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