Hawaii

We've pretty busy lately, I think I'll try and catch up on those things later, but at the moment, we are in Hawaii on vacation.

We were meant to fly out Sunday August 1st, but the flight was cancelled from Phoenix to Hawaii, and we wouldnt be able to get to Hawaii til Monday.
We decided to head to Phoenix, since OJ and Liz were out there and we could visit with them.
Turned out to be a great idea, we had dinner with them, US Airways put us up in a hotel for the night, and we were able to extend our trip in Hawaii so we could fly back on Monday instead of the Sunday.

We were upgraded to first class from Phoenix, a bonus for the leg room and food, and arrived Monday night.

We got to our beautiful little beachside cottage, and had an awful night full of crying with Koa.

Tuesday morning we arose nice and early to watch the sunrise from inside the cottage, so pretty and peaceful.
Headed over to the Hukilau cafe for breakfast, and Matsumoto for some shave ice, and spent a few hours at Sunset Beach.
Picked up some delicious poke from the Kahuku Superette under the recommendation of both Harris and Jay Tyau, and took the kids back to the cottage for a nap.

Its easy to see how people love it here.
We're relaxed, taking our time to enjoy our time with our little family, so nice ..

WOW Challenge

So, our company is having a Weight Off and Win challenge, we did the weigh in today.
The week before I ate TONS, and gained like 14 pounds, what a pig, hahaha.
But I really want to win.
So, today, it begins.
8 weeks of dieting and exercise, not too long at all, but the chance for a lifestyle change.
Hmmm .. to post before pictures or not to post them .....

Swimming signals the beginning of OUR summer!

The Travelling Husband

So the morning of my birthday, Stephen flew out to Japan ..and began his 9 countries in two weeks, whirl wind training trip.

He began in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China.
He was able to come back into Utah on Sunday, and flew out to Europe on Monday.
In Europe he went to Denmark, Germany, Belgium, Hungary and flew back through France.

Sushi in Japan

Over Nightless ?

Doing what he had to do ..

Boat ride in Hong Kong

The big building in Hong Kong, this is in Batman

Another random pic

Some random building, it is pretty beautiful though

The Lourve

Mona Lisa

Venus de Milo

not sure .. from Egypt apparently

Arc de Triomphe

Wandering around

Notre Dame de Paris

Eiffel Tower

When Stephen finally got home Sunday, it was Fathers Day.

The perfect day to come home!

Early Birthday Celebrations ...

Since Stephen is heading to Hong Kong tomorrow morning (early, and he will be gone for a couple of weeks, but thats another story for another time) we decided to go out and have a nice quiet little family birthday celebration at Tucanos .. and use the FREE MEAL birthday coupon we all know we signed up for.

Our boys are pretty good eaters, I'm pretty sure Koa ate bout 20 cheese balls.

We decided we would go and take a look at some rings.
When I opened the car door to put Koa in, a sparkle caught my eye.
Stephen saw my face and asked me what was wrong, I reached down onto the passengers side seat in the car and lifted my hand .. the missing diamond from my engagement ring was sitting there!

I think I was more surprised because Miranda has been riding to work with me all week since they are staying with us, and she had'nt seen it.
The only emotion I think I could even fathom was pure delight!

We went and took at look at some rings, and I fell in love with one.
After taking a look at a few other, crappier, places, we went back to the place with the ring I loved, and made the purchase.

My old ring was a 3 ring set.
I decided to take the two rings from my previous bridal set, and they are getting soldered together to become a ring for my right hand.

My new ring will be ready Tuesday and I'm so excited.
My husband is amazing, and I had the best early birthday I'm sure I will ever have.

New York

This post is purely for me, so I can remember the awesome "vacation" Stephen and I had.

Originally I was supposed to go to New York not long after we got back from New Zealand, for work.
It just didn't end up working out, as we had a new hire class start, and a number of other pressing matters occurring in the office, so I was informed the trip would have to be postponed.

Its crazy how it all just worked out.
Stephen had to attend a training class in New York during the last week of April.
He asked if I wanted to come, and just hang out with him.
He was lucky enough to get a room at the Waldorf Astoria, and we figured it might be the best time, since he would already have his days tied up, for me to go out to my companies NY office.

The Waldorf Astoria main entrance

I checked with my office, and my boss, and it ended up working out perfectly.
Stephen asked his mother to come in to Utah to watch the boys for the week. (Thank goodness for those flight benefits!)

We knew our days would be filled with work/training, so we wanted to try and pack the nights with food and fun.

We arrive early in the afternoon, and had to grab a taxi to take us to the hotel.
I don't know what I thought going into NY, but I was POSITIVE I was going to die.
Those taxi drivers are insane, they don't signal, they are pushy, and it was intense!

Stephen in our room

After checking into our hotel, we decided to check with the concierge about where we should eat.
It was raining, we wanted to get a good nights rest, and it was all really a little overwhelming.

We ended up going to a little Italian restaurant called Cellini, which I loved!
I had this melt in your mouth gnocchi, it was amazing, I never knew food could taste so divine (yeah, I said divine).

After that, we took a walk over to Serendipity, a very famous dessert/coffee shop place.
It truly wasn't as good as I thought it would be, the portions they gave out were enormous, but it just didn't taste as good as it looked.


They did have the most ridiculously priced dessert I'm sure I will ever see, $1000.00.

The next day (Tuesday) Stephen had to get up early and get to his training.
I thought it would be a pretty quick ride from the city out to our office, so I took my time getting ready, boy was I wrong.

I was still a bit nervous about being in NY and travelling around on my own, so I thought I might take a taxi all the way to the office.
The concierge mentioned it was only about a 30 minute ride, and it might be an idea to get a car and a driver to take me there, at a cost of $135 an hour .. no.

I called the office I was heading to, to find the cheapest way to get there.

After taking a taxi, L-Train, and another taxi, I made it to the office an hour and a half later.

I knew I would have to try and get out earlier so I could get back to the city and get in some shopping and sight seeing with Stephen.

We decided to go to Juniors for dinner, again HUGE portions, but really tasty food.

Stephen had also planned on us taking one of those double decker bus night tours around the city.
It was so pretty seeing the city, and listening to history behind the different areas.

It was FREEZING!!

And I just wanted to be touristy and buy an I heart NY something ...
So I got this cheesy hoodie.

Part way through, like I think for maybe the last quarter of the trip, we had to go inside the bus, it was just WAY too cold.

One of the things I had really wanted to do while in NY, was go and see a Broadway musical, namely WICKED.

Stephen didn't care to go, or not go, but knew that it was something I was really looking forward to, so Wednesday night, he got us tickets.

We ended up eating at the highly rated Plataforma Churrasco Rodizio, a Brazilian style eatery, and saw Kelsey Grammar while we had dinner.

The Gerswhin theatre where WICKED was playing was not far from the restaurant, and I was so excited to get there.

WICKED did not disappoint, I absolutely LOVED it!

I'm sure Stephen got sick of me talking about it, and listening to the music, but it was awesome!

One of our favourite channels to watch, is the Food Network.

We watched a show about NY pizza, and who REALLY brought pizza from Italy to the US.

Since Lombardi's is listed as Americas first Pizzeria, we decided we would go and eat there.

Now, I'm not a fan of pizza at all, in fact, when we get pizza, I get something else.

Too much dough, too much grease, uhh.

To my surprise, and Stephens, I'm in LOVE with NY style pizza.

The thin crust is awesome, so tasty, it was delicious.

After dinner at Lombardi's, we made the journey to Magnolia Bakery.

For all you Sex and the City fans, Magnolia Bakery has been made famous by that show.

We got a dozen assorted cupcakes, and I made sure to get a vanilla frosting yellow cake cupcake, what this bakery is famous for.

It was one of the best cupcakes I've ever had, and we all know how much I LOVE cake!

Friday night was Stephens night.

He wanted to go to a Yankees game, and I wasn't particularly excited about it, but I was looking forward to doing something Stephen really wanted to do.

We caught the subway to Yankees stadium, where I got a Yankees hat, because I'm a cheese like that and I like to support whatever it is we are going to.

It ended up being so much fun, I really enjoyed it, and would be more than happy to go back again.

We had a decent view, it was pretty good, we could see everything.

I love how they displayed the caloric content of each food item, next to the price.

I also really enjoyed how they had tons of crowd participation games throughout the game, and how everyone got up and sang take me out to the ball game.
I did ask Stephen to buy me some peanuts and cracker jacks, he just laughed at me.

Saturday was our one and only full day out in NY.

We had already decided to go and see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis island, and luckily we had pre-purchased our tickets.

We caught the subway towards Wall St.
When we came up from the subway, we found a Romanian festival going on, so we took some photos with the bull, grabbed some food, and headed over to the ferry.

The ferry ride was SO nice.

It was 80 + degrees, and the breeze of the water was so refreshing.
It was pretty cool to see Lady Liberty, and Ellis Island, but in the interest of time, we didn't get off the ferry.

After getting off the ferry, we headed over to do some shopping.

I desperately wanted to go to Tiffany's, which we did, and I was able to make a small purchase.

We took a walk down Wall Street, saw the paved streets, the NY stock exchange, the buildings are amazing.


We went over to a shoe store Ariel raved about, Michael K's, and were fortunate enough to catch a protest.

There were thousands and thousands of people protesting the Arizona law change, which singles out minorities.

We went over to ground zero.

They were building it up quite a bit, but it was humbling to see where it was, and truly amazing that there wasn't more damage, or residual damage.
It must've been crazy that day.

After the busy day shopping, and taking in the sights, we headed back to spend Saturday Night in Times Square.

We went to the biggest Toys R Us in the nation, wanted to go there because I missed our kids.

We decided to eat dinner at Bubba Gumps in times square, and sat to eat some tasty food.

We heard allot of commotion outside, but didn't really pay attention, because we were too busy enjoying our delicious meal.
It wasn't til the whirring sirens and flashing lights were right outside the restaurant, that we began to pay attention.

Some other restaurant patrons started talking about a vehicle that was smoking, and how they had evacuated times square.

We took a look out the window to see that they had evacuated all the buildings, business, hotels, etc, in Times Square and had put barricades around the perimeter.

There were thousands of people outside just standing watching.

After Stephen and I finished eating, we went outside, snapped a couple of pictures and asked what was going on.

We got a brief description of what they thought might be a bomb scare, which we later found out was a legitimate bomb scare.

After finding out what it might be, we took off.

We weren't taking a chance to find out if there was or was not a real bomb.

SIDE NOTE: If it had've gone off, so many people would have died, because people just stood there, watching, laughing, joking about how it might be real.

Sunday we were on our way home.

I can now honestly say I LOVE NEW YORK!

It was such and awesome break from Utah, but as always, it was so nice to be home and stay with our babies.

I love going away when its just Stephen and I, we always have such a good time together.