Awkward and Awesome Thursday

I'm sitting here at work eating off brand fruit loops for lunch (left over from a nursery lesson that I never ended up even giving) and listening to Adelle sing about fiery rain for the millionth time this morning. My head and face are pounding because my last wisdom tooth has decided to start moving around again. So in addition to handfuls of fruit loops I am also eating handfuls of advil. Boo. I find myself wanting to do anything but what I actually need to do, which just makes the stacks of charts around me grow exponentially. I'm the only one in the office this afternoon which means that sitting and staring blankly ahead is a much more appealing option than filing and cleaning.

Bright side? I do not work for the Parks and Rec department manning a carosoul and I no longer work in "Filing Hell". Better 'bright side'? I have a job! Chad has to remind me that this is a good thing :)

Awkward:

• Nursing Homes. An old little lady finally manages to wheel herself into our room and then I have to tell her that she has to wait until next month to get her toenails cut so that her insurance will cover it. She doesn't understand and starts pleading with me to let her see the doctor. Of course the doctor is right there and just continues to work on his current patient while I try to explain things to this poor, sad woman. "please, please! I'm begging you". A little help here? I didn't know what to do and was getting a whole lot of nothing from the docotor and nurses so.... I walked away and kept working. Finally she gave up and slowly wheeled back to her room. Who's the worst person in the world? Yup, that's me.
• Families holding up their little children so they could watch the Treasure Island show with all the strippers dancing around on the boat.
• The amount of Red Bull still being consumed in the Lewis house.
• Rukia getting a weird patchy sunburn when she went running with Chad and Jared. There's only a few spots but her hair fell out and it looks like we burned her with a hot poker or something. I feel like we injure our dog, on accident, on a weekly basis. Caring for actual children is looking pretty bad and is moving further and further into the future.
• Refusing to buy new scrubs because you hate spending money on, let's be honest, ugly pajamas. So now all of your scrubs are wearing dangerously thin in the crotch/butt area. Yes, some have holes. Most awkward part - still wearing them!
• Having to turn off the A/C in our car every time we come to a stop so that our car won't stall out.
• It is D-R-Y here. I've lived in Provo and I knew it would be dry but being here in the desert in the 100+ heat is a little dryer than anywhere else I've been. Don't believe me? Check out my nasty feet and scalp. If that doesn't convince you, when my eyes dry up and fall out of my head I think you'll be convinced.

Awesome:

• Nursing Homes. All the old men call you beautiful and gorgeous even though you haven't washed your hair in days, are wearing scrubs that are 2 sizes too big for you and have on no makeup. All the old women comment on how tall and thin you are. Looks like I found my new BFF's.
• Chad. He makes the BEST pasta ever. Seriously. I don't know why he lets me cook at all because he cooks way better than I do. His pasta is my favorite though and no matter what kind he decides to make it's always crazy good and I eat way too much. An added bonus: I came home from a long day at work yesterday to find the whole house picked up , laundry done, and the dishes done! And then he proceeded to make us all dinner. Awesome.
• Jared is here reminding Chad and I both that we do actually have friends even if they don't live very close to us.
• Birthday Celebrations coming up this weekend! Birthdays are the best. I love having birthday weekends free from laundry, cleaning, and errands and full of cake, movies, and presents... even if they aren't for me!

Jared's here!

I hope everyone else had a great long weekend! We picked Jared up at the airport Sunday night. Yup, we drove into Vegas for the 4th weekend in a row. We will not be going to Vegas this weekend! We spent Sunday night in Vegas, we walked around and people watched, and saw the Siren show at Treasure Island. It was fabulous. I remember seeing this show when I was little and it was this great pirate battle, it is now a bunch of strippers dancing on a boat. I thought it was pretty funny. Chad was less then impressed. We were packed like sardines on the sidewalk to watch the show. It was crazy trying to make our way out of there.

"Gross" - Chad

We finally made it home at 2:30am and crashed! Monday we were up and ready to go again. Chad and Jared got up early and I finally dragged my sleepy butt out bed so we could head out to Zion's. Chad and I had been wanting to hike through the Narrows and it was finally warm enough to do it!

Sadly we did not realize how extremely packed it would be because of Memorial Day. The parking situation was crazy. We drove around for a half hour before we finally found something. Once we got into the park it was busy, but not as crazy as the parking lots made it seem. We took the shuttle all the way up to the Narrows and set out in the river. We spent the whole afternoon/evening hiking there. It was great fun! Most of the water wasn't too deep but there were a few parts that came up to our waist. It was freezing cold, especially out of the sun, but the views were awesome and we are glad that we finally were able to go on that hike.

 

 

Mahalo

Tuesday started off hot and sweaty! After another early and awesome brekfast we headed up to Manoa Falls. Ash and Pat were celebrating their anniversary that day (happy anniversary!) so they skipped out on us ;) Mom's poor knee wouldn't let her come with us so we parked at the arboreum up the road so she wouldn't be sitting in the hot car just waiting for us. This morning ended up being one of our favorites! We tried a shortcut to the trail which didn't pan out so well and my dad ended up asking someone who worked there where the trail was. The guy kinda freaked out on us, wanting to know if we parked at the arboreum because that wasn't allowed, we should have parked down further where you had to pay, blah, blah, blah. He pointed us in the right direction and then let us know that there wasn't any water in the falls that day so good luck. Boo, rude much? Good thing we didn't litsen.

We found the trail and it was like we had entered Jumanji. Clearly none of us had been in a rainforest before, we didn't realize that everything would be so BIG! The trees were gigantic and the leaves on the ferns were as big as me! It was a fantastic hike. Nothing too strenuous, but the scenery was awesome. The falls were very pretty and very cold, ask Chad and Taylor. Chad dove in and Taylor fell in, he has the same grace and balance that I do. The bamboo was great and provided a lot of entertainment. Once we made our way back we wandered around the arboreum, which was gorgeous. Lots of beautiful and different plants and flowers.

 

After lunch we went snorkeling again. We tried going down the beach further, following our little map we got from the rental place. We went down the street pretty far though and had a hard time finding a place to cut through to the beach. Finally we just decided to jump over the cement wall and walk down the skinny stretch of sand until we found the beach we wanted. We threw all our stuff over the wall and Chad lept over while I slowly lowered myself down :) After a small stretch though we reached impassible parts. Back over the fence we went, ok, we just went through a gate this time. Finally we were able to sneak down into the beach we wanted only to see the public entrance smack in the middle of the beach. Geesh. We were better at what we were doing this time so it was a lot of fun. I've decided that all our vacations will now need to have snorkeling involved!

Wednesday morning was my favorite, hands down. We went to Hanauma Bay with everyone to snorkel. It was everything I wanted it to be and more! Everyone told us to go here so expectations were very high, and they were surpassed for sure! After playing with the pigeons again we hoped in the water. The water was crystal clear and there were fish everywhere! Seriously though, we put on our gear and as soon as we dunked our faces there were fish! Best part, we saw 4 sea turtles! That was my mission, to see a turtle. Chad had seen one yesterday when we were snorkling and it scared him. Cloudy water with a large shadowy dark thing swimming around? Yeah, would have freaked me out too. The turtles were really cool. They just swam along and let us swim with them. We had way too much fun and ended up leaving late. Sorry family! Chad and I learned the hard way that floating around in water in the crazy hot sun for 3 hours requires at least more than 2 applications of sunscreen. We were really careful all week but our luck ran out that morning.

We rinsed off, got dressed super fast and piled back into the van to drive up to the Polynesian Center. We didn't have a lot of time to do much (sorry!) but we were able to see the Samoa "town". The guy was hillarious! Chad and I laughed through the whole thing. We learned how to make fire, Chad was able to get the wood to smoke! And we learned about "tree"90X. Chad and I got tattoos, we were overly excited about them. The girl helping us out was very nice and thought it was funny how seriously we were taking our temporary tattoos. It took us a while to pick them out and then we had to pick a spot, which took us forever.

The dinner was great, we got to try lots of different foods, Elder Taylor tried sneaking in to hang out and was promptly kicked out, and we got a classic sunburned in Hawaii picture! We loved our crazy enthusiastic announcer and all the hula dancers. We sang Happy Birthday to Taylor, and Ashley and Patrick almost went on stage to dance for their anniversary but got scared! Chad and I were on our way up to learn a hula at the end but on our way up we realized they wanted kids, we quickly turned out butts around and sat down! Afterwards we went to see Ha!, the musical production that was going on there. It was great. We loved the show with all the dancing. We met up with Elder Taylor after the show and were able to visit with him. On the way back to the hotel we all crashed in the van, except for Patrick, our driver, he was a champ and managed to (barely) stay awake to get us back!

 

 

Thursday was another hiking morning. We had sufficiently wore Tay out so he kept Mom company while the rest of us hiked up Daimond Head. Surprise, surprise, it was hot and sunny! Very different from our last hike in the forest but the views at the top were great. Lots of stairs and crazy little asian women hiking up in heels, tights with shorts over top, and jackets. I was wearing as little clothing as possible and sweating the whole way. Best part of all the hikes we did? Compared to doing any sort of running/hiking in Utah I was a superstar in Hawaii. Woot Woot for sea level! And of course, there were more pictures of birds taken ;)

By the afternoon I was pooped. Chad and I were planning on going out that night so I took it easy that afternoon. I laid on the beach with Ashley while the boys surfed! None of us were sure how it would go, they decided to rent surfboards without a lesson and just give it a go! We watched some YouTube videos and figured that was good enough! And it was! Both Chad and Patrick were able to get up and ride some waves. Ashley and I tried to take some pictures, we zoomed in and stalked people out on the water hoping the pictures we were taking were of our husbands. Most were, some were not. We were convinced this one guy was Patrick, definitely wasn't. Then we though we finally found Pat but it was that same random guy. We've got some nice pictures of this random stranger! Chad got some nice board burns? I don't know what else to call it. It looks like a rug burn from the surf board, all over his thighs and part of his chest. It was pretty bad looking. We quickly learned why people wear what they do when they surf. Next time we'll know better!

 

 

That night Chad and I went out and explored the city more. We tried to get something to eat but were very indicisive and ended up just being snacky. So... we each got a cupcake from a bakery that won cupcake wars, got our own Jamba Juice, and split a pretzel. We stopped back at the hotel for a while to get cookies with the rest of the family to celebrate Tay's birthday and sing to him! After we went back out and wandered around.

We were in one store looking for a t-shirt for Chad and after folding it back up and putting it back the lady working walked right in front of me, where I put the shirt, and proceeded to fold it up correctly and then organize the rest of the shirts. She was literally right in front of me. It was super awkward and I just stood there to see what would happen. She just kept folding shirts. There was just enough room for us both to be standing up. Very weird. So we left there real quick and I made sure to unfold a few more shirts on the way out. The shop owners were a little different. Earlier that week Chad, Ash, Pat and I all got kicked out of a Christmas store because they were closing. We had to leave but the Asians that were there shopping could stay. We were also kicked out of a jewelry store in the mall earlier that week. We did manage to find some great shopping areas though and the Hawaiian cookie store with tons of samples, and a great garden with tons of twinkle lights. It was a fun night.

Friday was our last day. We were all beat. It was a crazy busy week. We stocked up on our breakfast munchies and headed out to the beach, where we just ate and hung out all morning. We had to check out by noon so after that we headed up to the mall so we could eat and keep cool and clean until our flights :)

 

It was a fantastic vacation and we can't wait to see where our parents take us next! :)

Awkward and Awesome Thursday

I don't know what it is about a vacation that absolutley just knocks you on your butt afterwards. Especailly this vacation. We were up early, ridiculously early by our standards, every morning and went to bed early, ridiculously early by anyone's standards, almost every single night. The time change rocked. Then we came home. We took the weekend to try to recooperate, rest and get back on track. Except for the whole getting back on track thing. We are having the hardest time adjusting to our normal schedule. The morning time is just awful and I am ready to pass out by the time I get home around 4:30. Then, at 9pm, I start waking back up. What?! Just go to sleep ridiculously early and try to normalize! Nope. Tuesday night we were up until 3am (chad 4), just laying there trying to will ourselves to sleep. Then the alarms started going off at 6. Lol, yeah right. I've never snoozed my alarm so fast in my entire life.

Awkward:

• Chad and Patrick's bouncy ball experiment while killing time in the Mall in Hawaii before leaving for the airport. We were on the second floor and they wanted to see if they could get it to bounce back up, without landing in the grout line and going crazy smashing into someone's face. Well, it didn't come back up straight but it didn't go too crazy. It also did not come back up high enough to catch again and just went bouncing all over. Run away!
• We found a gorgeous necklace that some homeless person was selling on the sidewalk late one night. I tried it on, and was then informed it was $100. Really? Who in the right mind is going to pay someone $100 for anything on the street.
• On our last morning at the beach we watched some 20 something year old guy who was laying out in front of us wrap himself in a towel and then carefully slip off his bathing suit. He then proceeded to try to put his underwear on just as carefully. He wasn't as successful and we got a little show.
• There was a learning curve to operating the elevator at our hotel. For a while I thought it was impossible for us to go to my family and the Flynn's floor because my tiny little brain couldn't figure it out. Then I learned that Tay couldn't figure it out either the first day and I didn't feel so bad since he's one of the smartest people I know :) Good thing Chad was there otherwise I'd still be stuck in our hotel room! Ok not really....
• The birds were way too amusing to us. Despite multiple signs telling us not to, we fed the birds pretty much any chance we got. My favorite was at Hanauma Bay, we had quite the audience watching as not just Chad, but Patrick and I played with the dirty pigeons.
• I got a bloody nose 3 days after getting back home to the dry, dry desert.
• The smooth jazz station at work that played popular songs from the 90's and 2000's but in smooth jazz form. Not good people.
• Remember how we thought the A/C problem was fixed in our car. Ha. Yeah, nope. Whatever the problem is BJ was right and it would cost $600 to fix. No thanks. We'll just keep recharging it until it's not 100 degrees outside and we can stand to drive with our windows open. Our poor little car also has this tendency of not wanting to idle when it's hot out. So far it's been ok but unfortunately our car's not wanting to idle is being exacerbated by running the A/C. Sigh.

Awesome:

•  Snorkeling was the bomb. I do not use that term lightly.
• The food was soooo good in Oahu. Even if we wanted to/could afford to go out to eat here our options are pretty much crap. We ate sushi and fish until we couldn't eat anymore! The Udon Noodles, Jamba Juice, cupcakes, and Polynesian Center were rockin'. The breakfast was fantastic every morning.
• The view from our hotel.
• Having a not only a king size bed for a week but no animals that insisted on sharing it with us. I don't know if it was because of the time change, the fact that I was dead tired from running around all day in the sun or the lack of animals, but I slept awesome in Hawaii!

Aloha

Hawaii was exactly what we expected, tropical and warm and wonderful! We started out everyday with the awesome breakfast that the hotel provided for us. There were pastries galore, which made us all very, very happy. It's not a vacation unless you start your day out with 3 or 4 donuts right?! Pleasant surprise, they also served rice, kimchi and miso soup! Breakfast was rockin' awesome every morning.

Saturday morning we headed out to a giant flea market at the Aloha Stadium. It was HUGE, and hot. They had tons of fun souvenirs, and it was fun to walk around and hang out with my family.  Patrick and Ashley had a kicking contest to see who could kick the highest. First, Ashley is 6 feet tall, second Patrick can't touch his toes. I think you can see where this was headed.

Chad got yelled at for playing with the gun, we were wasting the battery life of the sweet gun. Just confirms the fact that you know the battery life is about 5 minutes.

 

After the flea market we went and got Udon Noodles for lunch. I think Taylor was the only one who had ever had this before. It was awesome. After taking a few minutes trying to figure out what we were going to order we jumped in line and had some of the best food. Chad and I went back again that week. Not only was it great, it was cheap! We wish we had somewhere like that around us.

That afternoon Chad and I went to the beach where we were way too enthusiastic about the ocean and sliced up our feet as we ran out and into the coral. Ouch. Chad paid for that all week. We played volleyball and hung out until we went to dinner, Jack in the Box for the parents and Flynns and sushi and Jamba Juice for Taylor and us. They were right next door and it was the perfect compromise!


Sunday was Mother's Day! We had a busy day planned out, starting with the Dole Plantation. I was unreasonably excited about this one. We went on a train ride around the grounds and learned all about pineapple. For some reason pineapple grew on palm trees in my mind. In all honestly all tropical fruit grows on palm trees in my mind. So imagine my surprise when I learned otherwise! Every day's a school day!

 

 

 

The pinapple ice cream was Delicious!

On the way to the North Shore we were on the look out for a shrimp truck. We passed a few super sketchy looking trucks before stopping at an even sketchier looking one, Giovanni's. They had a nice set up of picnic table and such but the truck itself? I'm surprised we didn't get something. An added bonus? This grilled corn on a stick. It was to die for. In fact, all the food we got there was to die for. Best part of our stop though was hands down the bathrooms. We really should have took a picture. After waiting in the slowest line ever outside what I thought was a little bathroom, we opened the bathroom door and had to walk down this janky little hallway shack thing and then step up two steps onto a platform where the toilet was. It was super weird. The shrimp made up for the initial weirdness of the bathrooms.

 

We met Elder Taylor up at the Temple after lunch and wandered around and took pictures. The temple was huge! Especially compared to our Detroit one we are used to. And the long road leading up to it just made it that much more grand. We finally headed back to the hotel and spent the evening hanging out on the beach.

 

Monday was Pearl Harbor Day. We were picked up bright and early from our hotel. Luckily the time change really worked in our favor. The majority of the week Chad and I were up around 6, or earlier! Somehow Chad's favorite part of anywhere we went were the birds. Lol, ok, maybe not, but if you were to look at all our pictures there are a ridiculous amount of pictures of all the birds. We had too much fun with the pigeons. We played with them at Pearl Harbor as well.

Chad being a creepy stalker

Stretching out yoga couples style. Dan in Real Life anyone?

That afternoon we rented snorkeling gear, best decision! None of us had snorkeled before so we were excited to try it out. We geared up and headed out on the beach right outside our hotel and after hunting around we found the fish! We loved it! There wasn't a ton of fish but searching for them was a lot of fun!

The first half of our week was great! We were busy trying to fit everything in and it was all a lot of fun! As the week went on it just got better and better...

Snap Back to Reality

We left Hawaii around 10:30 Friday night and got into Las Vegas at 7 am. The flight was awesome, seriously. We were the only flight leaving our terminal and the airport was dead at our end. After a little mishap with the person who checked us in not actually checking us in we were able to get our boarding passes and hang out with my family until we all had to leave, their flight was delayed until 10:30 too! Our seats reclined a lot, we had head rests that folded out so we could actually sleep, and there was a crazy amount of leg room. Boom! I managed to stay awake long enough to take off (take off and landings are my favorite!), woke up to eat the best/worst cheese sandwich with mustard ever, had some pineapple juice, and then woke up again to land. Doesn't get much better than that! Unlike our departing flight we knew exactly where to go and found our car pretty easy after a small hike to the parking garage. There we sadly gave the machine the rest of the money we had for parking. Boo!

Our flight out of Vegas was much more exciting/exhausting/stressful. We ended up leaving late from our house because that's just how we do. Side note, Chad was running something back in the house last minute and Rukia made a last ditch effort to dart out to the car to come with us. So sorry sad pup! After getting stuck in traffic and finally figuring out where to park we just had to use the airport parking rather than drive around and look for something better. We crossed our fingers that the $7-14 rate would be closer to $7.... wrong. We jumped out of the car and made it through the parking garage all the way through the airport to check in only to NOT find our airline. Huh? We finally found someone to ask and they informed us we needed to be in Terminal 2. Sweet. We then followed the signs to terminal 2, which took us all the way back across the airport, up and down multiple elevators and escalators and then finally to a shuttle stop. We did not have time for this. We were cutting it way to close so we decided to run. Yes, run. This isn't the first time I have ran through an airport and sadly I don't think it'll be my last. I was not properly dressed for this but I just kept on truckin' as my pants kept sliding further and further down and my shirt kept ridding further and further up. I was a sweaty, red mess but after running all the way back where we came from and then outside and down to Terminal 2 we finally made it to check our bag with 15 minutes to spare! Upside? No waiting to board. We literally found our terminal and they had finished boarding the special people and were moving on to us regular people. Downside? No time to buy a magazine or fill water bottles or buy the ever important candy. Luckily we had lots of drinks served and I was prepared with a carry on full of food. Not too shabby.

 

 

Now it's Monday and I'm feeling better than I thought I would. Jet Lag was a beast Saturday and Sunday. We pretty much laid around all weekend catching up on shows, eating candy, drinking red bull, and snuggling with our very needy animals. There was a pizza in there as well but Rukia ate half of it when we left to get the candy... Pretty sad when the most nutritious thing you've eaten in days is a pizza. Now I'm at work and Chad is running errands, making phone calls and paying bills. After a great dinner made by Chad we are hoping to get back on a 'reasonable' schedule. Back on schedule that is until Jared comes to visit in a week :)

It was an amazing trip that we would have never been able to go on if it weren't for my awesome parents, Thanks Mom and Dad, you're the best!