Beauty everywhere we went this weekend!

For our 2nd anniversary, we decided to spoil ourselves a little :)  We started off the weekend by dropping the dog off in Hawaii Kai at the overnight pet “spa”.  Yes, a spa for dogs.  I still get a kick out of that.  We then drove to the north shore, to our majestic destination, Turtle Bay Resort.  We started off the fun with an amazing horseback riding tour of the resort grounds.  We saw the world’s second oldest banyan tree, a bunker on the beach, went through parts of the jungle and along the coastline, all thanks to our awesome horses Feather and Cody. 

We explored the resort and sunned ourselves on the beach before we decided to head over to Ola for dinner.  Ola is a beach front restaurant on the resort, and we highly recommend you try it if you ever go to the North Shore.  Our waiter, Dave from Ohio, (who looked exactly like Nick Lachey!), was sooo cool.  We told him it was our anniversary, so he carried a table out to the beachfront so we could have a perfect view of the sunset, sand, and water.  The food was equally as lovely.  I had the absolute BEST grilled island fish with Okinawa sweet potato (which is purple!), and Brent had a melt-in-your-mouth steak and veggies.  For dessert, … honestly the best creme brulee I’ve ever had, and mango cheesecake, …oh, and also some champagne :)

We ended the perfect day by sitting on a secluded park bench by the water and admired the starry night together.  It is amazing how bright the stars are and how much the night sky comes alive when you are so far out here in the middle of the ocean. 

On Sunday, we had a nice breakfast at Lei Lei’s by the golf courses, and then made our way to the driving range to whack a few balls.. (I think I whacked more grass/dirt than actual golf balls, but Brent is really good!)

On our way home we stopped at Turtle Beach where it is rumored that turtles are always seen on the beach and in shallow water, but we didn’t have much luck seeing any up close….we’ll try again another day!

The weekend came to a close with a yummy lunch at Kona Brewing Co., and we picked up the dog to head back to our cozy apartment in Waikiki. 

And at present, my husband of two years is busy cooking a lovely Bolognese sauce for us to enjoy later.  He is just the best.

:)

The festivities have been abundant here on the island of Oahu!  Saturday was a great time at the “mini” aquarium down in Waikiki.  It is quite small, but there are a lot of cool salt water fish and coral.  There are some crazy looking things we got shots of that almost looked fake they were so odd.  Our favorites have to be the rock-like looking fish and the seal.  The seal was a found orphan, so they wanted everyone to understand it wasn’t a kidnapped puppy.  It was starving by itself and likely to die until they took it in.

Yesterday we saw an odd parade.  Apparently the 4th of July parade is done on the 3rd.  It also comes in waves.  You will see a group of 4 or 5 things, then nothing for 5 - 10 minutes.  Then a new wave will come through again.  Also, which is kinda cool, parades here will stop and interact with you.  You can run into it and take photos with them and regularly walk in and out all you want.  It was a really odd time, but still cool.  Especially the random Star Wars geeks at the end.  Somehow Boba Fett and Vader are relevant to Independence from Britain!  Ha

Today we will finish off the weekend with a good movie - Transformers 3d and some kick ass food.  Hope you all had a great time enjoying the greatest holiday of all!  :)

Well, we had a pretty eventful weekend!  On Friday Emily had a work dinner at Ruth’s Chris, which was pretty interesting.  Food was pretty good, but didn’t really live up to all the hype.  Compared to Craftsteak, Tom Colicchio’s restaurant we went to at Foxwood’s, it was like an Olive Garden.  But the desserts were awesome! 

Brent had to take call Thursday and Friday nights so he was pretty tired.  He didn’t get home until 4:30am on Saturday morning!  Needless to say, we slept in, and then went out for a but to Waikiki.  We hit a few places for drinks and walked around to window shop and people watch.  Ended the night with a little Boston Legal and champagne.

Today we left early to explore a bit at the North Shore, which, now that we have a car, is just an hour drive from us!  Yay!  On the way, we got caught in some traffic because a horse trailer had overturned on the highway and the horse was running around in the middle of the lanes!!  We felt so bad for it because it was obviously hurt and bloody. 

When we got to Pupukea town, we went to Shark’s Cove and did some snorkeling.  We saw some beautiful fish and sea urchins, and had fun swimming, even though it was actually a little cold at first!  We then went to a cute beach bar called HaleIwa Joe’s , as recommended by the infamous Charlie Blumenthal. 

Now we are off to play some games at the Irish Rose next door, while the hubby has a cigar.  Aloha for now!  :)

For an update since the fair.  The car has landed!  Emily is taking the car to work, and I am riding the bus.  Now that we have the car, we should be able to start seeing the outskirts of the island.  We are looking at checking out the North shore sometime soon.  Maybe a surf lesson.

This past weekend we hit the Honolulu Zoo.  It was a lot better than we had expected.  There were some bad ass Tigers, a Lion couple that enjoyed mating season, A girraffe that was eye balling the mrs.  and some crazy ugly turtles.  We also got to catch some monkey like things that were swinging all over the place around there tree.  The things moved so fast you would swear they would fall off.

For those not on Facebook, I will put some pics up of the animals.

So we just got back from the fair…  It was a crazy time.  Em’s co-worker was cool enough to drive us, so we all went around together.  We had Korean BBQ for dinner, and deep fried oreos and Twinkies for dessert.  They had a free circus for entertainment that was actually better than the expensive one’s at CCC back home in Portland.  There was a contortionist that also did a pretty good MJ imitation.  They also had a solid tight rope act, unicycling, tumbling, juggling, and good audience interaction.  Then we went to the ostrich and camel racing.  That was fun when they raced, but the cowboy commentator talked way too much.  We also caught a pretty bad collision with a couple of the ostriches when they were pulling buggies.  I hope to have the video posted up here pretty soon.  And lastly, we ended the night on a ferris wheel ride where we ended up at the top and stuck for 45 minutes!  The wheel broke and we couldn’t get down!  It was so windy that the wheel would shake back and forth, feeling like it was going to break.  When we finally got off no apologies or anything.  There were a few kids crying.  I think they’re childhood memories of the fair won’t be fried dough and clowns…