Travels

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Hawaiian Honeymoon - The End

Zoo Day

So Curt thought I'd love to go to the zoo and he was right! It wasn't a big zoo or anything but it was a lot of fun.

I was really impressed at this zoo. There were really only 2 animals we didn't get to see. They set up their pens really well.




I forget what this thing was called but it is so cute!

Our last day

While every day on our honeymoon was a relaxing we chose the last day to just walk around and chill at the hotel.

A sunrise picture...of course.

We found the end of the rainbow and it was where we were staying. I think that is a good sign. While we were here we saw a rainbow at least once a day. We saw an entire one which arced over our hotel. It was pretty cool!

 Just a cool water/sky picture.

 A sunset picture. Obviously we both just showered. haha I didn't realize this before.

 Another sunset picture.

So this was our pick a pearl thing. What I did was I picked an oyster out of this bucket. They told me to pick the fattest, biggest, hairiest one that I could find. 

They cracked it open and inside was my awesome pearl! Now the pearl was only $15 where they get you is the jewelry. I wasn't going to get anything because it was all a ridiculous price but Curt is awesome and told me to get the necklace that I wanted. :D He is the best!



We had a request for some palm tree pictures so I of course had to make sure I got them. Here are a few. A cruise ship was randomly coming back so I thought I'd get a few with it as well. Enjoy!

The trip home

 This was our last sunrise in Hawaii. While most people are sad to come home we were both ready. We had so much to look forward to that we really didn't need the honeymoon but it was definitely nice!!

Oahu from the air.


p.s. I just heard our wedding pictures will be done on Friday so next week check back for some pictures!!!!!

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Hawaiian Honeymoon - Day 3

Day 3

Wednesday was the day we decided to rent a car and drive around the island. It was rainy (more like sprinkling) so we chose a good day to just drive around.


 This is the center of Honolulu. Their roads were like 4 lanes but completely surrounded by buildings. It was weird and hectic. The scenery was very pretty once we got out of the city.

 These trees are so funny looking. I was amazed that trees like this existed, but I am easily amused by things like this.



North Shore

We made it to the north side of the island in about an hr and a half. That is nothing compared to driving from Rensselaer or Thayer to Muncie.

 We were both confused by this blue stop sign. It was in a parking lot, but I never once thought I would see one of these.

 These were the waves at North Shore. They don't look that big in the picture but in person they were absolutely huge. There was no way either of us were wanting to get in that water. The beaches were actually closed this day because of them.


Us at North Shore

Relaxation

After driving around for a while, we headed back to just relax before our Luau.

The scenery on the walk back to our hotel.

Curt stylin' at the beach

Luau

While planning our honeymoon, we decided we would go to a luau. In reality the food was weird but the story, music, and dancing was very cool/interesting. The reason the food wasn't that good was because it was "authentic" Hawaiian food. It was a good experience though and we hit up McDonald's afterwards. :)

Before the luau
 
 They started the luau out with this girl twirling balls on a string. There is a name for these, but of course I can't remember it.

 The performers switched outfits at least 5 to 6 times throughout the night. The cool thing was that they were telling a story. The whole luau was about where the Hawaiian people originated from and a little bit about their culture.

They ended the show with the guys twirling fire but my camera wasn't doing so hot. Mixing low lighting with movement makes taking pictures extremely difficult.

Monday, January 21, 2013

Hawaiian Honeymoon - Day 1 & 2

DAY 1

Time for some honeymoon pictures! For those of you who don't know, we went to Honolulu, Hawaii for our honeymoon. Just getting away for a week was amazing. The best part was we would go to bed at 1pm our time and it was like 10pm in Hawaii then we could sleep for 10 hours and get up at 8am. This gave us the whole day to enjoy being there. First off traveling to Hawaii is terrible. We didn't have trouble with our connecting flight or anything but those are some long plane rides.

This is what Washington looks like from the sky. It was probably the coolest area to see from the air. The clouds were low enough to have some of the mountains showing through.
 
 Curt became a professional flier after this vacation. He had never flown in an airplane before but realized it isn't that big of a deal. I do know he has had his fill of flying for awhile (hopefully not forever :p). Mostly he was just bored because you sit there for 5 to 6 hours in a small space.

 We finally made it! Our travel agent set it up so that we would be greeted by someone and taken to our hotel. They even gave us lei's which smelled good but they were way to strong. It was still a cool way of arriving in Hawaii. Traveling took the entire day for us. We started at 11am Central time and arrived in Hawaii at like 9pm their time (which was 1pm central time). So we really just got situated in our room and fell asleep watchin some TV.

DAY 2

 We stayed at the Hilton Hawaiian Village on Waikiki Beach. After staying there for a week we decided that we were at the best resort on the island. We say that because on the other side of the island the waves were like 25-30 feet (pictures will be posted on a later blog). Then in our area, our resort had everything we could possibly want. We wouldn't have had to leave the resort since it had everything but we wanted to explore.


  
This was our view. We were on the 23rd floor out of 25. It was pretty cool to have this view. The weird thing was you can feel the building sway in the wind.

Okay your probably thinking..."Really a picture of a fish?" BUT this is a koi fish. I had absolutely no idea they were this giant. I just wanted to share our 'what the heck' moment.

BEACH TIME!

We of course had to do the cute name in the sand picture. It's so weird to have a different last name but I love it! 

 So when we got to the hotel (at 9:30pm) our room wasn't ready. How does that happen?! Anyway, we were told we had to wait but we got $100 credit on our account. It ended up we had to wait 5 minutes so it was definitely worth it. Well we spent half of our credit on snorkel stuff. You can see Curt (above) modeling his gear while you can see me below!

 The cool part was we just walked into the ocean and could see tropical fish. We didn't pay to go snorkeling since we could do it for free. Now for some scenic photos from the area on the beach we were at.

Diamond Head
 We also walked around Honolulu during our day there. We didn't go too far because believe it our not about 80% of the people that were visiting were Japanese. You almost felt like you weren't in the USA.

The streets of Honolulu

A really cool tree with extremely long roots.

Our first palm tree picture!
Since this was New Year's Eve we decided to go out to dinner. We went to Tropics Bar & Grill which was located in our resort. It ended up being our absolute favorite place to eat. They had the most amazing ribs.

Look back soon for the next part of our honeymoon!


Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Our Wedding!!!

Yay! Time to talk about our amazing day! Our wedding day went very smoothly. In fact, we actually arrived at the reception ahead of schedule. I'm sure a lot of brides say this but I can really say our wedding day was perfect. The only mishap we had was that Curt broke his pants right before the wedding. Luckily, the people that did our flowers (Jordan's in Rensselaer) also do tuxes and fixed it for him. Oh and the Presbyterian Church's pastor called me Krenra during his prayer. I thought it was hilarious because our nephew Colton calls me that. If anything it lightened the mood. Now I will warn you I don't have many pictures but I will post more when the photographer gets them done. 

Our first kiss as a married couple! 
LOVE IT!
One thing Curt told me was that he did not want to see me before the wedding. He loves being traditional and I'm glad we did it that way. It made the ceremony more special. We took a few cute pictures of us before like the one above. I can't wait to see the rest!!




Our nephews did an amazing job! From what I hear, they didn't want to get out of the wagon so I'm sure they loved it. Colton especially loved the reception. I didn't think he would ever stop dancing! A funny story about Colton was that during the rehearsal he wanted to come stand by me. His mom said no (obviously) and he started to cry and said "I don't want Krenra to get married!" Every time I think about it I laugh because I think he would have preferred that I married him. 


Us cutting our delicious cake! Thinking about this cake makes me want a piece. Luckily, I have almost the entire thing in the freezer and will eat some after dinner now. :) 


So the photographer, Samantha Mitchell, had a picture of me up as a sneak peak. I thought I'd share it with you all as well. 

I will definitely post more pictures as soon as I get them but right now this will have to do! From what we hear everyone thought the wedding was beautiful and we think so too! It was definitely perfect for us because we were marrying our best friend. Now I just want to thank everyone that helped out. Our day wouldn't have been as special without all of you there and with all the help we got. I am glad its over now because no more planning! I also get to see my husband every day and love every second of it. Even if we are disagreeing.