Happy Halloween!

We hope you all have a wonderful Halloween, full of mostly treats!

Don't worry; there are costume pictures coming, but I won't be taking them until this evening before the festivities begin... Happy Halloween!

Some birthday pictures...

So, I'm really late with Drew's, but I finally got caught up on all my photo editing and I finished Drew and Bryn's birthday shoots. Head over to my photography blog if you want to see more!

Aloha!

Yes, I've been very slow in getting these on here, but I wanted to edit the pictures from our trip to Hawaii and I've had several things I had to edit first. But they're finally done and I'm so excited to share! Brent and I had so much fun! Plus, this was our first real trip somewhere together, so it was the perfect present to ourselves for our 9th anniversary.

We stayed in downtown Waikiki, and as you can see from our balcony view, we were just a few buildings away from the beach. It was sweet...

The other great thing about our hotel? It was surrounded by the International Market Place. We went there almost every day, whether to do some souvenir shopping, for dinner or even to see one of Honolulu's prestigious hula schools perform (it was awesome, by the way). So fun to wander and brouse, try different foods and even some Dole whip. Yesssss....

Even though Brent was busy with clinic time several of the days I was there, we still got to go do all the things you're supposed to do when you go to Hawaii. The experience I thought was the most interesting was Pearl Harbor. It was incredible! We didn't bother with going to the Arizona memorial (we couldn't, actually, because Brent had to be in dress uniform for that), but we visited the USS Missouri battleship.

I am enamored with WWII history, so it was really incredible to be in the place that brought the United States into that war, and to be able to see where it ended in the Pacific. This battleship was truly impressive in all it could do and all that it had done...

This was the marker on the deck where Gen. MacArthur and several others signed with Japanese dignitaries to make their surrender official at the end of the war. It was humbling to stand there and listen as our tour guide repeated some of MacArthur's speech that day. We also saw a submarine come into the harbor, and the sailors were all standing on top of the sub, saluting the Missouri as they came in. Pretty cool...

We also made the trip up to Laie to the Polynesian Culture Center. I have to say overall, that was one thing I could have skipped. It was cool to see the little villages...

And I did get to take the hula lesson I really wanted to take (although I was kind of disappointed -- it was very touristy and I wanted to learn something about traditional hula).

We enjoyed the buffet, although I wasn't really impressed with that either. It was, however, so much fun to see Brent try to immitate the tikis. Hehe...

It was worth the drive, though, to see the temple. (Plus the drive was spectacular along the way.) The temple was wonderful to see, even though we didn't have time to go inside.

We also made it up to the North Shore to do some snorkeling. We went to a little place called Shark's Cove (just to the left of the trees in this picture). It was a tide pool area big enough to swim in but sheltered from the waves. We saw so many neat tropical fish. We had lunch at this spectacular place called the Hula Cafe in Hale'iwa, and then it was so crowded on the tiny roads up by the North Shore, we decided to head back to our hotel.

The North Shore was pretty spectacular. I'd love to come back in the winter and see some awesome surfing...

Brent was so wonderful: He made reservations to this really fancy restaurant close to our hotel called Top of Waikiki. It was at the top of a big business building, and the restaurant actually rotates around in there, so you get to see the entire area in an hour. So we had this extremely fancy dinner to celebrate our ninth anniversary.

The view was spectacular (we went right around sunset, awesome), and we had sooooo much fun, but apparently I'm not really a fancy dinner kind of girl (unless maybe it's French food, I guess). The food was not good, at all, and I was really disappointed with their tiny menu. Brent really liked the appetizer, and I got a wonderful fondu for dessert, but our entrees -- well, I thought Brent's swordfish was decent, but my chicken stuff was disgusting. Oh well, it was still lots of fun!

We also got to go to the swapmeet at the Aloha Stadium, which was so fun! We went body surfing at Waikiki Beach, I got to go shopping at the Ala Moana Shopping Center and we spent plenty of time walking around, enjoying the local cuisine and scenery. I got all the jewelry I was hoping for, as well as a Hawaiian dress, and Brent got a ukelele -- a real one, not a toy -- and he's getting really good at playing it.

I have to say I was expecting it to be more picturesque, but I'm still pretty happy looking back at my pictures. I absolutely loved these little flowers that we saw growing everywhere, and there were lots of other beautiful flowers and plants. The mountains in the middle of the island were awesome, and the beaches were fabulous, especially along the east side of the island.

It was short, but for our first trip away from the kids, it was the perfect length. I'll definitely take more time for the next trip, and I'd like to see some of the other islands. It was so much fun!