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March 22nd

Before we left for our trip I had some people say to me “Ugh, the road to Hana? Don’t even bother! You drive and drive and drive and then you get to Hana and there’s nothing there.” They made it sound like it was some sort of trick, but I think they missed the point- the road to Hana isn’t about the destination, it’s about the journey.

At first glance on a map, the road doesn’t look so bad. I mean sure, it’s a little winding, but Google Maps says it’s only a two hour drive from our condo! What that map doesn’t show is that the road is actually ABSURDLY winding, with dozens of single-lane bridges, blind corners, falling rocks and other hazards like MORON DRIVERS who stop dead in the middle of one of the aforementioned one-lane bridges to take a picture, or come blaring up behind you, trying to pass on one of those blind corners.

I know I’m not really doing a good job of selling this thing, so I’m just going to post pictures to show how truly lovely it is. That side of the island is the “weather” side, so it’s basically a lush jungle-y rainforest of greenery, bright flowers and waterfalls.




This was the first place we stopped. I climbed down the ravine a little and peed behind a tree, haha.

Symphony was less than thrilled. We actually had a huge fight a little later on the drive about her Attitude Problem.








That’s my Coke can. I didn’t leave it there.

This might be the best picture of me from the whole trip.

The guy in the lead car had to get out and move a big chunk of fallen rock off the road.

Symphony-style eye-squinking.

We stopped at Waianapanapa State Park for lunch, but not before checking out the black sand beach and lava tube.

“This beach has dark grey sand, not black.” MY LITTLE LITERALIST.

Notice anything? NO CAMERA.



The light in the lava tube was really cool, there were all these little chinks and holes in the ceiling so it was actually quite bright.






All the picnic tables were filled with old people tour groups so we ate on the grass.


The park was full of mongooses. Mongeese? I’d never seen one before, I thought they were bigger than this. They are about ferret-sized. We saw one get in a fight with some birds.



These rocks were not fun to sit on.





There were dudes out at the ends of these rocks fishing. We probably would have walked further out except it wasn’t appropriate for Sym.




This guy is clearly CRAZY!!






There is a blowhole in these cliffs, a place where the waves rush in under the rocks and spray up through the hole. It wasn’t blowholing but you could hear the waves booming and echoing. It was kind of freaky. It had a sign saying “CAUTION BLOWHOLE STAND CLEAR” but everyone there went right up and looked down it.

After we were done lunch and photographing everything we had a discussion about whether we would turn back at this point or continue on to Oheo Gulch. We voted to press on, I mean, why not? When is the next time we’re going to be there, right?

to be continued…

Welp it’s Monday, and vacation time is really over now. I worked on Friday, but it didn’t seem like a for really-real work day. Today does though. DOES IT EVER. It’s cold and rainy, the kids are all crabby and keep hitting each other in the face, and I have a ton of stuff to do.

Even though I tried to clean up as much as possible before our trip so we wouldn’t come home to a sick mess, there was one area I really neglected: the kitchen island. I don’t use it for anything but a catch-all for things I don’t want to deal with yet, and this morning it looked like this:

WHAT. That is a disaster! I’ve been sorting through everything and it looks a bit better now, but I need to get it completely cleared off so I can start painting the canvases for Elina’s mural. Some other fun things I need to do:

• clean the hamster cage & cat box
• three loads of laundry & one of dishes
• take out all the garbage and recycling
• clean both bathrooms (ugh)
• make a 4th light cover for my kitchen fixture since another halogen bulb burnt out
• finish unpacking!

Yes, that’s right, I haven’t finished unpacking yet. Kind of ridiculous considering we got back four and a half days ago but I’m mostly done, I just need to put away some toiletries and shoes and Symphony’s clean clothes. I don’t think Taylor has unpacked anything at all! Before we left Hawaii he said most of his clothes were dirty, but he hasn’t put anything in the hamper yet. I guess when he does I’ll actually have four loads of laundry to do. Great.

I also have to help/nag Symphony into cleaning her room properly. I was in there a little while ago looking for my embroidery scissors (I have two pairs and couldn’t find either since everyone always takes my scissors and puts them in weird places. I finally know how my mother felt all the years of my childhood, haha) and every surface in the looks like the kitchen island up there! I think I got her into a bad habit by focusing on getting the floor clean enough to vacuum, because it seems like all she’s been doing is piling things on her desk, her shelves, her dollhouse… everything!

I also want to get the foyer nice and clean and tidy so I can photograph it for One Room at a Time, but right now that’s pretty low on my list. Hopefully I get to it sometime this week.

Yes, I am aware that I have two posts in a row partially titled “Happy Anniversary.” It really was though!

March 21st
Originally we’d planned to go for dinner to celebrate, but instead we went for breakfast at the Five Palms at Mana Kai, where we had breakfast on our wedding day last year. It’s located right next to the beach, so it was the perfect place for us! We all ended up having pancakes: the plain kid’s pancakes for Symphony, macadamia nut pancakes for me, and an apple-banana & cinnamon plantation-style pancake for Taylor. We also shared a quartered Maui pineapple as a sort of started (the plantation pancake takes 20 minutes), and I swear you have never eaten pineapple until you’ve had it really fresh like that. So. Delicious!

Symphony took this picture of the two of us, which is actually better than the ones we took of each other.

This really shows off my sunburn and the star-shaped tanline on my chest from leaving my necklace on during beach day #1. Not cool, me.

I don’t even know what this face is. At least Symphony can look nice in pictures!

Oh wait…

After breakfast we headed straight for the beach.

We’d already loaded the car (with less stuff this time) and driven over so we just had to go to the parking lot to retrieve our beach things. That was fortunate because it was way busier than any of the other days we spent there and we had to walk much further down to find a good spot. Happily, it wasn’t nearly as windy this time but like the previous evening, the waves were really big. Taylor and I both got churned up in the breakers a couple times. What we didn’t get was more sunburnt, well, I didn’t. Taylor got a LITTLE more burnt, but I have no idea why, since we upped our SPF and had a reapplication timer going. I guess he’s just doomed to burn!

We spent the afternoon mostly just lazing around the condo, although we did go into Kihei for some souvenir shopping. Taylor got a terrible Hawaiian shirt for his mom, but there was a two-for-one special so he figured he’d get one for himself as well.

Great.

At 5:30 we headed down to Paipu Beach in Wailea, where we were married, to watch the sunset.

With his camera in hand, as usual.

My hair was a sick mess the whole trip, and I SWEAR I am wearing shorts here, they’re just really… short.

Later that evening, Taylor tried to take pictures of the lizards that lived under the air conditioner on the lanai at our condo but I scared the away by banging my head against the window for some inexplicable reason. I think I was trying to see around some pipes and forgot there was glass there. One of the weird translucent gecko-y ones almost fell in my hair!

Next Up: The Road to Hana

On Saturday Taylor and I decided to go out for a belated anniversary celebration. Our actual anniversary was during our trip on the 21st, and while we did celebrate it in Hawaii (I’ll post about that tomorrow) we couldn’t really do anything really romantic with Symphony in tow!

We chose dinner at The Corner Suite Bistro De Luxe, the same restaurant we went to for my birthday. It’s only a few blocks from our house and I’m glad because I was EXHAUSTED! I spent the afternoon running around Home Depot to get background paint for Elina’s mural (I can’t wait to start painting!) and had to rush home to meet Symphony’s stepmom because her dad was stuck at some fighting tournament he was helping organize or something, I don’t even know. ANYWAY after that Taylor went to the gym and I laid down to read and promptly fell asleep! When he came back he asked how my nap was and I think I said “I’M STILL NAPPING TURN OUT THE LIIIIIIGHT.” Our reservation was for 7:45 and I don’t think I got up until 7:15! Luckily my hair looks just fine slept on so I just had to throw on some makeup (and pants) and I was ready.

I have to say that dinner was a little awkward at first. I still had that weird, disoriented and dehydrated afternoon nap feeling, and our waitress wasn’t very good- but just with us, which made us kind of uncomfortable. After we were seated it took FOR.EVER. for her to come over and ask us if we wanted still or sparkling water (which she never brought anyway), and then she went to the couple on my left and told them the specials and went to the group on my right and told them the specials BUT SHE NEVER TOLD US THE SPECIALS until after we got our wine. I have to say that once you do start ordering things there it all comes really quickly and was delicious, but just like our last visit, it really got off to a slow start.

Anyway. Enough complaining! We ended up splitting a bottle of sauvignon blanc and to start Taylor had an adorable mini (and I do mean mini, it was practically doll-sized) French onion soup and I had a green salad with poached pears, hazelnuts and panko-crusted goat cheese. For our mains Taylor had steak & frites (again!) and I had the Station 7 burger (classy I know), and for dessert he had sticky toffee pudding and I had this delicious trifle consisting of layers of vanilla, chocolate and marshmallow creme. So yummy! One of the owners brought us complimentary glasses of port (I assume to make up for the crummy start to our service), I had never had port before and it was like someone made butter out of fruit and turned it into alcohol. Taylor ended up drinking mine for me, haha.

The awkwardness also passed and we had a great conversation about books and cartoons, laughed about the guy next to us who confused Don Draper with Don Cheadle (how is that even possible???) and also had some serious future relationship discussion (including a talk about his concerns about the possibility of us having a baby at some point, concerns that may have made me say “vagina” too loudly in the restaurant. Oops). In the end it was a really lovely evening and a perfect celebration of our first year of marriage 🙂

As for the rest of the weekend it had some good parts (getting to hold Symphony’s friend Ali’s pet degu’s brand-new one day old babies), some bad parts (Dougal peed in Taylor’s shoe), some less-lazy-than-normal parts (I actually went to the gym!) and now I’m into the melancholy part. Symphony has gone to bed and Taylor is sleeping as well. He has to go back to work tonight for the first time since the 17th, and I’m going to miss sleeping next to him. His night shifts never really get any easier. He had to take two extra days off for our trip to work, but now because he was off for so long he’s probably going to work Good Friday to “earn” back a vacation day (which he’ll probably never use anyway). So now I have a four-day weekend coming up (I have Friday and Monday off) but he just has a regular old two-day weekend instead. Oh well, I guess I’ll take what I can get!

March 20th

On Saturday we gave our poor sunburned bodies a rest by driving up to the summit of Haleakala, Maui’s dormant volcano. We did it last year as well, and I also went up during my first trip to Hawaii in 1999. Some valuable lessons for visiting the crater:
• It is hella cold 10,000 feet up in the air, so dress appropriately. The first time I went I was wearing shorts and a tank top. This is not appropriate!
• The road is really windy, so if, like Sym and me, you are prone to carsickness, take precautionary measures (take Gravol, skip breakfast, etc).
• Don’t expect to be able to buy gas or snacks or anything except for books up there.
• It only costs $10 to get in and if you are doing the road to Hana, DON’T THROW AWAY YOUR RECEIPT because it’s good for three days and you can also use it to get into the coastal part of the park at Kipahulu.

It was pretty cloudy in the crater that day, but you can see some better pictures from last year on Taylor’s flickr.

There was also a heart cloud last year.

It’s windy up there as well as cold.

Symphony with the observatory, which just serves to make the landscape all the more Martian.

Practically the only picture I have to Taylor NOT taking a picture/doing something with his camera.

See?? Luckily that means there are actual pictures of me!

Symphony was really crabby, so I tried to get her to smile by tickling her. Obviously this backfired!

I took this picture of Taylor about to plummet to his doom from the Leleiwi Overlook. This is at 8,800 feet and is where I always have to stop and throw up. Good thing there is a parking lot!

Symphony and me on the trail to the Leleiwi Overlook. I look weird because I just puked up Jolly Ranchers and coffee.

This is the same ahinahina I took a picture of last year:

I swear, one year I will be there to see one of these damn things blooming! (In case you didn’t know, they only flower once and then they die.)

I would say this day was just okay; I think we got better pictures at the crater last year, I got really nauseous on the way down and had to take more Gravol so I basically fell asleep, and Symphony was CRAB. BY. the whole time and whined non-stop about being hungry, which is annoying when you are 10,000 feet up a volcano with no stores or restaurants! We ended up stopping at a McDonalds in one of the little towns on the way back down the mountain just to shut her up! I don’t even remember what we did when we got back to the condo, just napped and read I guess- wait, I just cross-referenced with Taylor’s flickr and we watched the sunset at Keawakapu Beach. I remember now that there was a really high tide and huge waves that evening.

Next Up: Beach Day #2 & Happy Anniversary 😀

March 19th

Because of the three hour time difference, we all woke up early every day we were in Hawaii, around 6 or 6:30. That was actually like sleeping in for me since it felt like 9 or 9:30!

We decided to spend our first full day at the beach, so after a quick breakfast and a serious sunscreen slathering session we headed straight there. Even though it was basically across the street, we ended up driving over with all our stuff:
• cooler full of Dr Pepper, Sprite and apples
• Maui onion-flavoured potato chips
• three beach chairs
• two beach towels & one beach mat
• a boogie board
• a beach umbrella, which turned out to be totally useless since it was super windy
• books (including my Kindle in a Ziploc bag, haha), toys, my camera and more sunscreen

Symphony was really excited to be there.

The ONLY picture of me from the whole day is an awkward self-portrait, OF COURSE :/ Also you can see I was wearing my necklace. This had hilarious results.

Taylor was so white. I mean, like, SO WHITE.

He wrote our initials in a heart.

This was his second attempt, for some reason the first time he wrote TT + TT.

What we forgot to bring was a watch or a phone or some other kind of time-keeping device, so we really lost track of time. We ended up stay five hours and in spite of our reapplying of sunscreen Taylor and I ended up getting a little burnt. Symphony was fine though; I think she was just running around too much for the sun to catch her! It was a super fun time though, we just alternated between reading and rolling around in the waves. At one point we attempted to put up the beach umbrella at an extreme angle to act as a windbreak but it didn’t really work, and I had to hold on to it to stop it from blowing away. Our beach neighbors tried to copy our example and their umbrella did take off and Taylor had to chase it down for them!

After going home and thoroughly aloeing ourselves, we drove over to the Shops at Wailea. We were hoping they had a drugstore so we could pick up a few essentials without going to the gross Longs Drugs in Kihei, but no dice. Instead Taylor went to go buy new sunglasses since he lost his in the ocean, and I went to the Gap Women’s store to buy a new bikini. I really like their swimwear but they don’t ship to Canada (last year I had to get my friend Morgan to order one and then ship it to me UPS) and the stores here usually don’t get any until well into summer. I considered blowing Taylor’s mind by getting a red bikini but they only had XL bottoms (my butt isn’t that big. Yet.) so instead I got, you guessed it, grey. Taylor also bought a Gatorade and look!

No Advil! Amazing! Anyway I think the only other thing we did that day was go pick up some groceries and then sit around being burned.

Next Up: Haleakala

As in, I am a nut for macadamias. Since we were just in Hawaii, obviously we stocked up. Last year we only got three cans (and gave two away!) but this year we came home with ten in five different varieties.

Kona Coffee Glazed, Milk Chocolate Toffee, Wasabi & Teriyaki, Milk Chocolate, and Dry Roasted. We have four more cans of the Dry Roasted. I also got Macadamia Nut Hershey Kisses.

They’re wrapped in Mauna Loa-blue (it’s trademarked) foil and the little flags say Aloha! Too cute and too delicious.

Tonight I decided to use some of my nutty bounty to make macadamia crusted chicken, but all the recipes I could find online were too complicated or involved deep-frying or saving drippings and other things I’m not interested in., So I made Macadamia Nut Back-of-the-Cupboard Delight Chicken.

•2 chicken breasts (boneless, skinless, aka the only kind of chicken I will cook)
•1 egg
•1 tsp soy sauce
•1/4 cup chopped macadamia nuts
•1/2 tsp salt
•1/2 tsp white pepper
•1/4 tsp garlic powder

Preheat oven to 425°F.

In a small bowl combine egg & soy sauce. In a second small bowl combine nuts, salt, pepper and garlic powder. Place chicken in an appropriate dish (I had to use a different one than normal because I’m a spazz case and broke my favorite Pyrex baking dish by putting in a sink with cold water when it was still hot from the oven. It DISINTEGRATED). Brush with the mix of egg & soy sauce then sprinkle with macadamia nut mix. Bake for 35-35 minutes.

You could very easily totally coat the chicken by dipping it into the egg mix and then the macadamia mix, but I didn’t feel like chopping up more nuts and I didn’t have any breadcrumbs (which one would want to mix into the nuts). Anyway it was delicious. I served it with these ADORABLE MICROSCOPIC POTATOES, I swear they were the size of grapes:

… and a leafless salad. We did have some spinach but it was leftover from before our trip and although it looked okay it tasted nasty, and although Taylor went to the store but he bought this mixed herb salad which I don’t like. It’s easier this way, I don’t have to fight with Symphony to get her to eat the leafy parts! I did refuse to tell her what was on the chicken until after she’d tried it, since she is a cuckoo banana and doesn’t like macadamia nuts. I swear, sometimes I wonder if we are even related.

Also, before it fades and I’m whiter than death again, I wanted to share with you all evidence of My Sweet Tan:

Perfection.

I’m still planning the rest of my vacation recap, I just don’t want to fall further behind so until I’m caught up I’m going to uhh double up uhh uhh all my posts.

March 18th

We got up really early and headed for the airport for our 9:30 flight. We already had everything packed except for our toothbrushes so it was a snap. Checking in and trip through customs & security was a breeze. The check in agent complimented us on how well organized we were, unlike most families who have eighty-billion tons of stuff with them (my packing light was totally perfecto, btw, I wore everything except for a few underthings and my one-piece bathing suit). Taylor managed to not forget his giant suitcase at the check in desk this time (phew) and the airport security area has been, like, totally redone and streamlined since our last trip. I guess the Olympics were good for something other than just winning gold medals!


This was Symphony’s first real flight. We’d taken a seaplane over to Vancouver Island once but that really doesn’t count. I was worried she’d be sick or miserable or whiny but she was actually really good and only complained about being bored a few times. She was a little scared when we were landing, but that’s totally normal. If you’ve ever flown to Maui you know how freaky that hairpin turn over the ocean & sudden screeching halt on the runway can be! I actually had it worse than Sym, for some reason my right ear is a pressure change nightmare and I had horrible pain all down that side of my face and into my jaw and eyeball.

We quickly picked up our luggage and hopped on the shuttle to the rental car agency, where we upgraded ourselves from a regular SUV to a RIDICULOUSLY HUGE Chevy Tahoe. We rented one last summer when we went to Oregon, but that time we had more luggage (I wasn’t packing light then) and Dougal’s big dog crate. I’m not sure we really needed such a big truck but I can’t help it, I love them! Symphony approved as well.


I was pretty nervous to see what our condo would be like. I found it on a vacation rentals by owner website and for all I knew it could have been disgusting. I chose it because of the location (way down at the south end of Kihei, almost in Wailea) and the price ($130 a night for a 2 bedroom). I was also worried because when I google maps-ed the address there was nothing there, like NO BUILDING AT ALL. As it turned out the entrance was actually off a side street I didn’t have anything to worry about because the place was FAN. TAS. TIC. I would absolutely stay there again if (when!) we go back to Maui.


Once we were settled in we went down to the beach. Part of the reason I wanted to have a condo in this area was because we wanted to be close to Keawakapu Beach, and we were basically across the street, which was great! This is the beach our cheap, non-wedding-night hotel is on, and since you can’t see it from the road it’s much less busy than some of Kihei’s other beaches.



As you can see, Taylor’s shorts were already wet from standing in the waves. This happened basically every day!


After dinner we went down to the lawn of a nearby beachfront condo resort to watch the sunset and a family of humpback whales was right off the shore, like maybe 50 feet out. It was amazing and a perfect end to our perfect first (half)day in Hawaii!

Next Up: Beach Day #1

It’s been a while, internet! I meant to post while I was on vacation for the last week but I forgot my wordpress password and I couldn’t retrieve it because I also forgot my gmail password. Oopsies! But please rest assured that I will be inundating you with pictures and stories and did I mention pictures? from our trip 🙂 In the meantime…

Sweet Valley High #120 In Love with the Enemy, 23/104
Sweet Valley High #121 The High School War, 24/104
Sweet Valley High #122 A Kiss Before Dying, 25/104

Before we left for Maui I downloaded my favorite fantasy trilogy from high school to my kindle to read on the plane/the beach/etc. I didn’t want to start it ahead of time so in the last couple days before we left I pulled out some random SVH books from my nearly complete collection to read. I chose the ~Betrayal~ miniseries and really, what can I say about Sweet Valley High that hasn’t already been said in many, many other blogs? Basically, these books are the California sun-kissed perfect-size-six blondes of the literary world! This miniseries has it all: Gang violence! A Tragic death! Surfing competitions! What more could you ask for?

Weather forecast for Kihei, Maui.