Hawai'i

I know everyone has been waiting for an update...let's be honest, pictures...but I've been recuperating from getting more sun than the last 5 years of my life combined. Seriously, my body has stored up it's beautiful rays and I could go for another 5 years of only seeing the sun when forced to walk from where I park to the closest building with air conditioning.

It was beautiful, fun, exotic (not extremely, but we're from Utah so do the math), relaxing, and part of me wishes we had found jobs and stayed. I could be a waitress (ha!) and Matt surely could find work at one of the thousand ABC Stores in Waikiki alone. For those who haven't had the pleasure of visiting the Waikiki vicinity, there is literally an ABC Store on every corner. There was a spot on the main drag (Kalakaua Dr) that you could stand there and see three stores from that single spot! It was worse than Starbucks in Seattle (I'm dead serious). What's an ABC store? Oh, well it's like a 7-11 but better. They sell liquor (mini-bottle leis anyone? They have those!), clothes (over-priced, but everything was), and souvenirs galore!

However, the exorbitant use of vowels in the Hawaiian language and street names, was enough to make us miss home, and the simplistic (anyone could sound out) street names.

The whole week was an adventure, but started with flying. I think I married the only person I've ever met who hasn't flown on a big-ol'-plane before. I've flown a lot, starting at a young age. I've never flown over an ocean for 5 hours, so I was a bit nervous. (Crash into the wide open ocean? Not for me, please! The idea of crashing into water and possibly surviving only to be floating somewhere in the 2500+ mile stretch between Hawaii and SoCal, and eventually eaten by sea life? Yeah, I'd rather crash into the side of the mountain and die on impact). Matt was a trooper and didn't voice or display one bit of nervousness about flying. Our first plane was a wimpy SkyWest (wimpy, yes, it holds merely 68 seats). The second was quite large, bigger then I've ever flown on, even on my flight to NYC. What kind of plane, you ask? I haven't the slightest, because I'm not a things-with-engines geek. It held 7 seats across a row and at least 42 (where we sat) rows. Plus, Delta offers free movies on the flight to/from Honolulu! Sleep on the plane? Not when I could be watching Bride Wars or Confessions of a Shopaholic! (You know, since they're chick flicks and Matt won't watch them with me)

My favorite part was stepping out of the airport in LA for a quick drag, and Matt experiencing true humidity (Utah doesn't ever get true humidity, we're a desert dammit!). Little did he know Hawai'i would be worse and it wouldn't be early morning before the heat compounded it.

Enough of my commentary, although you'll get some narration with the pictures. (Because there are almost 300 pics I took I'm going to make a post for each day with a few pics. They will be post-dated to correlate with the actual days so stayed tunned and scroll down!)

Hawaii Day 4

Sunday, was totally a chill out and relax day. We went to some presentation in the morning to get us a car rental, and the rest of the day was us being lazy :) I enjoyed playing in the ocean, but couldn't convince Matt to join me, so he played in the sand & collected mini sea shells.






And when in doubt...there's alway's a Denny's nearby:

Saturday was part relaxing, part recuperation from the night before. What better way to do so than sleeping in followed by some shopping, time strolling the beach and enjoying the night life? We watched the sunset, then ate at Hulu Grill above Duke's and the atmosphere was wonderful with live local music.

Hawaii Day 2

Our second day there was a long, full day. We decided to hike the Diamond Head Crater, followed by a short beach visit for me, then dinner at the Top of Waikiki (rotating fancy restaraunt) and drinking at The Red Lion while listening to a local band.

Hawai'i-we have arrived

Hours on a plane, meant this was a refreshing view. This was Matt's initial encounter with any ocean. We ate at Lulu's just down the block from our hotel, and the open-air seating overlooks the beach, with live music.



Our hotel room view (you can see the ocean...not that we paid for a partial ocean view)