Anniversary #4

Adam and I have been keeping ourselves pretty busy lately, so I'm just getting around to catching up on the blog. Adam started the new school year in the middle of September. He is taking Biochemistry, Physics Lab, Genetics, Pacific Natural History, a 1 credit research lecture, and auditing Spanish, so he's in the library a lot (or he should be). He's also still working at McDonald's but not as many hours as before.

I'm still substitute teaching, but on the days I don't get called, I babysit my friends' 8 month old daughter. I also just started a new position at the aquarium as a docent. I basically teach groups of kids in the classroom then take them out into the aquarium and teach them some more stuff. On top of that, I just got a position as an assistant coach of the BYU-Hawaii softball team. It's just volunteer, but the new coaching staff is awesome, we have some really good players, and we're expecting to go pretty far this year.

Okay, now for some pictures.



Adam and I just celebrated our 4th anniversary on Wednesday. When his parents came, they went on a catamaran trip in which they went snorkeling and were supposed to see some dolphins. Since they didn't see any, they were given return tickets that they gave to us, so we decided to use them on our anniversary. It was a really nice day. They actually took us to one of our favorite spots, Electric Beach. On the way back, we saw a big pod of Hawaiian spinner dolphins that swam right in front of us.



They made us wear those gay life vests if we were going snorkeling.



After our catamaran trip, we ate dinner then went to the Polynesian Cultural Center to go to the Haunted Lagoon, a haunted canoe ride. It was fun. That's about all with us for now.

Catching Up

It's been a couple of months since our last post, so here's some catching up for us. Adam turned 26 on October 25th. I threw a party for him and made him a special Monopoly cake upon his request. We also made pizzas, since that is Adam's favorite food.



Then was Halloween. Adam and I dressed up as Zack and Kelly from Saved By the Bell. I'm sure you can all guess who's idea that was. This is the only picture I took, but I'll post more of that when my friends send them.



Last week, Kahuku High School's football team (that's the local school that I work at) made it to the state championships, so we went to watch that at the University of Hawaii's stadium. Kahuku is kind of like Texas when it comes to football, so it was pretty exciting, even though they lost.



Other than that, we've just been doing a lot of babysitting Leo, our neighbor's kid, and getting ready for Christmas. I hope you all have a good Christmas.

Catching Up

It's been a couple of months since our last post, so here's some catching up for us. Adam turned 26 on October 25th. I threw a party for him and made him a special Monopoly cake upon his request. We also made pizzas, since that is Adam's favorite food.



Then was Halloween. Adam and I dressed up as Zack and Kelly from Saved By the Bell. I'm sure you can all guess who's idea that was. This is the only picture I took, but I'll post more of that when my friends send them.



Last week, Kahuku High School's football team (that's the local school that I work at) made it to the state championships, so we went to watch that at the University of Hawaii's stadium. Kahuku is kind of like Texas when it comes to football, so it was pretty exciting, even though they lost.



Other than that, we've just been doing a lot of babysitting Leo, our neighbor's kid, and getting ready for Christmas. I hope you all have a good Christmas.

Camping

Adam and I went camping in Hau'ula, which is less than 10 minutes from here. We went camping there before, but this time we (Adam) decided to take another trail that he had supposedly been to before. Instead of hiking for 45 minutes, it ended up being about 2 hours. The trip was definitely worth it in the end because of the beautiful views and the strawberry guava trees and passion fruit vines all around us.

This is me standing on one of the next campsites we are going to stay at.


A view of the ocean on the way down the mountain.


This was taken from our tent.

Most of the passion fruits were out of reach, so Adam "volunteered" to go get them for me.

That little orange thing is the passion fruit.


Here is Adam climbing the tree to pick it. It looks higher than it really was; although, the drop was pretty far.


And Adam made it safely back to the ground. I had never had that type of passion fruit before, but they were delicious, definitely the best I had ever had.

Liliko'i

This month, Adam and I have been able to spend a lot of time together. For the first part of the summer, he was working two jobs and going to school full-time. He started out this summer term doing the same thing, but then he felt like he needed a break, so he dropped one of his classes and quit one of his jobs. We haven't done a whole lot, but we have been relaxing and hanging out more.

One of the things we did was go snorkeling at Sunset Beach with our friends Matt and Sunshine. Since Sunset is known for it's heavy waves and shallow water, I always assumed that there wouldn't be much life on the ocean floor, but there were tons of corals and some pretty big fish.

We also started a blog where we rate movies. We've already watched and rated like 4 or 5 so far. It's been fun since we both love watching movies. In case you're wondering, the url is www.goodmovieratings.blogger.com.



We went to the pet store the other day and really liked the lovebirds they had there, so I brought one home on Wednesday on the way home from the aquarium. We named her Liliko'i, which means passion fruit in Hawaiian (because she's yellow like some passion fruit), and we call her Lily for short. She and Limu are getting along really well. They cuddle and groom each other all the time.

End of Summer

Nothing terribly exciting has been going on over here lately. On Saturday, we rented a carpet cleaner and, as part of moving everything off the carpets, ended up rearranging the entire apartment. It is really nice to finally be able to walk on our carpets with no shoes on and not end up with black feet (I don't think the carpets here have been cleaned in years). Also, the way we arranged both the living room and bedroom made it so we have so much more space. We got rid of a bunch of clothes we never wear and threw out some things we never use. Now all we have left to tackle is going through and organizing a pile of papers on the dresser...

The public schools are beginning on July 30th (really early), so hopefully I'll be getting some calls for substitute teaching soon. Meanwhile, I'm just trying to keep the house spotless and going to the Aquarium once a week.

Adam started school yesterday. He is taking a religion class (Achieving Eternal Marriage) and Pathogenic Microbiology. I'm going to try to attend the Eternal Marriage class with him when I can, and Adam is excited about the Pathogenic Microbiology class since he really enjoyed General Microbiology and it is being taught by the same professor.

Oh, I guess something "exciting" did happen to us recently. On my way home from the Aquarium on Wednesday, I noticed a light blinking on my dashboard. I pulled into a 7-11 and realized my radiator had cracked. Long story short, we ended up driving it (slowly) home a few days later, and it is sitting in our parking spot until we figure out what to do with it. Fortunately, we have a bunch of amazing friends who are always there to help us out when we need it. For now, one of our home teachers has offered to take a look at it and see what he can do...

That's about it for now. Hopefully we do something more interesting soon.

4th of July Weekend

Adam and I had a pretty long weekend filled with fun. He had work off from Thursday through Sunday, so we were able to enjoy it together. On the 3rd, we went for a hike to Waimea Falls with our friends Tim, Sumbel, and their son Leo.



Along the path to the falls were tons of native plants and ancient sacred Hawaiian structures.




We had fun swimming in the pool at the bottom of the falls as well as trying to swim up behind the waterfall. We are planning on getting an annual pass so we can go back often and explore all the side paths we didn't get the chance to see. Those who are fans of Lost may recognize the pictures of the falls from the show.



After that hike, Adam and I got packed up to go camping. We went to the Hau'ula Trail Loop just down the highway from where we lived when we first moved here. We left later than expected and didn't get there until it was getting dark, which made for an exciting hike. I had never been on the trail, and Adam had only been there once...about 2 years ago, so we were trying to find a campsite, which isn't really a campsite, more like a clearing, in the dark with only one flashlight with dying batteries. At one point, we heard some rustling in the trees that sounded like a big animal, so we turned back, hiked for a little while longer, and just camped out on the side of the trail. It turned out not to be the best spot since it was on a slight incline so we were sliding down the entire night, but it was the best we could find after hiking for an hour in the dark.




Later on that day, the 4th of July, we went with Tim, Sumbel, and Leo to the Schofield Barracks, one of the million military bases on the island. The band Kansas was there, there was a carnival, and a ton of things to do, but we just sat there and relaxed most of the time. After being there for a few hours, we came back home and set off some fireworks. It was a long but fun weekend.

Big Island

On Friday, June 12th, Adam and I had the opportunity to go to the Big Island for the first time. The main purpose of our trip was to go to the Kona Temple. We haven't been to the temple for more than 6 months because the La'ie Temple is closed for a year and a half for major renovations. We left at 4am to get to the airport by 5am, and our flight left at 5:52, so we were pretty tired the entire time, but it was well worth it. After a 40-45 minute flight, we arrived on the Big Island, rented a car and headed to the Kona Temple. We went through 2 sessions, at 9 and 11, with the other 13 people from the ward who came. We had been looking forward to going to the temple for a long time, so it was awesome to finally be able to go. It may not be for another year (when the La'ie Temple reopens) until we can go back again.



Oh, and just across a wall to the temple grounds, there were 3 horses, so we petted them and fed one of them a piece of banana.



Having such a great experience at the temple, we went with Erik from our ward to Kahalu'u Beach to go snorkeling. I had read online that it had great snorkeling there, but I didn't realize it would be so amazing. The fish were twice as big and numerous as I had ever seen on Oahu, there were so many brightly colored corals and we got to hang out with some sea turtles that weren't afraid to get close.



After snorkeling, we went to eat at the Big Island Grill, right by the temple. I got a Hawaiian plate, which consisted of lau lau, poke, macaroni salad and rice. It was all pretty good. If you're ever in the area, I'd recommend it. After finally being able to attend the temple after so long and having the best snorkeling experience ever, I hope we can go back to the Big Island soon, but it probably won't happen since we had to sacrifice a little to make it there this time.