Hawaii...

Well, I'm a liar and I'm sorry I never posted about Hawaii or our anniversary or other various events. I have the best of intentions, but obviously nothing came of them.

For the sake of getting back on track, I've decided to just post a jumble of pictures, and try to fill in some of the gaps of what we were up to this Fall. Hopefully this will be followed up by posts about Winter, before Winter is over already. I'll try. Again, best of intentions.

First up, Hawaii!

Andrew's parents have a time-share on Oahu that they inherited, and when we go that's where we stay. It's a little condo with bamboo furniture and a great view off a private beach, in one of the poorer quieter parts of the island. We love it! This year we were there in August, and last time we were there the end of March. Apparently I never learned enough in school to understand why tides work the way they do, but our awesome private sandy beach of March was a sheer rock cliff in August. It does it every year I guess.

This rocky beach was a long sandy beach last March.

Hawaii was all about relaxing this year, as we'd already done a lot of tourist stuff the year before. We spent out time snorkeling, hiking, laying on the beach, sleeping, and eating. It was nice to get up in the morning and just see where the day took us.

Andrew and I love to hike, and don't do it nearly enough. We also really love Lost....I know, embarassing but true. So we figured while we were in Oahu we would take the opportunity to get some hiking in and also see some amazing Lost areas.

Most of these pictures are from a hike we did up through an area where they filmed a lot. It was GORGEOUS. The ridiculously old and awesome buildings are part of the compound where the cages are in Lost.

This waterfall was at the top of the trail. What you CAN'T see is the ridiculous looking model and photgrapher taking pictures at the bottom of the falls. HILARIOUS. Can't believe I don't have any pictures of it!

Just down the road from our condo was this cave. There is a pretty creepy story associated with it about a shark god who drug people in to it and ate them...I didn't get to fully enjoy it, because I was too worried about the shady looking gang of locals hanging out by our rental car. In Hawaii they go out of their way to post signs that convince you everyone is out to steal your stuff. I have an irrational fear of getting my license/passport stolen and not being able to get back home....it's a problem that leads to me asking Andrew 70 thousand times a day if he still has his wallet (with my license in it because I make him carry it around), and then making him pull it out to show me that it's still there. Really, it's a problem.

The cave is right off the main road, and our cars were parked across the street

Inside...super scary, right? :)

This how I spent a whole lot of my time

Sunset off our lanai. We ate breakfast out here every morning. This is Andrew's favorite place to be.

One of my all time favorite days was spent at the temple. When we were here last it was closed for remodeling. It was rededicated a couple of months before we were there this time. It's completely gorgeous and was such a nice and peaceful day.

Don't mind the awful picture. Contrary to what it looks like, the wind was blowing like crazy, and I don't exactly go out of my way to spend a ridiculous amount of time getting ready in the morning while on vacation.

Last but not least....Food. My favorite part of vacation. We drove into Honolulu for some Bubba Gump's the night of our anniversary. I have a thing for Bubba Gump's. I think it's because we don't have one in Utah, so everytime we're in a city with one (Seattle or Honolulu) I always want to go. However, when we got there we couldn't find it and ended up giving up and heading home, stopping at McDonalds for cheeseburgers on the way home. :( Not the best way to spend your 1st anniversay. It turned out okay though, because we went for round 2 the following day with success. We also hit up Hank's Haute Dogs for some awesome gormet hot dogs as well. In fact, we stopped off at Hank's twice, because once just wasn't enough. It's pretty fantastic.

Worst. Picture. Ever.

I swear neither of us are as chubby as these pictures make us look.

A-MAZ-ING.

Well, that's about it for Hawaii. I wish I had pictures of other various events, such as the massive amount of snorkeling we did (and found out we LOVE), or the super ghetto Big Island Aiport in the middle of the night on our way home. I've been to some pretty shady airports in my life--mainly those in Mexico and Peru, but this one looked a whole lot more like a bus terminal than an airport. Probably because it was outside, nighttime, and there were some big honkin spiders runnin' around. Quite the adventure.

Next up....cake.