June 2010

Hello Everyone,
Tami's family (Mom, Aunt and brother) came to visit us for the past two weeks. Here's some pictures of their trip to the island. Most of these pictures are from the weekends because I had class during the week so I basically just went out for dinner with them during the week.

Well Tami and I got lots of fun car pictures because we just enjoy doing that. This is when we were leaving the parking garage to head to the North Shore.

This was when we were further down the road and out of the parking garage. Hahaha.

Tami and her brother, Jameson, are both dive certified so they went diving at Shark's Cove and myself, Tami's mom, Barb, and Aunt Sandy snorkeled.

This was the last time we saw Tami and Jameson before they came back up.

On our way back in we saw this huge sea turtle that just came up from between the rocks. It was so cool.

He was swimming to the surface to just chill.

He just hung out at the top of the water.

Also on our way back I saw the biggest pufferfish I have ever seen while snorkeling.

When we were done snorkeling and diving we headed back to Haleiwa and when to eat dinner at Jameson's By The Sea. So this is Jameson under the sign there.

We had to get a picture of all of us with drinks and everything. So from left to right its Jameson, me, Aunt Sandy, Barb, and Tami. Aunt Sandy and I both had the banana daiquiri and I would recommend it to anyone that likes bananas. It was very tasty.

After eating dinner we went down the road to Matsumoto's for some dessert. Aunt Sandy and Barb hung out in the car while we waited in line.

But of course waiting in any line for Tami and I always means a perfect opportunity for a photo.

But you gotta have a little fun because they can't all be just smiling. That is just too boring.

Getting very excited waiting in line.

The whole group with our shave ice. YUM!!!

The next day after going to the swap meet we headed back up the North Shore to Waimea Falls. Tami and I walked while the rest took the shuttle. We got there way before the rest did so again with the pictures.

We got Aunt Sandy and Barb up in front of the falls for a picture.

But before we got them up there Tami and I got up there for some pictures.

It is very hard (well at least for me) to keep your eyes open while up there.

This is our group picture in the water where we were trying really hard not to sink because we couldn't touch the bottom.

Had to take a group picture in front of the waterfall after playing in the water.

After the waterfall we headed to Turtle Bay Resort to Lei Lei's to try their oyster shots. It is an osyter, shrimp cocktail sauce and horseradish sauce. Tami, Jameson and I were the ones that tried them and all we could taste was the cocktail sauce but they weren't bad. I also got a Strawberry Lemon Drop to drink. After our appetizers we went to Giovanni's to have shrimp for dinner.

This was at dinner at The Chart House on the last night Tami's family was here. Tami just couldn't take a nice picture.

But we finally got one. It was lots of fun to have people over to visit. We helped them get around the island and they helped us move our stuff to the new place. Hope you enjoyed the pictures. Sending warm wishes and aloha kisses.

Videos from Kauai

Hello Everyone,
These are the videos that I shot while in Kauai. The first 6 videos are from the helicoopter ride and the last one is at Spouting Horn Blowhole. Enjoy :)

Our New Apartment

Hello Everyone,
So here's a little photo tour of our new apartment. We got the keys this week so we've gone a couple times to clean and rearrange the furniture that we bought from the guy who had lived there previously. I'll be posting another blog in the end of June or beginning of July after we've gotten everything moved in. I hope you enjoy the pictures.

This is our small kitchen. To the right is the door into the apartment. As you can see we don't have an oven but we do have a toaster oven, crockpot, and stove top range. And don't worry we have a full size fridgerator which you will see if you keep scrolling down.

So this is looking into the living room from the kitchen. The fridge is to the right of me.

This is looking from the opposite corner back across the living room.

Then we did a little rearranging of the furniture. The desk that is in front of me was in the bedroom. When we moved the couch we realized that we had a lot more room in the living room so we moved it out there. The coffee table actually lifts up to be a regular height table so we're going to use that as the dining room table or extra desk.

This is looking into the living room from the kitchen. We were able to move the fridge over so we could fit our new vacuum and trash bin there. Its better there because now it is closer to the kitchen.

This is looking across the living room. Now you can see where we moved the TV so we had room to move the fridge. The doors lead into the bedroom. The desk was on the other side of the doors. We're going to get some curtains to put across that doorway so we can have a better separation between the living room and bedroom.

Okay this is looking from in the bathroom past the closet into the bedroom. The door into the bedroom will from now on be closed because my bed is going to go there.

This is our bathroom. I had to add some pink touches. :)

This is our closet.

Now you can see the entrance to the bathroom and closet that we'll be using. To the left is the bedroom and to the right is the bathroom.

This is looking from in the bedroom out towards the living room. We're going to replace the lawn chairs with more comfortable, fun chairs so we can enjoy our amazing view.

This is Tami's bed and part of our view.

When my bed gets delivered it will go against the wall and we're going to put a dresser thing between our beds. So that door will always be closed which is fine because it doesn't open all the way anyway.

This is our wall of windows. It is beautiful and pictures seriously don't do it justice. We overlook the harbor and can see the airport. The guy who lived there this past year told us that the sunset is absolutely gorgeous. Can't wait till we get to see that.

This is looking towards the airport. You can't tell in this picture but looking down is where our pool and hot tub are. I had to save the best for last. I'll post again soon after we get all our stuff moved in. Sending you warm wishes and aloha kisses.

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. :)