a little last bit of island love.

yep. i'm still blogging about hawaii. 

when you take 1000 pictures you have to post a good chunk right?

and as of an update on my life: 

full time job + husband studying for the mcat + netflix = nothing too exciting is happening right now. 

sometimes in life you have successes, 
and sometimes you might fail. 

on my last day in sunny HI, we had both:

we saw some of my efy kids from summer 2011. they both go to BYU-H. it was great to see 'em all grown up! they are surfin' their way through school, and that sounds like the life. jealous.
we used them to take a picture of us in front of the temple. 

success.

then the sister missionaries took one of all of us.

success.

next, we drove down the coast to a beyond gorgeous beach with the finest, softest, powdered sugary sand. it's called lanikai. it even sounds pretty!

success.

it was a perfect day for a sand man. 

success.

who knew you could make these? new found skill.

we wanted to snorkel and convinced some good old mormon folk we found on the beach to lend us their gear, but their twenty minute excursion turned into two hours... and we had other things to do!

fail.

like show off our fake tattoos...

 and take lots of pics.

such a perfect day!

success

pretty things.

one of my favorite things about hawaii has to be the plumeria. it's beautiful, and it smells divine.

we decided to drive the quick five miles over to sea life park.

mindy has a free pass to get in because she works at the pcc.

seems like a success.

well that five mile drive turned into a fifty minute drive, so when we got there it was basically closed.

fail.

they still let us in, but all we saw were a bunch of run down tanks and sleeping animals. 

we did get to see this off-duty trainer in action... so maybe we could call it

partial success.

after that fail, we drove around the coast and took random stops.

at this particular stop there was a sign that says it's a great place to see whales, and then there were lots of tourists with cameras pointing. we thought for sure it was a whale!

turns out it was actually just a geyser that spouted very similarly to a whale. 

so we ended up just taking windy pictures.

double fail. 

our next stop was hamuana bay! though the famous snorkeling was done for the day, 

we did chase chickens,

take lots of pictures,

pose with these cool trees,

and hear the life guard say "please get outta da wah-ter, you need to get outta da wah-ter" about 300 times in the craziest monotonous voice. so i would definitely say the bay was a 

success.

we had just enough time to get some dinner in honolulu before i headed back to the mainland,

so we went to the cheesecake factory 

we ordered to go so we could avoid the 1 hour and 45 minute line.

success.

it was also just really good. red velvet and peanut butter dream cheesecake?

double success.

then it was airport time. red-eye style.

mind surprised me with a beautiful lei to take the spirit of aloha home with me!

success.

though saying goodbye is never fun, 

the trip was definitely the ultimate

success!

thanks mind for being a wonderful host and a best friend.
some of the best times were laughing and chatting til the wee hours of the night!
sly. dct.


also, my mom came to meet me for my three hour layover at 4 AM in good ole san fran. she rocks.
success.

and coming home to this guy?

always and forever a success.

here's to blogging about things other than hawaii. next time.

shaka.