So, as you may have heard, I got married on Friday! (My name is Rhonda Helms now, though I'll still be using Rhonda Stapleton as my teen fiction writerly name.) I just got back from my honeymoon and thought I'd blog with pics about how my weekend went. :D
June 24! I wrote a note on the dry erase board about the wedding. My son added "Bry tux day"...because that's what he was super excited about. haha
Here's a pic of all of us post-ceremony! We had the wedding at our house. Oh, and ignore the serious paleness of my legs. For real...just pretend they're lovely and tan. My husband Chad on the left, then daughter, sister, me and son.
Das cabinstein! We went to Hocking Hills on Saturday afternoon--the cabin is just over 3 hours away from where we live in Cleveland. It's hard to see, but this cabin literally was on the side of a mountain, where we were constantly in danger of sliding to our deaths. Uh, or at least Rhonda the Clumsy was, anyway. Chad took this pic by setting the timer on his camera. Fancy! We chilled there for a while until early evening. Then, we went canoeing. And didn't die, or even fall over in the water--so that was nice. The canoe livery was crazy ghetto, run by a bunch of drunken/drugged wankers, but Chad and I were alone on the water and got to sing to each other while we rowed our way back to the livery.
Here's the hot tub on the back of the cabin, where I pretty much lived. It was glorious. *happy sigh*
Sunday, Chad and I were supposed to go horseback riding, but it rained all morning and the grounds were icky muddy. So instead, we decided to venture forth and find some shenanigans to get into. There was this gift shop called Fiddlestix. Well, with a name like that, we had to go! Unfortunately it was closed--but we still got a taste of the gloriousness from the outside. It looks like a creepy little village with small houses set up based on what was for sale--one house for cookies, one for quilts, one to hold the skins of dead tourists, etc.
Just past Fixxlesticks, we saw a sign for a castle. A CASTLE...in middle Ohio. You guys, I couldn't NOT go to Ravenwood Castle. I sweet-talked Chad into taking me to this amazing dream-like place. Well, it was even more amazing and crazy (cramazing!) than I could have dreamed.
In the front entranceway of the castle was this creeptacular Nutcracker. Here was me, doing my best impression...and likely making my new husband wonder what the crap is wrong with me. haha
I got even more excited when I realized WE COULD GO EXPLORE around the castle grounds. We found a tea room, which looked like a plastic flower store vomited inside it. Here's Chad, waiting for our order. There was a small radio in the background playing music. They played "All I Ask of You" from Phantom of the Opera--our server didn't know the song at all. Even though she's the one who picked the music out.
Well. Food arrived. I got the King's Ransom chicken salad sandwich with chips. Here's what it came out to be (okay, I took a bite first)...and this was NINE dollars (and my can of soda was $1.25). I almost died laughing. Poor Chad--his Jack of Clubs was literally white bread with pre-cut deli meat on it. It was so ridiculously overpriced. Our meals total were around $22. For lunch. For white bread sandwiches and Lay's rippled chips. Talk about some ballsy owners! We quickly looked in the gift shop, which was insanely underwhelming--it had a few plastic crowns, T-shirts of Ravenwood Castle, and paper dolls of Prince William and Kate's wedding...uh, ok.
Before Sandwichgate, I'd made Chad promise to bring me back to Castle Crapsylvania for a night's stay. But since lunch cost so much, I couldn't even imagine what a room's price would be. So I let that dream go, and we headed back to civilization. We stopped on the side of the road and took some pictures, including the above one of us.
Our last exploration on Sunday afternoon was driving around the town of Logan...where we saw a sign for Cornhole Dodgeball. You see, just cornhole wasn't enough. Or just dodgeball. This place was EXTREEEEEEME!!
When we got back to our cabin, we had a glorious massage (one of Chad's friends ordered it as a wedding gift). Monday morning, we headed back home. Hocking Hills is behind us, but never forgotten.
Thanks for letting me share our adventures! We had a blast. It was fun, romantic, doofy--what more could I ask for? haha
is released into the wild. I'm verra happy about the reviews so far. This book is kind of an experiment--superhero books are a very hard sell in publishing, so I figured I'd take a chance and see how it did if I published it on my own. It's been a fantastic learning experience so far! As a small pimping side note, you can read a sample for free. Just click on the linky above and on the right, you can send a sample to the reading device of your choice. :D
? That comes out in December, and it'll also be available as a three-in-one ebook too. I'm suuuuuper stoked.
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