Aloha 'Oe

Aloha 'Oe Hawai'i nei...

A hui hou kakou malama pono.

We'll be back!

Finishing up

A couple more boxes to mail, a lot of deep cleaning, and we're ready to move halfway across the world to NYC.

Um, can I never move ever again please? I can't stand this constant de-junking, packing, and moving process. This will be the 5th time we've moved since we've been married. 5 too many if you ask me. The most depressing thought is that we're only going to be in NYC for 2 years and then we get to do it again!

I think its the cleaning that gets to me. There is one drawer in our kitchen that is housing 3+ giant momma roaches and I've been trying to gather non-existent courage to clean it for 4 days now. I think I'm going to pass that job along to Seth.

I've shipped most of our stuff home because Hawaiian Airlines will rob you blind if you try and take on your stuff as luggage. Oh and I just thought that I would tell you that Seth is never allowed to tell me I have too many shoes again---while all of my shoes fit into my carry on, he has golf clubs, and guitar, X-box, skateboard, and a TV to get home.

Carry-on full of shoes: free.

Mailing/checking in stuff: $.

Bottom line: I don't have that many shoes.

The Black Pearl...

...is currently in Kaneohe Bay for the Pirates of the Caribbean filming!

It would be SO awesome to watch them film!

Sadly, Johnny Depp wasn't hanging around. :(

Last day at PCC

Yesterday was my last day of work at the PCC. It was so sad! :(

I brought my camera to get some last memories of some of my favorite people!

I'm going to miss this job so much. I have a feeling that no other job will be as fun as this one was.

They even got me a little going away present!

( I am totally going to use that weaved fan! I hear its super humid in NYC right now...! I had one when I was in the Philippines and it seriously saved my life.)

My last day made me realize how much I'm going miss all of the friends that I have made in the last 5 years here. Its kind of scary to think that I have to start all over again in a place that I've never even been before. Why can't I just take all of my friends with me?!

My last day of yoga at TB was yesterday too. My long-time instructor had a special closing mantra for me, and asked everyone in the class to send good energy to me and my well being in NYC while we chanted. Then he told me that my yoga practice has gotten a lot better and is very beautiful. I felt like a young grasshopper all grown up! haha. That meant a lot to me because in class he's always telling me I'm crooked and that my belly is sticking out...if you've taken a class from him, you know what I mean...! All my little yogi buddies wished me well too. But seriously though, I felt so loved and I was so sad to think that I have to leave all of these wonderful people behind. And I'm sad that I have to find a new yoga studio and instructor. I've grown so attached to my routines here!

I'm getting mopey. Is that even a word? Its just hard for me to leave this life that I've built here. Every time I do something, I think to myself, "This is my last ______." and get all mopey. Friday is my last Zumba class with my friends, we'll see how I handle that. I'm not much of a crier, but I have a feeling that my last day on the island is going to be a hard one.

Anyway, one more week, then I'm off to start a new life, and hopefully make some new friends and yogi buddies.

[sigh]

Seinfeld, anyone?

And it's only about 6 min away from our NYC apartment via subway!

Wet 'n' Wild Hawaii!

Last Monday we headed over to the waterpark in Kapolei (2 for 1 deal!) as part of our "last hurrah" in Hawaii.

It was a lot more fun than last time because all of the rides were actually open! Last time like half of the rides were closed.

I brought my waterproof camera to tag along while we went on all of the rides. It took me a while to figure out how to carry it on the slides without it smashing into my face!

Anyway, this was my favorite ride:

I beat Seth every time---and he made sure to get plenty of rematches, but lost anyway. Guess I'm too agile! paahaha! Don't worry Seth, you will get another rematch when we go to the waterpark in CA in a few weeks!

I totally smoked those asian girls.

Here's Seth...

I zoomed in on the 2nd one to show you his face...he told me afterwards that he was trying to look as crazy as possible. It worked.

This ride was fun as well:

We jumped on with some little kids. It took me about half of the ride to figure out how to turn on the video setting:

That cute and giggly little boy had so much fun!

But the best part of the water park was of course, the lazy river. I just loved floating around with my handsome hubby.

I honestly could have floated there in the sun all day long.

The day ended with a trip to Target (the best place in the world) and Costco for a delicious hand-dipped chocolate bar.

Water park: check.

Next on the list: kayaking to Mok's at Lanikai.

Tahiti E, Imua!

And here's take 4:

Oi, don't judge me too harshly, it's hard to farapu on a moving canoe!

[If you listen closely you can hear Seth say, "Chicken Dance!!" in the middle of the video because he thinks the music sounds like the chicken dance. (??) He probably flapped his arms like a chicken too.]

Only 2 more days of work left! :(

Chocolate craving?

...then you must get one of these:

Hand-dipped chocolate bars for only $1.50 at Costco!!!

MMMMMmmmmmm... I cannot drive by Costco without getting one... the chocolate is delicious and satisfies my biggest chocolate cravings!

Take Three

I bought Seth a tripod so the videos weren't so shaky.

[Take 1, Take 2]

This day I was on the Hawaii canoe. He was so proud of the video that he has been reminding me every day to post it! When he showed me the video he went through each part of the dance explaining the technique he used to film it. :)

For some reason I can't find a way to upload it in the HD quality that the camera filmed it in. ??

:)

T-minus 2 weeks...

Sigh.

I live in a sea of boxes and bubble wrap.

Another gorgeous day

...spent at the beach.

Day off!

Yesterday was my day off from work (score!) so we decided to spend the day soaking in some rays at Lanikai.

And of course I spent a lot of time with my new friend the iphone 4! I read a book on it and looked up a great place to eat on my new app Urban Spoon (love this thing).

**Ignore my shaggy sheep dog hair--I need a hair cut!**

I have tomorrow off too, so we are heading to the water park (buy 1 get 1 free tickets!) to spend the day in the sun and then making a stop at Costco to eat a glorious hand-dipped chocolate bar (I crave these things like nothing else). Looking forward to it.

Have a great Sabbath day!

4th

This 4th of July we went to go see fireworks at Schofield Barracks. The last time we went there was the day we brought little Baloo home from the airport! There were tons of people there, and a lot of food, rides, and craft booths!

Its fun to go to Schofield because of all of the patriotism that is displayed there. Who is more patriotic than our own military? God bless America!

We enjoyed our lunch and got to see Smashmouth play....lol. I personally didn't care for them but there were a lot of people running and screaming to their songs. It was like a flashback to the 90's!

Oh yeah and I got to wear my sweet red vans!

The fireworks were awesome-- so much fun to watch! I'm sad that this is our last year watching fireworks here but I can only imagine the amazing ones we'll see in NYC!

*BTW all of these pictures were taken on my iphone. Pretty nice, huh?

Alice and Wonderland!

Today I love...

...this dress:

I just love the teacup pattern and all of the colors! It reminds me of the Mad Hatter from Alice and Wonderland (love that movie!). It's so unique, and I think the more I look at it, the more I absolutely love it.

I also am in love with this skirt:

There are clocks on it! How interesting is that? So unique, and again, reminiscent of Alice and Wonderland. [I'm not even going to mention the prices] Anthropologie, why must you torture me so?

What do you think? Like? Dislike?

Weekend getaway!

On the last weekend in June, Seth and I stayed at the Hilton Hawaiian Village for a mini-vacation!

I have never been in this area before, and now I don't know why because the whole place is gorgeous! I had lots of fun playing tourist!

Probably the best part about the entire trip was that our room had the AC blasting the entire time! It felt like we were in the Arctic and it was sooooo nice---Hawaii is blazing hot/humid right now. The sheets and blankets on the bed were cold too! We just lied on the bed and talked about how wonderful AC is.

The village area was interesting! It had an asian feel to it and had all sorts of crazy stores. Benihana's was there (I was wondering where that was!) and if it wasn't so dang pricey we would have gone!

When we got to the hotel they gave us this coupon book for the store in the village. None of them were very good, but Seth carried it around with him all weekend just waiting to use the coupons! It was pretty funny to see him whip out a handful of coupons every time we went into a store.

The hotel had a lot of different animals around! Even penguins (?)! Ever since I worked at the zoo I've always felt bad about animals in captivity. People can be really mean to the animals. You'd be surprised at how dumb people can be and what you find in the animal's cages. Regardless, it was still fun to see all of them. Especially the penguins. They were so cute!

The beaches were gorgeous! We had fun just hanging out in the sun.

Look at this weird bike thing! I've never seen anything like this before and I thought it was kind of funny to see people paddling around in the water on these giant bikes.

There were some really nice pools around. It was pretty crowded, but it was still fun to lounge by the pool and read a book. They even had a fun waterslide! Seth had fun on the waterslide, as you can see here:

For dinner we went to the Cheesecake Factory (yum!) and ate some deeeeeelicious food. I love that place. I don't think we've ever gotten anything there that we didn't like. And the Red Velvet Cheesecake is seriously to die for. For some reason there were a lot of crazy motorcycles and cars out for display that day. Some of them were pretty sweet.

Oh and there is a picture of my shoe in there because I actually walked all the way from the hotel to the Cheesecake Factory in them. It was quite the accomplishment because I am absolutely terrible at walking in heels! I was so wobbly that Seth said I looked like I was drunk. I'm practicing for NYC. haha.

That was our fun weekend! We are starting to go down our list of things to do before we leave now, so I'll be putting up a lot of pictures soon!

Off to work now!

Take Two

We tried again to get a video of canoes (remember last time?).

This time I was on Maori instead of Tahiti.

And just our luck, it started to rain so most of the video Seth is trying to protect the camera instead of getting it into full focus. haha! And the rain prevented from getting one whole video.

Oh well, we'll have to try take three tomorrow.

The first one is part of the action song/poi balls. The second one is the haka.

Monday's thoughts

Today I turned into a productive freak,

which was kind of a good thing because I got a lot of stuff done.

I made a gigantic list of things that I need to get in done in preparation for grad school/NYC and I surprisingly checked off quite a bit!

That included:

-Finding doctors for physicals (for grad school---not looking forward to that)

-Filling out and faxing student health forms

-Cleaning out the closet (Probably the biggest accomplishment for the day!)

-Cleaning out dead cockroaches from closet....!!

-Gathering old clothes and other random things to donate to Goodwill

-Packing up 3 gigantic boxes to mail home

-Getting rid of a ton of junk lying around

-Putting in my 2 weeks notice at work

-Somewhat deciding on when to book our flights from HI and to NYC.

Whew! I rewarded myself with a nice ICE COLD Diet Coke. Ahhhhhh!

Our front room is a mess because I still have to box a lot of things and then actually mail home the boxes. Mailing huge boxes is actually kind of pricey so I might have to spread out the time between the mailing of each box. At least I've started to get things done. It gives me a little peace of mind.

The day we leave is continually creeping closer! I've made a list of all the things I want to do one last time before we leave. Lots of fun posts to come!

:)

Memories post #2

Meet Vado:

We picked him up at a random flea market on our honeymoon in Manzanillo, Mexico.

I wish I took pictures of the actual flea market because it was such a funny little place. I remember it being a bunch of tiny shacks almost in the middle of nowhere, and everything being super dusty. There were seriously the most random things there, and I found this bobble-headed dragon! It was one of the craziest little things I saw there and I definitely wanted it. I was going to buy it for however much the lady said it was because I hate haggling (I am so bad at it its embarrassing) but Seth stepped in and haggled it down a bit and bought it for me! He actually had to do this for everything we bought in Mexico because I seriously suck at haggling.

So I got my little painted dragon. We named him Vado because there was a giant yellow sign in front of our honeymoon condo that said "Vado" right before a huge dip in the road. Random, but true.

He has been with us ever since. I remember I forgot him in San Diego and I didn't want to lose him---luckily Pattie was kind enough to send him to me.

Now he sits on top of my oven. So many good memories when I look at him. And he's coming to NYC!

Happy 4th of July weekend!

Ta da!

It's here!

Turns out, I didn't need my signs.

As I was heading to work on my bike, I happened to glance down the street and saw a FedEx truck at the very end!

I was already late to work, but I quickly turned my bike around and headed home to camp out on the front lawn. I ambushed the delivery guy as soon as the truck pulled up (he didn't even get a chance to get out of the van!), and ran inside to drop the box off! I was pretty late for work and had to book it to the PCC and wait to set up and play with my phone until later. I was so antsy at work!

But finally, this beautiful piece of machinery and I are united at last. :)

It is soooooooo sweeeeet!

Here was the aftermath:

As you can see, things got pretty crazy when I got home from work. There's even a chip bag in there because I got hungry during the whole ordeal.

:)