173 Steps = An Amazing View

Hello,
Tami and I decided we were going to hike Diamond Head again. The last time we had done it was last spring break.

This is me being me before we went to breakfast at IHOP.

This was after we got on the bus to head to Diamond Head State Monument. I was just too excited. Those pancakes gave me all kinds of crazy energy I needed to claim up the side of a mountain.

Then I decided to have a little bit of fun with the settings on my camera. This setting is called Fish Eyes hence the reason I'm making a fishy face.

First you walk up this winding trail.

Again more winding.

Then you get to start the fun stuff: stairs. This set is 74. After this set is a tunnel that of course goes uphill so you don't stop until you get to the pit stop before the next set of stairs.

The next set is 99 steps. Its best to take a break between sets but once you start the second set you DO NOT stop till you get to the top. If you stop you have a really hard time making yourself start again and more than likely you'll stop many more times before reaching the top. We took another break at the top of this set in the tunnel because a really good breeze comes through that tunnel.

This is the view down the back of the crater which is where you climb up.

Here's the view of Hawaii from the top.

This is more just a picture of Waikiki.

This is the Waikiki Shell which is where graduation for HPU is held. In a year and a half I'll be graduating there (Dec 2011). :-D

This is one of the signs they have at the bottom to show you the path you take to get to the top and where we found out how many steps there are because we were so not counting them.

After we were all done. We made it back on the bus to head back to Waikiki where we got some ice cream and hang out on the beach. Could not have asked for a better day. Sending you warm wishes and aloha kisses.

Snorkeling Shark's Cove

Hello Again,
Tami and I ventured to North Shore during our first day of summer vacation. We stopped at Matsumotos for some shave ice. I got green apple (I always get this one), raspberry and strawberry cream. It was delicious. Then we headed up the shore to Shark's Cove. Don't worry we didn't see any sharks but that's not to say they aren't there. Tami went diving there with HPU's dive club and we have wanted to go snorkeling there for a while but has to wait until the water was calm enough to go.
This is a view from where we had our stuff out to where we snorkeled. We went all the way out to the furthest set of rocks at the horizon. Oh yes, I got to use my new underwater digital camera. I love it. It takes very good pictures in and out of the water which you'll get to see further down.

Tami lead during this snorkeling adventure because I had never been there and she had so she had a better idea of where to go. We found out real fast why its a good thing to have me lead and that is because she swims a lot faster than I do so I was kinda playing catch up the whole time but we still got to see a lot. Anyway back to this picture, Tami swam down to take and picture of me (that she never got) and I took this picture of her.

There were lots of divers there while we were there and one of them almost ran me over too.

We saw 3 turtles while we were there. This was the first one we saw and he came really close so I got some good pictures. This one reminds me of postcards I've seen here.

This was the point that we turned around. We had gone really far off the shoreline but people go out further than this.

I think I had put that this is one of my favorite fish in another blog just because it is so bright and colorful.

School of fish playing follow the leader.

One of the areas of coral we swam around.

There's an all black sea urchin at the bottom of this picture. This is only the second time I've seen them here. Usually the ones we see are black in the middle and have white/off-white spikes.

I like these fish too. This fish is like Gill (a moorish idol) from Finding Nemo.

Hope you enjoyed the pictures. Sending warm wishes and aloha kisses.

Party!!!

Hello Everyone,
We had our end of the semester party last night. It was so much fun. There were 13 of us here which is the most people we've had over at one time. Here's the pictures from our fun party.

I made two different kinds of cake bites for the party. The pink ones are strawberry cake and the green ones are chocolate. Everybody fell in love with these.

I also made ice cream cone cupcakes with the chocolate buttercream frosting from scratch. They were delicious.

Here's the beginning of our party guests getting their food.

These are three of my coworkers. Naudia is drinking the water, Ryan is eating a cake bite and Zyna was just laughing at him.

Okay so Tami was tickling Corey and he was telling her that he was going to get her back so bad. All the while Liz, Myra, and Hogan were enjoying the view.

Here's Ashley, Naudia, Ryan, Me, Zyna, and Kia for a fun group shot.

Here's the whole group just chatting and Ryan posing in the middle, as always.

Here's the file room kids as we put it. Jeremy, Zyna, Ashley, Me, Naudia, and Ryan. I'm hoping to get a picture of all of us on Tuesday when we have the student worker potluck at work.

This is Tami and her chem friends. Hogan, Myra, Liz, Corey, Tami, and Kristen.

And.........This is the whole crazy group minus Ashley and Naudia. Everybody had a really fun time and we laughed a lot. It was all something that we needed before the last week of classes and finals. We're hoping to be able to do it more next year because it was so much fun. Sending you warm wishes and aloha kisses. :)