Aloha (picture overload)

Oh Hawaii..... How I love thee. We have been back from our trip for 3 weeks. It was exactly what we needed. No jobs, no pets, no house, no kiddo... just us and some gorgeous scenery. Here's the view from our balcony of our hotel room.. amazingness!

Our first full day we did a spa day... I got a massage and facial from a middle aged guy from Brooklyn living in Hawaii.... it was as weird as it sounds.... not the best experience I've ever had but I don't know that it's possible to have a bad massage when you're in Hawaii.... well this one was pretty bad.... I was sore for days afterwards. But part of the package was a nice lunch on the water which happened to be the best part for both of us.

The salad was awesome and the view was absolutely gorgeous.

After that we stopped to pick up some groceries and in the time it took for ust to go in and come out of the store it started pouring like I've never seen. We had to run from the store to our rental car and then from our car to our hotel room, which considering it was our first day we didn't quite know how to get from the parking lot to our room so we took the long way and got soaked. So soaked that our paper shopping bags ripped and our groceries fell. We were both laughing so hard and I couldn't help but remember the early days of Abe and Krista.... young and carefree... sigh :)

Fair warning you will see lots of pictures of me with a drink in my hands.... As Rihanna would say "I'll drink to that." We foolishly bought some rum and POG (pineapple orange guava juice) from costco thinking we'd drink that and splurge on a few drinks while we were out. But when the boss is paying, it's not necessary to be so cheap so we ended up leaving behind an entire gallon of POG and half a bottle of rum and told the girl who checked us out that the staff was free to have a party in our room with all the stuff we had to leave behind.

Anyhoo here's me drinking

Had to have sushi in Hawaii. Abe was in heaven!

At the sushi restaurant we saw on the menu Molokai sweet potato cheesecake.... sounds yummy right? Well this is what arrived at our table so we asked the waitress if she made a mistake and brought out blueberry cheesecake and she looked at us all weird and said no, sweet potatoes from Molokai are purple. Oh I'm sorry, totally should have known they were a totally different color and taste like blueberries. Can't complain though because it was delish!

And yes, my non-drinking husband even had a few drinks on our trip... aparently I make him want to drink... hmmmm funny how that works :) I kid, I kid.

Next day we went for a walk along Kaanapali beach. We saw this guy standing there with hands in a prayer position. Assumed he was meditating... right on. But when we were on our way back and passed the same spot about 20 mins later he was still there.... hadn't moved. Next morning we went for our walk and same guy same place!!! I assume he had to have taken a break but who knows. Had to get a pic though.

We were up early the next day for a packed day. First stop... Helicopter ride! More on that later, but did I mention we got a mustang convertable as our rental car?! So fun! At least it was fun when you're riding along the beach but it just confirmed that I wouldn't want one of those cars. Too low to the ground and completely impractical for us but fun for the moment!

On to the helicopter ride. Now I must preface this with saying I'm sure there are many people who have taken helicopter rides and really enjoyed them. I, however, can honestly say it was my least favorite part of the trip. It was awful. I had to close my eyes the whole time so I didn't lose my breakfast. I didn't know at the time, probably because my eyes were closed, but Abe was feeling the same way. When we got off the helicopter and got a good look at him, he was so pale I thought he might pass out. As he so eloquently put it "If I ever want to pay $500 to get sick I now know what to do." I warn any would-be helicopter riders that if you even get remotely sick on a windy road, a boat, anything DON'T DO IT! Both of us said that if we would have been on that helicopter even 10 minutes more we probably would have had to be one of the "very few people that ever has to use those air sick bags" as our pilot said. Yeah right so few people and yet 1/3 of your passengers had them in hand ready to go. We did get some pretty good pictures from the Iphone.

This is my "sweet Jesus I'm so happy to be done with this" face. I know we're both pretty white on a daily basis, but this is the whitest I've seen us and we were in Hawaii of all places.

When we were walking back inside the building afterwards one of the ladies that was with us in the helicopter started talking to the people in the line to go on after us and when asked if she got dizzy she said that she didn't at all and it kind of felt like riding in an elevator. Really lady? An elevator? I've never vomitted in an elevator but maybe it's just me.

After this we had scheduled a zipline. After this fiasco I was thinking "oh hell no." But we laid down for a while on some benches then grabbed a bite to eat and started to feel better an hour or so later. So we decided to go ahead and do it. I'm so glad we did. It was so fun!



Had to get a cheesy shot of us holding hands :)


The next day was a lazy day. And rightly so after the packed day of adventure before. Plus we turned on the news and saw that there were flash flood warnings on Kaanapali beach and to get to high ground. We figured several stories up in a hotel was considered high ground. We did go see a magic show that night in Lahaina that was recommended to us by someone and turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip. The package included dinner for 2, 2 drinks a piece and then a magic/comdey show with 2 acts. The food was awesome, the drinks were amazing and the show was surprisingly good. I thought a magic show would be kind of lame in Hawaii, it's not exactly a Vegas atmosphere but it was pretty darn funny. If you're ever in Maui check out Warren & Annabelle's magic show in Lahaina. Here I am drinking again.

The next day we rented some snorkeling gear and went out near black rock. I have a fear of dark water where I can't see far in front of me... that and sharks so I wasn't too keen on this idea but we got so close to some sea turtles that were just hanging out right next to shore. One of the highlights of the trip for sure. We rented an underwater camera too. I forgot to mention that I ruined my brand new digital camera on the first day of this trip so most of the pics with the exception of the underwater camera are from Abe's Iphone. I won't go into the details but it involved the camera, my purse and a waterbottle that emptied itself out in my purse thanks to a loose cap.

Couldn't pass up a luau while we were there. Although honestly we were a little dissapointed with it. Kind of a cheesy MC and it didn't help that the creepy guy sitting next to us (see guy in the hat next to Abe) waited until Abe got up to get food to tell me I "had really pretty eyes.... but don't tell your husband I said that." Ummmm... check please!

Our last full night in Hawaii. Had to end it with a sunset.

The trip of a lifetime that's for sure. I look forward to a lifetime of getaways, vacations and adventures together, but for now I'm happy making memories with our daughter and with our other children in the future. This trip taught me that as much as I think I need to get away from time to time, the things I think I need to get away from are the things I miss the most when I'm gone. I have a pretty amazing life. Until next time Hawaii... Aloha!

Black Friday

I will forever shiver when I hear the term Black Friday thanks to my first Black Friday experience this year. Don't get me wrong, it was worth it for the deals I got and I'll probably do it again next year and the year after that until Farrah and any other kids we have are older. But man oh man was it crazy out there.

I wasn't even really planning on going out but on Thanksgiving we were at my mom's house and after the meal we were looking at the ads. My mom goes a little nuts when it comes to Christmas presents (sorry mom) so she was studying each ad for more and more present ideas for Farrah. Since little miss has a birthday in December in addition to Christmas, I wanted to try to get her birthday presents at some black friday deals as well as her Christmas present.

My aunt wanted some ideas for a birthday gift for Farrah and I said a kitchen set and we found this awesome deal in the Toys R Us ad for black friday... on sale for only $70! Reg. $100So my aunt gave me a check for it and asked me to pick it up. Now I really had to go for the Black Friday deal because otherwise I was going to have to come out of pocket $30 for a gift that was supposed to be from my aunt so I went from just perusing the ads to preparing for a long night of crazy people and crowds.

So I asked my brother-in-law if he would come with me... best decision I made because there's no way I could have carried everything by myself, plus I had someone to talk to to pass the time while we were waiting in all the lines.

So we got to Toys R Us about an hour after they opened on Thanksgiving night... so I guess technically it was Black Thursday. It took us about a half hour to get into the store... not so bad I guess. Once we were in I saw the line to pay and I knew we had to hurry and grab what we came for and quickly get in line. The line weaved in and out of the aisles of the store. My brother-in-law grabbed the kitchen, I grabbed a food set to go with the kitchen, a cash register, and then this slide on sale for $25. I'm hoping it will provide hours of fun for Farrah when it's raining outside :)

Then we proceeded to the line to check out. That took about an hour and a half to get through. And there was a fight in the aisle over for an apparent line cutting incident. Here we are trying to keep a positive attitude despite the craziness.... I had to take at least one pic to document the experience.

Oh and while we were waiting in line in one of the aisles I saw this gem....

Thankfully they weren't sold out or I don't know what I would have done :)

We then took off to Target for me to get a portable DVD player with 2 monitors that attached to the back of the headrests in my car. We take long drives when we visit family and as Farrah has gotten older it has become increasingly difficult to entertain her in the car. It was on sale for $99, regularly $200. They had the line wrapping around the back of the store just to get inside. That was the worst part of the whole Target experience. There were people walking up the line selling hot chocolate and tamales to the people waiting (not a half bad idea if you ask me.) And then there was a guy that had a puppy in his trenchcoat that he was trying to sell as he was walking up and down the line. It was pretty much a circus outside the store. When I got inside it took us a while to find what we were looking for because the electronics section was a zoo. But the line to pay was really short. Like I'm pretty sure I wait longer than that at a Target on a regular Monday morning.

I should have known it would be too easy. When I got up to pay she rang it up and it came up full price. Oh heck no. I explained to her it was supposed to be $99 and it was in the ad. She seemed confused but then it appeared a lightbulb went off and she said "Oh you mean this one?" as she pulled a box out from below her register. It looked exactly the same as what I had except the monitor size on the box she had was 2 inches bigger. She scanned it and sure enough it was half price! Then she said "you know you're really lucky because I believe this is the last one and I had someone come through my line not long before you and they thought it was too expensive so I put it down her with the go backs." Score! The Black Friday gods must have been looking out for me at 2am the day after Thanksgiving.

We were going to go to Kohl's but thought we should end on a make.

That, and we were just really exhausted.

All in all, it was worth it. I think I ended up saving just under $200 and didn't pay full price on anything. I think it's worth it if you have young kids but I don't see the point if you're not buying larger quantities of stuff.

I'm done with most of my Christmas Shopping. Just a couple more people to buy for. Hopefully Cyber Monday proves to be a good day to do some shopping as well :)

Anyone else have any Black Friday Stories?

A much overdue Halloween post

I know, I know, I'm behind on my posts. But my pre-New Years resolution is to be more on top of my posts.

So Halloween was pretty Anti-climactic. My father-in-law and sister-in-law came to visit that week and my sister-in-law has always referred to Farrah as her little cupcake, so when she saw a cupcake costume at Old Navy she called and asked if she could get it for her. Of course I was more than happy to have someone check something off my to-do list for me and thought it sounded adorable so when they came to visit I was excited to see it on Farrah. She had other plans though. Apparently she hated it. I say "apparently" because I wasn't there when they put it on her and when I came back it was already off because she got that upset when they put it on her. They snapped a few photos so I was able to get the idea of what it looked like. My vision of my smiling baby in her Halloween costume visiting her neighbors to get some candy will have to wait until next year.

That night my church was putting on a neighborhood Trunk-or-Treat and I volunteered to decorate my trunk and pass out candy to all the little kids. My hubby showed up with Farrah in the "costume" she selected..... a 2 piece Dora swimsuit and dress up clear heels that light up. Needless to say she didn't stay long due to the clothes to temperature ratio.

Next year will have to be our first "real" Halloween with Farrah. Let's just hope she can keep her costume on long enough to get some good pictures.

What I'm thankful for this year

I could go on for days but here are some of the highlights

1. People who still read my blog even though it's been over a month since I last posted :)

2. Having my in-laws visiting for the week. I'm one of the few lucky people that actually loves having them visit.

3. My house. Although there are many times I get frustrated with projects that need to be done or things going on in the neighborhood that make me want to move, there are times I stop and look around and can't believe this house is actually ours. How did we get so lucky to be able to own a home, especially one that has been good to us and our sweet babe.

4. My "other kids." We have 4 pets that, knock on wood, have all been pretty healthy. While I sometimes complain about the work involved in taking care of them especially with a toddler, they bring us such joy and I am grateful for the joy they bring Farrah. Pure joy.

5. My parents and sister. While we haven't always agreed on everything, my parents have been through some life "biggies" this year and we have all come together for support. And my sister is working hard to make her dreams come true. I couldn't be more proud of her.

6. Our trip to Hawaii. Yes it already happened, and yes I haven't blogged about it but it was awesome and I will get to blogging about it. The main hold up is I broke my new digital camera on the trip and so the only pictures we really got were from the hubbs' Iphone and I'm waiting for him to upload them. But for now the cliff notes version is it was awesome!

7. An absolutely amazing year for our careers. A free car (which by the way I'm especially grateful for considering Abe's car just died and we're now living on one car until we figure out what to do), a promotion for me, and ending with a promotion for Abe! We finally feel like instead of treading water we can actually make some progress when it comes to our financial goals. This one was a biggie for us this year.

8. Finding a wonderful church. This had been on my "things to do" list for a while and we found an awesome church that we enjoy attending, and Farrah can go to a great "preschool" while we're there.

9. Friends. We really have some amazing friends. And we've become so much closer to them all this year (and it's not just because they are geographically closer to us). I realize not everyone has the fortune of having "lifer" friends like I do. I know these girls aren't going anywhere no matter what happens in our lives. They're the kind of people you could call at 3 in the morning and ask them to come pick you up 3 hours away and there would be no questions asked. Love them.

10. My husband. Bleh.... as soon as I typed that my eyes got all watery. Absolutely the most perfect person in this world for me. No one understands me better, deals with me better (love you :), or could be a better partner for me as we make our way through this crazy thing called life. The most amazing father to Farrah and I thank my lucky stars everyday he came into my life via a little place called Quiznos :)

11. And lastly, my sweet, sweet girl Farrah. I have a feeling I'm going to say each year that it was the most fun year with her... well maybe not when she's a teenager :) But she has really turned into such an amazing little girl and she's not even 2 yet. I'm amazed by her on a daily basis. She teaches me how to be tough, not to take things so seriously, how to enjoy the little things, and how to truly enjoy life. Love you baby girl! Thank you for being my biggest blessing!