The Honeyballoon, part 1

*For those wondering, "honeyballoon" is what my cousin Molly calls a honeymoon. ;-)

We have returned safe and sound from our wonderful wedding and honeyballoon! My retelling of The Big Extravaganza will be in reverse order of how it happened because, believe it or not, I was too busy at the wedding to take pictures and therefore don't have any available right now. But never fear! There will be plenty of pictures in good time! 

Without further delay...The Honeyballoon, part 1.

(This is where the trumpets would start playing if this was a movie.)

Before we officially began our travels to the Trapp Family Lodge (henceforth known as the TFL), we stopped at Daniel and Erika's to drop off my wedding dress, then headed to Walmart to buy a camera. You may remember the tragic fact that I lost my camera during one of THE MOST IMPORTANT WEEKS of my life and how I almost DIED due to camera withdrawal. (I never ever get overdramatic, incase you're wondering.) Armed with a new camera and a bag of Lindt chocolate truffles courtesy of Autumn, we drove through the woods...

...and over the mountains...

...until we reached Austria. Or perhaps it was Vermont, but it looked like Austria to me. If ever there was a perfect time to start singing "climb every mountain", this would have been it. Isn't it beautiful? 

Because we're people and we like to eat, one of the first things we did upon arrival was get lunch from the cute little TFL deli.

While we were eating, Christopher asked me to start teaching him sign language. I was more than happy to oblige because I love having someone to sign to. Christopher is very smart and learned quickly so we now we have little sign language conversations. Elizabeth always complains when I sign because she doesn't understand anything I'm saying. She tells me to "stop mumbling". I just can't help it if I have a lot to say even if no one understands me. 

I had never seen a real, formerly-alive wildebeest at a hotel, but apparently there's a first time for everything because this one greeted us each time we went to or from our room. I tried coming up with a name for him but I couldn't. 'Larry' just didn't seem to fit.

The rooms were separated into groups named after different composers; ours was a Schubert room. The signs around the lodge were so pretty and all hand-painted like the ones below.

As previously stated, we love to eat so we were quite excited about the food possibilities the TFL had to offer. It was so yummy!! As a matter of fact, the spinach and bacon(!!) salad I had the first night was so good that I had it the next two nights. 

The only meal I didn't enjoy was the lobster, shrimp, and mushroom dish. That was just a poor choice on my part because I do not like mushrooms and I barely like lobster. You'd think I would have thought it out a little more before ordering something that only has one ingredient I like. 

Honeyballoon, part 2 is coming soon!