Hawaii in all its glory

I think it is kind of impossible to condense a post about Hawaii into a brief description and a few photos. I am going to be candid: this post is going to be LONG! Get out now if you have no interest in wasting your time looking at our photos or reading my captions. With the Ellison photography powers combined we snapped over 1600 photos. I did my best to select only the most essential photos that would make our few readers feel as if they were there with us...

Clark and I had a blast in Hawaii! We spent the first 7 days on Maui and the last 2 days on Oahu. With no further delay I am going to go through our vacation day by day. Enjoy.

Day 1: Clark and I flew into Maui and arrived around 7 PM. Bummed we didn't get a view of the island on arrival since it was already too dark. We picked up our rental car--which turned out to be a minivan--which ended up being very convenient. We attempted to use our GPS until the damn thing makes us turn onto a dead end dirt road. I kid you not. I ended up calling my Dad in frustration, crying. Hey, it had been a long day of travel. He provided us with directions using landmarks because who actually looks at street signs anyway? We finally made it to our destination and ate a nutritious dinner of Taco Bell. No pictures.

Day 2: Picked up Scott and Dagmara from the airport and immediately drove to the Iao Valley State Monument for a hike and scenic pictures. Then we finally hit the beach!

The cell phone waiting lot at the Maui airport. We found it humorously makeshift.

The Iao Valley State Monument with Mom and Dad. And of course, Mom is distracted, possibly by a pterodactyl.

Action photos.

Very picturesque.

Finally on the beach!

Clark's poor white body. My Dad said Clark is blindingly white which I think is a bit of an exaggeration. He's just extremely fair skinned.

Poor Clark attending to his foot. Apparently something in the sand bit/stung/pinched him.

Pretty sunset.

Before the sun had set we drove down to the Ahihi Kinau Natural Area Reserve which is where the majority of the Island's lava rock is.

And go figure, the battery in Dad's rental died. And go figure we were in an area where the rental company strictly informs you not to take the rental. Thankfully, a nice gentleman local suggested swapping car batteries and the situation worked out fine. Whew.

Day 3: Road to Hana. The day did not start out well. I became increasingly irritable on the drive due in large part to the winding, twisting road on the way to Hana. Switching seats and not sitting in the back seems to help and my mood/stomach improved.

A friendship in bloom.
Beautiful scenic overlooks.

And another.

The occasional downpour.

Only 6 more miles, thank heavens.

Great looks of contemplation as we ordered at Tutu's. Who knew an ordinary hamburger comparable to a McDonald's hamburger could cost $6?

We drove beyond Hana to the 7 Sacred Pools. This definitely made the long twisting drive worth it!

Clark and Dad in the freezing water. Dad tried to help some people out by diving below to try to find a camera they had lost. He didn't find theirs but he found a different water proof camera--his souvenir for the trip!

Scott trying to usher me into the water. I prefer to take my time. Oh. my. gosh. This water was cold. But my Mom even got in so I had to do it, too.

Day 4: Big Beach! Awesome beach with larger waves that you could actually play in.

We headed home mid afternoon from the beach to get ready for a Luau! Scott and Dagmara are just a dashing couple.

And Mom and Dad look great, too! Both have their eyes open and they're looking at the camera-and Dad isn't even squinting as bad as usual! FRAME THIS ONE, DAD!

The beautiful dancers. Seriously. Beautiful. Need I say more?

Ready to eat and be entertained!

Enjoying the bottomless fruit punch.

The fire dancer. Very impressive.

The girls after the dinner and show.

Day 5: Nakalele Blowhole and beach/snorkel day. This is the day that I realize that I have a fear of snorkeling in few numbers. I guess I'm scared of sharks and anything that can potentially harm me in the water. And coral. My sister got stung by coral years ago when our family went on a cruise and I've had a fear of coral ever since.

Clark and I at an overlook on our way to the Blowhole. Don't ask what Clark is doing with his arm. I promise nothing fishy was going on.
A heart in the rock?

Certainly!

Blowhole in action!

Clark getting sprayed.

Clark and Dad body surfing. This beach on the Northern shore was perfect for body surfing.

Day 6: MY BIRTHDAY! Am I really 27!? I realize I still act like a 19 year old. And... the Molokini and turtle town snorkeling excursion! Also, parasailing!

We left for our excursion waaayyy too early in the morning. This picture cracks me up. I'm either giving Scott a saucy look beneath my sunglasses OR checking out Dagmara's boobs. I'm not sure which. IT WAS EARLY!

Enjoying our leisure swim after snorkeling. I must admit, turtle town almost convinced me that Clark and I should move to Maui. Then I contemplated the awful, minimum of 5 hour flight we would have to take to leave Hawaii. Nevertheless, sea turtles are incredible. And cute. I wish they were cuddly and not on the verge of extinction.

The Molokini crater is between our heads. I bet the snorkeling would have been incredible had there not been 8 other boats full of tourists snorkeling. Not that it was bad; we still saw lots of fish! And I didn't get too scared. Safety in numbers.

We didn't get any good pictures of us parasailing since the boat took us pretty far from land. But it was a great experience. On the way back to the shore after parasailing the guide drove the raft onto the beach, "like the navy seals." It was awesome.

Final picture of the day at dusk.

And later that evening, after some Vietnamese Pho (you know I used chopsticks like a champ!), birfday cake!

Day 7: Scott and Dagmara left for Honolulu. We had our flight booked to leave the next morning for Honolulu and we would meet up with them there.

After we dropped Scott and Dagmara off at the airport we drove to the Haleakala National Park in hopes of viewing the crater. Of course, when we got up to the top, visibility was poor and we couldn't see anything!

My Dad's face is priceless in this one. I love how Mom looks relatively calm with her eyes closed and Dad looks like he is going to freeze to death. Classic!

Uprepared, I resorted to a towel for protection from the cold, drizzly weather. Kind of looks like mars...
On the way down we stopped at a little market. They market had lovely flowers on display. I fell in love with the aloha prayer flags. I don't know what they really are but they remind me of Tibetan prayer flags. Too bad they didn't have any aloha prayer flags for sale. I would have snatched those up.
Day 8: Honolulu street vendor shopping and Waikiki Beach. We said our goodbyes to Mom and Dad and flew into Honolulu early. We met up with Scott and Dagmara mid morning and then went to a Ramen restaurant where I had another opportunity to fine tune my mad chopstick skills. We then ventured out to the main shopping district and found the international market and other street vendors. I purchased an orange glass Plumeria necklace but neglected to take a picture of it. Very purty indeed.
Clark was head over heels for these masks. I refused to let him purchase one. We don't need to put anything else on our walls right now. Plus, I can only imagine the price of a hand crafted mask. In Hawaii.
We also stopped at a store that sold Power Balance bands. I am almost sold on these bands. I'm about 85% there. Dagmara invested in one. I'll wait to see what she thinks.
Later in the day we strolled down to the famous Waikiki Beach. Diamond Head Crater is in the background. Next time we go to Honolulu we will have to hike the crater. Apparently you cannot hike the crater after noon. Oh right...because when people go on vacation they love to wake up early to do activities.
Aren't they just so cute!? I really love this picture of my brother and his wife.
This dude was searching for treasure. If you can enlarge this photo you will notice that he has rings on most of his fingers. I'm assuming all of the jewelry on his person was found with his metal detector.

The view from our hotel room. We actually had an ocean view but those pictures weren't nearly as clear. Sadly, we had to say good bye to Scott and Dagmara since they had an early flight the next morning. We had a good meal and fine conversation at the California Pizza Kitchen.

Day 9: Pearl Harbor and Red eye flight out of Maui.

We took public transportation to Pearl Harbor, and even though it took an hour to get to the memorial we were still able to get tickets to see the USS Arizona Memorial. This picture is part of the gun turret near the stern of the ship. It was so humbling to walk over the grave site of so many courageous men.

We had only enough time to see the USS Arizona Memorial, watch a short film describing the circumstances leading up to the Pearl Harbor attack, and walk around and view some missiles and torpedoes.

I really wish we would have had more time to spend in Honolulu. I don't think I got a good feel for all that Oahu has to offer. If we had stayed a couple days longer and rented a car I think we could have seen and done some amazing things like see the North shore and hike Diamond Head.

After Pearl Harbor we headed back to our hotel to collect our luggage and then took a flight back to Maui. We then had to wait hours for our red eye flight back to the states, so we ate a late lunch at Costco (gotta love that Costco prices are consistent anywhere you go!) and then picked up some snacks at Wal Mart. After turning in our rental and heading back to the airport again, we came to realize that our flight was completely booked and many of those flying were children. Under the age of 2. There was never a lull in shrieking on the way back to the states.

**I learned several things while on vacation:

1. How to eat properly with chopsticks (thanks, Dagmara!) This proved useful since half of our meals were Asian cuisine for some reason. Even a waiter at a Chinese restaurant IN Chinatown IN San Francisco could not teach me how to properly hold chopsticks. Interesting.

2.The Ellisons can accomplish almost too much while on vacation. I was exhausted after each day!

3. Hawaii is ridiculously expensive. Nope, you can't find any $5 footlongs at Subway there!

4. I am scared to be in open water unless there are a lot of people around me. Getting eaten alive is not the way I want to go.

Thank you Mom and Dad Ellison for allowing us to meet up with you both in Maui and share your timeshare :) Thanks for all the fun and memories. We can't wait to do it again!

Clark's birthday description--just a tad late

Clark celebrated his 27th birthday on November 4th! Yay Clark! Unfortunately, we both had to work so we couldn't celebrate until the weekend. His lovely wife (oh, that's me!) surprised him with some scrumptious cupcakes and Dansko work clogs... but that was the extent of fun on the 4th.

For Clark's birthday we went shooting. Not to a range, just out on the Salt Lake desert with a few friends. I tried to keep the shooting celebration a secret from Clark but then he insisted that I must have gotten him a ticket to go skydiving and I just couldn't lead him on like that. So when he found out what we were doing to celebrate the day of his birth we went out and bought a bunch of clay pigeons, a pigeon thrower and shot gun shells. And a gun cleaner. We almost invested in a gun case too but I was reluctant to invest so much in a gun we had never even shot before.

We had a good time (finally!!) shooting our shotgun. I will now feel safe at home when I am alone.

Ready to rock.

Clark looks... like he is ready to kill something.

In action!

Lots of ammo.

Killing some clay pigeons.

Even I killed several clay pigeons. A real self esteem booster.

Clark shooting a 30-06.

Even though we couldn't go shooting on Clark's birthday I think we all still had a great time and we can't wait to go try out some handguns at the shooting range soon. I gotta say, shooting is pretty thrilling and exhilarating. I guess we'll be needing that gun case after all.

*when I have more energy and time I will blog about our recent trip to Hawaii. Supa fun trip but an awful day of travel on the way back to SLC. Five airports and four flights in less than 24 hours. Exhausting.

Laughter...the best medicine!

We have been cracking up over these videos for the last few nights. I hope you all enjoy these as much as we have :)

"What does this mean?"

Life just keeps on flying by

Seriously, I don't think I can keep up. The only reason I even have time to blog is because I NEED a break from studying, writing essays, and crying over our flooded basement. Yes, our basement flooded AGAIN! It was a magical surprise to come home to early one morning after 12 hours of plane/car travel. I'm not going to lie, I cried pretty dang hard. It feels like we've moved three times in the last 10 months because every time it floods we have to move all of our belongings upstairs. And that is no simple task. GUH.

But here are some photos of what we've been up to the last several weeks. In no particular order...

We traveled to the Sequoia National Forest last weekend for one of my best friend's weddings. And we saw a massive tree. 6th largest in the world, mind you.

Yep, that's me in the corner saying, "damn, this is a BIG tree!"

The girth is sure impressive...

Jessie and her now husband Max got married atop Dome Rock. It was so beautiful. Clark and I felt very honored to witness their marriage. Aside from their immediate families and some close relatives, only Clark, myself, Amy (the priestess, who got her certificate just so she could marry Jess and Max), and Jenna were invited. And I thought I had a small wedding...

Such a beautiful couple.

Trying to recreate a pose from a picture four years ago.

Clark, the official amateur photographer of the wedding.

And here we have a waterfall. Totally unrelated to the wedding. A couple of weeks ago we hike Adam's Canyon in the Wasatch mountain range.

Where Clark polluted some pristine mountain water.

Where Clark also delighted in the variegated foliage.

Them are some purty leaves.

And...unrelated to the waterfall hike, we also decided to visit the Kennecott Copper Mines one afternoon. Since it is one of the few man made excavations seen by astronauts in space, we decided to go take a look for ourselves. And yes, it is a BIG pit.

And the trucks they use to haul the rock have giant wheels.

So that is what we've been up to the last several weeks. It's starting to feel like fall here and the temp in the house is 65 degrees, but I'm refusing to turn on the heat. Ahhh, I love this time of year. I just wish life could slow down so I could enjoy it more.

Cuteness overflow

I am generally a cheap person; I have no problem with purchasing dresses or skirts from goodwill or DI. In fact, a little over a year ago I dyed a dress I had brought from Goodwill to make it more presentable. It is a rockin' dress.

However, the below dresses from this website are KILLING ME! They are all so adorable and unique. They aren't necessarily that expensive, but it is so hard to choose just one.

I broke down and finally bought this dress after eying it since May. The only problem is it is a bit too long and the way it flows makes me look prego. Since I am not pregnant and I don't want to be harassed constantly, I'll have to have Mom Tobler work her magic on the dress in the future. But I love it. It is vintage-inspired and so much fun.

Here are a few more I have my eyes on...

The fabulous thing about this website is that you can customize orders. You can add sleeves or make the dress longer/shorter for a minimal fee. Pretty awesome.

To give myself a bit of control, I told myself that I cannot purchase another dress (or two, or three) until I get accepted into a graduate school. Since I will be overjoyed to be accepted into any of the schools I am applying to, I just need the satisfaction of knowing my hard work has paid off, and then I can get myself a treat!

Impressive

Clark went to the dentist today for the first time in seven years.

He has not one cavity in his mouth. Good job, Clark!

The dentist did mention that his plaque was pretty "tenacious." The dentist used that high pitched, electric scraper-thingy (Jeff, what's the device?) for almost 45 minutes straight. Yes, I guess seven years of build up will lead to "tenacious" plaque.

BJ & the Summer Decompression II Festival

It's always a good thing to support local music. Especially if your spouse is a musician in a local band.

Me likey.

BJ rockin' out: Kris, Tyler, Clark, Randy and SP.

Tyler's theatrical antics. Guess you had to be there.

Clark with his official pass for the festival.

Here are a couple of videos. I apologize for the shakiness. My arms get super tired from holding the camera still.

(Disclaimer: So's YOUR FACE is PG-13/R rated for those of you who don't want to subject yourself to puerile language. But I'm sure you've heard worse walking around a college campus--unless you went to BYU. Young Man's Game does not contain foul language to my knowledge...)

Headlining the festival was Royal Bliss. They're kind of a big deal...if you're from Utah. But seriously they are on a major label and have songs you would probably recognize.

ADDICTED

Nothing tastes as good as Fig Newtons lately. I've gone through four packages in the last week... yikes, that's a little scary to admit. I really need to break free of this addiction. Why can't my addiction be to edamame or green beans or broccoli?

Weekend #2 of September

We went to the Avenues Street Fair. It was more of a big deal than I thought. Huh. Bought some flowers for my hair that make me feel oh so rockabilly. And I like it.

Throngs of people.

Adding more flowers to my hair clip collection.

Clark's band played at Club Vegas. And rocked it. BJ is so much fun to watch. They play again this weekend at the Summer Decompression 2 festival. I can hardly wait. An all day outdoor music festival? Life doesn't get much better than that. Unless the other bands suck. Then we may have to leave early.

I just adore Clark's drumming facial expressions. Priceless.

Got my hair did. I think it turned out quite nice. Now I am ready for fall. And thank you, Mom, for the pajamas. I will actually wear them. Oh look, we have proof in this picture that I have already worn them.

Gretchen's new nook. Isn't she precious?

Just like old people...

I just bought 2.78 pounds of prunes at Winco.

I think this means we're aging. Or we're just really concerned about regular, smooth bowel movements.

Or both.

(Our blood type craves these shriveled suckers. So I guess we could always use that excuse.)

Random notes you really shouldn't bother reading

• Clark and I feel like such lame Americans for not barbecuing on the socially appointed bbq days of the year: Memorial Day and Labor Day. Dang it. We didn't entirely miss our bbq window of opportunity (we used our mini Weber twice this summer) but now the coolness of fall is settling in and Clark may not want to tend to the grill for an hour outside when it is 30 degrees. I can't blame him.
• I am totally looking forward to getting my hair did this Saturday. Man, blonde hair on a natural brunette requires a lot of maintenance! I told Clark I may have to become a brunette in early 2011. I thought I could hold out and stay blonde until my hair grew way long, but it is too much work and too expensive. In the mean time I am going to slowly incorporate dark brown back into my hair palate. Take these photos of Kat von D for example:

So imagine this coloring a bit differently. Where her black hair is, my blonde is. Where her blonde streaks are, I want to have brown streaks. Not sure which photo I want to work with yet but I hope it turns out.

• Just watched The Blindside last night. What an amazing story. And the fact that Michael Oher played for Ole Miss is totally awesome, too. I guess I'm still a Rebel at heart. Looks like I missed watching him play at the Vaught-Hemingway stadium by about a year. Nonetheless, transferring to ASU was still the right decision. But SEC football...nothing beats SEC football.
• Clark's band BJ has two shows coming up. This Saturday at Club Vegas and next Saturday at the Ogden Ampitheater. Can't wait!
• Contacted a couple of my previous instructors from ASU asking if they could provide reference letters on my behalf for grad school. Whew. I think that might have been the hardest part of the whole application; the thing I was dreading most.
• Junking out feels good. Just went through my closet and drawers and made progress. Or did I just make room for new items?
• I've got to admit, I am readily looking forward to fall. I am excited to be in a place where leaves actually change colors!

I think that's all for now. Maybe I'm just bored because Clark is taking a 10:30 pm nap and I can't watch our next netflix flick without him. Have a good week, ya'll.