Ten Things I Love About Hawaii

...in no particular order.

1. Painting my fingernails.

Ry laughed at me when I told him this was one of my favorite things about Hawaii :) He just doesn’t understand! A nursing student is not allowed to paint her fingernails, and since I am a nursing student 8 months out of the year, I love the four months that I get to paint my nails! I used to hate polish on my fingernails, but a friend forever changed my mind last summer while we were in Hawaii.

2. Feeding geckos.

I just discovered this this year and I absolutely love it! It is definitely one of the most entertaining things to do! They are so stinking adorable. If you don’t believe me or even if you do… watch the videos! Those little stinkers are the worst sharers ever. If another one even gets close the first with start to freak out haha.

3. The ocean…obviously.

this beautiful picture was taken by Andy

I LOVE the ocean. Hate the salt, but love the water! I absolutely love snorkeling and boogie boarding and scuba diving and playing in the waves. Anything and everything. It is so much fun.

4. Sunsets.

The sunsets are absolutely gorgeous and I so wish that a camera could truly capture the beauty of one. So amazing.

this beautiful picture was taken by Tarah

5. Wearing less makeup.

 

Yup. I wear hardly any makeup here and love it! I still put the base and mascara on, but most days I go without eye shadow and eyeliner and I love it. I love not having to take the time to put that crap on and that no one here really cares. Don’t ask me why I don’t just do that at home…I don’t really know why, but I just don’t.

6. The pineapple.

The pineapple at home does not compare to the pineapple here. No “buts” about it.  It is so dang delicious. One of our favorite meals here involves grilling pineapple. Mmmm.  The pineapple is amazing!! If it didn’t give me cankers I would definitely eat it every single day.

7. Mary Higgins Clark.

I LOVE this woman’s murder mysteries. I don’t know why, but they are just great. I never have time to read a novel during the school year and it makes me kind of sad! So…my sweet Ry guy took me to the D.I. and we found a few Mary Higgins Clark books for 25₵ each :) Sure beats the late fees at the library! I’m a little bummed though because it’s only three weeks into the summer and I’m almost done with one of the books. I only brought two :( bad idea. So uh…if you ever need a gift idea, go to the D.I. and get me every Mary Higgins Clark book you can find! I promise I wouldn’t be offended that it’s used. In fact, I’d be offended if it wasn’t used! Anything more than 25₵ for a book I will read one time is way too much.

8. Sea turtles.

I love them :) When we lived on Oahu last summer there was a beach super close to our house that we would go to and there would always be two or three turtles there. Sometimes they were even up on the beach resting! (so cool, but holy crap they smell bad!) We would climb on the rocks and pick a ton of seaweed and go in the water and they would come up to us and eat it out of our hands!! They are so dang awesome. Every time we go snorkeling we look for them. I don’t know what it is about them, but they are such neat creatures. One day last summer we were snorkeling and for some reason decided that we wanted to try to ride one. They are pretty dang hard to hold on to! So slippery. “I like turtles” too.

9. Not doing my hair.

Okay, now I just sound plain lazy…but this one I have a good reason for! I’m not the nicest to my hair and I really want it to grow out, so this is my chance to try to be a little bit nicer to it!! And it’s not so much that I choose every day to not do it, but we usually get done playing in the morning and I don’t have much time to shower and get ready, hence, less makeup and air drying my hair :) poor Ry guy. I try to make up for it by getting all done up on Sunday at least. I figure he’d rather play for an hour longer than for us to go home early so I can shower and put make up on and do my hair. Right? Again, as Ry says, “it’s okay Liv, you don’t need to justify it”.

10. Spending time with my sweet husband.

Probably my most favorite thing of all is getting to spend so much time with Ry. During school our schedules are both usually so crazy and opposite that we hardly get to see each other. It’s so nice to have a few months where we wake up at the same time, go to work at the same time, get done with work at the same time, and go to sleep at the same time. When we were first married there would be days that we wouldn’t see each other for three or so days because I would wake up early and he would get off from work late so I would be asleep when he got home and he would be asleep when I left for work. It was depressing and I hope that it’s never as bad as it was those first few months of marriage. It’s so much fun to be with him so much!! I'm so grateful he's mine for eternity...

 

 

Friday, May 20. Weightless.

The feeling of weightlessness is amazing. Love it. It’s one thing to get that feeling when you’re floating in a pool, and another to get that feeling when you’re floating 30 feet underwater. Love it!

On Friday we got to go scuba diving! Even though I had done it before, for some reason I was nervous. We got on the boat and I started to get really nauseous. I went and sat on the edge of the boat, you know, just in case…but right when I felt like I really might lose it a group of the certified divers were swimming right below where I was sitting. Drats. I held it in, no worries! I’m not sure my boss would have been that thrilled if I had thrown up on his head :) The second I got in the water I felt better though, so that was good.

Because we aren’t certified we had to pass off a few skills about a foot under water with an instructor…which I don’t really mind. It’s a nice refresher course on how to get water out of my goggles in case it gets in :)

Scuba diving was awesome. I saw some really neat fish, coral, eels, and a giant conch shell! I can’t really put into words how awesome it is to observe the undersea world.

Getting down was pretty tough for me both times that we’ve gone scuba diving. It absolutely kills my left ear. I don’t know if I can’t get it to pop or if I’m trying too hard to get it to pop…either way it is pretty painful. I’m grateful that the pain usually goes away after a bit though.  I wish I had more to say or pictures to show, but I don’t. To put it just plain and simple, it was AWESOME.



da group



Saturday, May 21. Manta Rays!

Saturday night was so dang awesome! So we had seen signs and heard of tours that people would take at night to snorkel and see manta rays. Well…our boss somehow figured out that for the tour you were basically paying $150 for a two minute boat ride and flashlights. So we just skipped the tour and rented waterproof flashlights! Totally the way to go.  We went where we heard the manta rays usually were at about 9 or 10pm. Kind of scary to snorkel at night. Luckily it was right behind a hotel and they left their flood lights the whole time we were there so we could see where to get in and out of the water. It would have been terrifying if those lights weren’t on.

For some reason I would get a little nauseous because it was dark and the flashlight wasn’t 100% steady so it would go out of focus, in focus, out of focus, etc. But not too bad. We swam out just a little bit and found a giant manta ray. It was SO awesome. I had never seen one before! I guess that light attracts plankton and manta rays eat plankton, so they would come into the bay. It was so so cool to watch them swim around with their ginormous mouths open and eat. When their mouth is open you can see almost all the way through it! You can see all the bones that make up its body…pretty much. In some parts there was SO much plankton. It kind of creeped me out because I could feel it on my skin. When we got home I was showering and when I would rub my skin the plankton on it would start to glow! Blue. I think it was the same stuff that I saw the day we swam across the huge bay. So cool!  Anyways. Words really could not describe how neat this was, so I will try to post some videos that Andy took!

Sunday, May 22. The move.

We went back to the ward we went to the week before and I absolutely loved it. I have never been to a ward that has been that welcoming and loving. So many people came up to us and welcomed us and recognized us and told us it was good to see us again. They are saints. I want to be like that someday! Maybe one day when I have more permanently moved into a ward and gotten to know everyone…then I will know who is a visitor and who has lived there for ten years. Someday!

After church we packed up and moved to the other side of the island. It was a long drive, but it was beautiful. Ry and I saw an amazing waterfall and drove through some amazing forest.

A while after we got to Hilo we drove back towards where we came from and went to the observatory. It was up about 9,000 feet in elevation and dropped about 25 degrees in temperature. Brr! I was in pants and a hoodie and I was FREEZING! Who’d a thought that it could be so chilly in paradise? It was amazing up there. There were big telescopes set up and we got to see Saturn and some really need groups of stars. This place is the only place in the United States that you can see the southern cross and the north star at the same time. I saw them both. So neat. There were a bajillion stars! Ry found “my” star :) sweetheart. It was a good time.

Poor Ry guy was freeeeezing!



it made me laugh :)



Monday, May 23. Running.

Ran. Well, attempted it anyways. We did about two miles in the slowest time I have ever run in my life. BUT. That’s okay! I’ll get there someday.  We ran down to the ocean to see what our coast is like. It was about a 15 foot drop off made out of lava rock. Not somewhere we could chill on the beach at…but beautiful nonetheless.

The second we got home we jumped in the pool and hung out there for a while. It felt a-mazing. We did the same run on Tuesday and jumped in the pool again. Love it.

Wednesday, May 25. I love Ryan.

Wednesday reminded me again how much I love and care and worry about my sweet Ry guy. Tarah and I were working when Andy came downstairs and told us that the sales reps hadn’t been able to get a hold of Brandon or Ryan (they were together) to schedule appointments and that they hadn’t showed up to a job they were supposed to be at an hour or two before. I immediately started to try to call both of their cell phones. Neither of them answered my repeated calls. A while later Andy came down and told us that they had somehow gotten stuck on a dirt road. I have a creative mind when it comes to worrying. Did he mean stuck on the side of a dirt road in a ditch? Did they get in a car accident which caused them to get stuck on a dirt road where there happened to be no cell phone service? So many thoughts racing through my mind. I continued to call both of their cell phones with no success. Tarah and I then came to the conclusion that there is no way you just get stuck on a dirt road unless you were REALLY messing around. Frustration started to add to the worry. FINALLY Brandon answered his phone. He didn’t have great service and he couldn’t talk long because it was starting to get pretty dark and they were still stuck, but he promised me that him and Ry were okay and that they would call me the second they could.

Turns out a GPS told them to turn onto this nasty road. They started to go down it and it slowly got worse and worse. They didn’t know if they should turn around or keep going, so they kept going. It got the point that they didn’t even know how long the road was so they decided to run to see when it ended. They ran about a mile (in slippers, aka flip flops)  and saw the end and ran back. They decided they would rather just try to drive the rest of it rather than turn around and re-drive everything they had just driven. Poor guys. It took them three hours to drive the four mile road. I was so relieved when Ry called to say that they were off the nasty road and that they both were okay. Poor boys.

I love my Ryan to the sun and back a bajillion times x a bajillion.

New and Improved!

I decided to change our blog up a bit...I'm kind of proud of myself for figuring it out! I had a cute background all chosen and everything and Ryan was disappointed that it wasn't Hawaiian themed...so I let him choose the background for the next four months :)

Welp! Somehow 8 months flew by and we landed back in Hawaii for another summer of work and play. This time I am a little more determined to "journal" aka blog about it. I used to be the BEST journaler! I don't know what happened. Oh well. I can always renew a goal, right?

Monday, May 8th

We flew out at 10:45am. I am proud and RELIEVED to say that we didn't miss any of our flights!! We made it here in 14 hours rather than...30 or so? (if you don't know the story behind that, please see last year’s Hawaii post).  The flights went well. I was a little disappointed that we didn't fly Hawaiian Airlines because they at least fed us on the 7 hour flight. We didn't even get peanuts or pretzels! Just drinks. Good thing I learned my lesson from last year and didn't just pack two dozen muffins. I was prepared with sandwiches and snacks galore. However, I don't remember Hawaiian Airlines playing movies throughout the flight. I'm sure they did, but this year I got to watch two movies while Ry slept away. Yay for melatonin.

When we finally got here we stopped at Walmart and got the cheapest groceries we could. Totinos pizzas, ramen noodles, and frozen burritos. We caved and also bought cereal, milk, and bread too. They are like twice the price here than at home! Anyways....this isn't all that interesting so I'll move on. We found our house and went to bed!

The place we're staying is pretty dang awesome. From our deck I can hardly see any other homes. I can see a church and one other garage and that's about it because there is SO much vegetation. I absolutely love it. Gorgeous. Of course with so many plants come spiders...not so lovely. I think they build new webs about every day for us to walk through when we go down the stairs outside. I've learned to let someone else go first and walk behind them :)



Ry leaning over our deck railing




Our favorite place to eat breakfast

 There are also a TON of geckos and I absolutely love them. They're adorable. Tarah and I like to put cookies on the deck and watch them lick them all day...they aren't very good sharers though. If one gets there, he scares all the rest away. Stinkers.

Now for my most depressing moment here...I accidently squished a gecko :( I felt so dang bad. I closed the bathroom door and he happened to be inbetween the hinges. I didn't even realize it either! We were in the kitchen and looked over and were like "hey, a gecko!" So I went over to look at him and as I got closer....yeah. Depressing. Moving on.



Can you see the lizard? :(

 Tuesday

I was kind of proud of us! Last year for the first week we woke up at like 11am (which is 3pm at home)…kinda backwards if you ask me. This year we were normal! We woke up around 6am (10am Utah time…which is pretty good considering we were awake until 3am Utah time)! I was glad to get up and get going. I was determined to get to a beach asap. This island is a little different when it comes to beaches…on Oahu there are good beaches everywhere, but here we kind of have to search for them because so much of the coast is lava rock, so sand it not as common.

We went to a beach about a half hour away. It was pretty cool…because of the active volcano on the island the sand was pretty dark…pretty grey.  We played spike ball for a while which was a ton of fun. I really want to buy one. After two games of spike ball we got in the water. I love the ocean. I hate the salt…but I love the water. We also snorkeled for a bit. I love it. I could spend hours looking at fish and coral. I am terrified of sea urchins though. I hate when the water is not deep enough and they’re everywhere!

Scary sea urchin!!

Started working on Tuesday also. I was nervous that I had forgotten everything and that Tarah would have to reteach me. She has been very patient with me at reminding me how to do things J but it hasn’t been as bad as I thought it would be! Love it.

Wednesday

We went snorkeling again J I’ve kinda learned that it might be the thing to do while we are on this island. I’m okay with that! I would like to boogie, but there aren’t really good beaches for that here. We went to a different beach, but the sand was just as dark. We saw turtles! But the turtle nazi’s were there and every time we got close they would say “we ask that you stay at least ten feet away from the turtles”. Lame. But the snorkeling was good. Lots of fish!

Thursday

We went dolphin searching. Failed. This was the first time I went snorkeling that we got in water so deep I couldn’t see the bottom. It was a weird feeling to be completely surrounded by water and not be able to see the bottom. It scared me. Ryan and Brandon found an underwater cave/bridge thing and Brandon decided that he wanted to swim under it and he did…he said it was awesome so Ryan did it too. Unfortunately when Ry was coming back up he didn’t see some rocks and scraped up his back pretty good L poor kid.

Friday

We did nada. Which is sometimes nice too.

Saturday

Company barbeque! It was nice to have a GOOD meal. Mmmm.

Sunday

We found a church close by and all went. The ward members there were SO unbelievably nice! The second we walked in people were welcoming us and shaking our hands and kissing our cheeks and putting leis around our necks! So nice. The lady sitting in front of us turned around during sacrament and gave us all Juicy Fruit J so sweet. Church was awesome. Loved it.

After church we went for a drive and stopped at a few beaches around the island. It was nice, Tarah and I took naps on the beach while the boys played spike ball for a bit. When they were done with that beach we went to a different one. On our way I noticed a van pulled over on the side of the road and saw that there was a cave-looking thing so we pulled over! It was a huge lava field and it had like collapsed in...it was pretty sweet.




Ry and I kinda look like we're glowing :)

 

Hiding my white shirt behind Tarah so I don't glow :)


To get to the next beach we drove on a crazy bumpy road (oh yeah, did I mention I was sitting on Ry’s lap in the front seat because six people squished in one car?). Not comfy. After we drove on that road for 30 minutes we walked over a lava field for what we guessed was a mile and a half. Lava rock is really poky, and we were all in flip flops. Also not comfy.

lava field

The beach was beautiful though. There was nobody else there, which is always nice. The guys and Tarah had fun snapping pictures while jumping off a ledge. The sunset was also beautiful.

 

When we left our car to walk to the beach we noticed a sign that said the park closed at 7pm and that we needed to be to our cars by 6:30pm. Well we didn’t get to our car until 7pm and when we reached the gate that nobody noticed a half hour late there was a car waiting for us. We kind of got chewed out because the lady was supposed to be home with her family by then. I felt bad.

Monday, May 16 2011

I hate running. I want to love it! But I just don’t! I used to…then I ran 13 miles of up and down and tripping and peeing my pants. And just like that I did not run again. So depressing. I am kicking myself for that!! Anyways, I finally got the motivation to wake up early, put on my running shoes, and go for a jog with Ry. About died. For some reason I thought that when we got here because we are close to sea level I would be able to *poof* run again. Not so, not so. I am determined to keep working on it and to not make the same mistake as last time and run on just flat stuff. Good thing that is impossible here, huh? The whole island is hills!

Tuesday

Amazing. When we got here we discovered that there was a temple on this island. We had no idea! We made big plans to go while we were here. They were dashed when we learned that the temple does not rent clothing L we didn’t bring ours. But then our hopes were revived when one of the sales reps knocked into the temple president! He said he could probably get a few sets of clothes for us! So we showed up at 7am Tuesday morning ready to go. I love the people here. They were so nice to let us borrow temple workers and missionaries’ clothes. I love the temple so much! It was such an amazing experience and I can’t wait to go to the one on Oahu!

Wednesday

Oh gosh. This day was…quite the experience. Remember how I said we went dolphin searching and failed? Well we heard that they were often in a bay close to our house early in the morning, so we tried to give it another go. When we got there we stood on a wall for a while to see if we could spot any. We spotted a few big splashes that were out of place and we finally saw some fins! So we threw our gear on and headed out on the adventure. Well we got in and swam and swam and swam. Nothing. We pulled our heads out of the water to see if we could see anything, but we couldn’t.

On the other side of the bay there is a monument dedicated to Captain Cook. A lot of people rent kayaks to get out to the monument and snorkel around it because the snorkeling was supposed to be really good. Well, by about this time we were half way to the monument so we decided to just go all the way so that we could at least snorkel and take a break. So we kept swimming and swimming and swimming…this was the deepest water that I have ever snorkeled in. It was kind of scary at first, and I still don’t love it, but it wasn’t too bad. The only thing I could see were floaties (I have no idea what they were and I don’t care to know) and glowing blue things. Really. Glowing blue things. I had NO idea what they were and I don’t know why I was scared of them, but I was! I thought they would sting me. I think being scared created a fake pain on my stomach…because I was so nervous and then all of the sudden my stomach started to sting and I was sure that they had gotten me! But nope. Nothing.

So we kept swimming and swimming and swimming. And finally made it!! Ry’s guess was that it was two miles. Doesn’t sound far, but swimming that is a killer. I need to look at a map and see if I can figure out how far it really was. Well we got there and climbed onto the wall by the monument and rested and brainstormed. There was absolutely no way we could swim all the way back. We contemplated commandeering some kayaks but decided against it…then we saw some tour boats conveniently dropping people off right by us to snorkel. So Ry and Brandon jumped back in the water and swam over to one of the boats…as they got there the lady looked down at them and said, “let me guess…you guys swam too far and decided you might as well go all the way and decided that it’s too far to swim back?” Ummm, yup, pretty much! She was super nice and gave us a ride more than half way back! Woot. Before we took off we got to snorkel for a bit with her group, which we decided we better dang well snorkel to get something out of that adventure. It actually was really good snorkeling too…we saw some awesome coral and fish and even an eel!! The eel was my favorite part. I would not mind an underwater camera.



Google image. This is the bay we swam across