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.

:)