Honeymoon: Day One

I should start with the night before. Asa was very sick, up all night with a stomach virus while we all tried to help take care of him. We really hoped he would be well by the morning, but it didn't seem likely when he needed medicine from the store at 11 at night, and then made his own 4 am trip to Walmart for food. He did eventually get over it the next day, but then there was the fear that Marley and I would get it while we were gone.

We had planned to leave when I got out of class at 11 am, but my teacher was sick and canceled class (YIPPEE!) so we got to leave earlier than planned. When we looked up the route on Google maps, we were told it would take about 5 and a half hours to get there. I was discouraged, but whatever. We were still going. We had gotten Marley up early in the morning so that she would fall asleep quickly after we got in the car. That plan worked so much better than I expected and she slept for the entire trip, which turned out to only be 3 and a half hours somehow. Note: don't use Google maps.Since we had arrived two hours earlier than expected, we needed to waste some time before checking into our cabin. We looked around the tiny, slightly nasty town of Broken Bow, before calling to ask if we could come early. Luckily they said yes, because if I had to look at one more person smoking with their kids in the car I would freak.

So, we went down the dirt road to our beautiful secluded cabin.

It was so perfect, I was absolutely in love the entire time we were there! It had a huge king size bed, a jacuzzi tub, a full kitchen, a hot tub outside, a fire place, big screen TVs, and an outdoor fire pit. It was really the perfect cross between Asa's dream vacation of camping and my dream vacation of staying somewhere a little more comfortable than the ground.
I felt so lucky the entire time I was there. We did pay a lot of money to stay there, but it was totally worth it. We enjoyed everything about it, and it was the perfect set-up for someone with a baby. She could explore the whole downstairs without me worrying that there was something dangerous. She had a blast roaming in the open space. And the windows were beautiful! Even though we were inside in the warm house, the large windows made us feel like everything outside was with us too.

Unfortunately, it was raining, so we could not explore the outside until the next day.
We left around 4 to go get groceries for our stay. On the way to the store, it started POURING! We didn't really think much about it until we were trying to drive back to our cabin and ran into this problem:
That's the road we needed to get across... There was no way we could do it our car, so we called the office for the cabin rental and asked if there was another way around. There wasn't, so we waited for one of the workers to come and take us across in his truck.

In the meantime, we taught Marley all about rocks. She ended up being fascinated with them the entire time we were there.
We did get across with the help of the owner, but we had to leave our car on the other side for the evening. Marley and Asa went on a walk while I made dinner, and she explored more rocks. Here she is eating one:Her Mimi is so proud! She is going to have a fellow geologist in the family!

We actually got to spend the evening together when Marley went to bed at 7:30! We ate dinner, relaxed in the hot tub, talked by the fire, and then got in bed next to the huge bedroom window open to the trees. It was perfect.