Boys...

Visitors again! (I guess that's what happens when you live in a prime vacation spot)
My brothers Brad and Jeff and their two friends Scott and Matt came to stay with us. Jeff is leaving on his mission on Wednesday so it was kind of their last "hoorah"/surf trip before he left.
They were great guests and were surprisingly tidy!

What handsome boys!
Matt, Scott, Jeff, Brad

A good bye picture with Jeff. I didn't think I would cry but of course I did.

Scott and Jeff performed every night they were here.
They are so so so talented. And that's not being sister biased.

Cam and I at one of his shows.
After I was cheering, taking pictures, clapping, to Jeff's performance, Cameron says, "I'm so glad I never had a sister to embarrass me."
Haha... thanks Cameron.
I know you didn't mean it that way. :)

waiting for their turn on stage

I made a cake and decided to make it a birthday cake since Jeff would be missing his birthday with us!!
Haha... Jeff thought we were weird. Which we are.

"Happy Birthday Jeff!" haha... not till September

Playing games in the yard...

It was such a pleasure having these guys here. I will miss Jeff for the 2 years he's gone in Mexico. I guess it doesn't make that big of a difference since we live a 5 hour flight time apart. :)
Brad was a great manager for the pair and is so determined.

My brothers amaze me all the time.

A year in Paradise

I can't believe it's been a year in Hawaii.We moved here a day after our 2 week honeymoon. I threw somethings in a suit case and off we went. Cameron was going to a new school, we both were looking for jobs, and all we had was wedding money and gift cards to our name.

Cameron's friend Poppy (Brian) for our wedding gave us a free car. It didn't have a title, registration, or insurance. The trunk didn't close and I think the transmission fluid leaked. But it ran and we drove it! One night we even drove it down to Honolulu and bought 3 chairs and Costco groceries and somehow they all fit! (and we managed not to get pulled over!)
Our first house we moved into was a dream! It was so cute,perfect, and on the beach. It was everything we dreamed of for our first little hut in Hawaii.
We had great neighbors and friends that let us borrow practically their whole house while we got ours together. It took us a whole month to find jobs. I did marketing downtown for a company called "Vanpool Hawaii" and Cameron was working at Pizza Hut as a delivery boy.

Wow... things have changed...
Now Jeanne has come into our life and things are just a little bit different. :)
I'm curious to see what will come in the next year.

Cameron and I looked at the classes he has to finish up school and I realized two more years will fly by.
One year of enjoying Hawaii so far.

I loved this warm happy movie.
And now I'm reading the book.
Not really just about a dog but more a relationship between 2 people.

And even though it's PG, it's still an adult story.
I'd say 8 and up.

Our Quick Break

I've been horrible at blogging and so much has happened. While slacking on my own blog, I've enjoyed reading all of yours!
Went home to San Diego for 10 days and

1. Went to Kate and Pehrson's wedding

2. Went to see Wicked the musical with mother-in-law Shannon.
This was AMAZING!!!

Got to go back stage!
We lucky enough to get a behind the scenes tour with the star of the show!

3. Did so many fun things with our families!
Also got my shopping trip in with my mom. :)

4. Celebrated the Holidays with family.
Here's baby Trey!

My family... haha... any more and I don't think we could get them in the picture.

Celebrating Christmas Eve at Nana and Papa's

5. Got some pretty awesome gifts!
Cameron got me this:
And I got him this in silver:
My in-laws tricked out my bike!

6. We celebrated our one year anniversary!
Dec. 28th 2007








We celebrated by going out to dinner downtown and staying a night there.

Cameron surprised me with the flowers and the most thoughtful card.

Our very red room! It was cute.
We spent the next day downtown using some of our Christmas gift cards shopping.

Vacation time! Off to San Diego we go!
Here's some pictures from the Howard's fun Ugly Christmas Party!

Sequin sweaters and all...

The Tafa's baby loved the reindeer antlers...

In the White elephant gift exchange, Cameron got these praying hands... haha nice!
Just what everyone needs right?

And poor Shean got our thanksgiving gourds that we gifted. He was trying to put them under his sweater.

This vacation is long overdue!
Can't wait to see family and enjoy wonderful San Diego!

it's been a while...

I haven't written here since before thanksgiving so get ready for a doozy.

1. Thanksgiving, Tiff, Nick and Karch visiting:We had a great time with all our thanksgiving visitors. I realized I absolutely love to slave over a hot oven for hours!! :) I really do! I sent out my husband and Karch to surf and the visitors out to drive around till 2 and dinner will be ready when they come back. I babied my 21 lb. bird like no other, even brining it (letting it soak in salt water, herbs and spices of choice) for16 hours before roasting it. It turned out great and brining does make a difference. Actually everything turned out really really good. Except the peas. I burnt the peas haha... out of all things. :)








Here's what I made from scratch. I wanted to do EVERYTHING from scratch:
21lb. Turkey
homemade stuffing
Yams with pecans and brown sugar
Creamy Mashed potatoes
green bean casserole
Rolls (Karch did these and they were SO good!)
Peas
Carrots
Cranberry Relish (this was amazing!)
Gravy (ran out of time so i didn't do this by scratch)
Pumpkin Pie
Apple Crumb Pie
Pumpkin Chessecake
And it was all so so so yummy!! I started at about 7am and finished at 2pm and I loved every bit of it!

2. What we have been doing since thanksgiving:
Since then, finals, work, and exercise have been taking a lot of our time. The end of the semester is coming and so is a lot of studying with it! The 10 day Christmas vacation will be much needed after this week.
This has been one of those weeks with Jeanne. Boy oh boy. She has a crazy week every so often and this week was it, on finals week... perfect Jeanne, thanks. So I come in on Monday morning and guess what Jeanne has been craving all weekend? STEAK! And she wants it bad. So I call all 81 steakhouses on the island to see who is open and I found one. An hour drive and lots of wining later, we get there. Of course Jeanne's steak wasn't cooked right, sends it back, she's upset and blah blah blah... so when she final receives her perfect steak, she takes one bite and is full. After all that? oh brother. So what does Jeanne do when she is down and out? By flat screen TVs!! Of course!! Who doesn't do that when they're not having the greatest day? We go to Best Buy, buy a 32'' flat screen TV and we're out of there. Phhheeewwf. I was going to tell her she doesn't really need a another flat screen TV since she has one in every room... but I didn't. And so guess who realized she had too many flat screen TVs when she got home? Big J. So who did she give her extra to to put in there casa?
Us. :)Thanks big J for this lovely addition in our bedroom. We are not really ones to have TVs in our bedroom but hey, guess we are now.

3. What we woke up to this morning:
Keep in mind that this week has been pretty busy. We also had are dear friends Rory and Ashley come to Oahu to stay with us! We're so excited to have them stay! Of course we have finals till Friday at 10am but after,it's all fun!
Well all last night I kept waking up from the rain and then by this morning there was lightening and thunder. Well, we got a pretty big shower last night. It flooded Jeanne's whole property and not to mention... our guest bedroom. Poor Rory and Ashley found a little swimming pool in their room after breakfast. It rained really hard.
Jeanne and I were supposed to go out to lunch in Honolulu today but the roads were all shut down. I walk into Jeanne's house to say good morning when all the sudden Henry's( Jeanne's 90 yr-old boyfriend, they've been dating for like 40 years) nurse comes to us worried and says "Henry is tired". Well due to Henry's medical past,Jeanne instantly knows Henry is going through a stroke! We all rush into his room, I call 911, we try to keep Henry alive, Jeanne is crying/yelling, I call 911 again to see where they are and they are at the wrong house, ambulance is having a hard time getting around due to flooding, I run outside to flag down the ambulance and drop my phone in the knee high flood water, I'm soaking wet from head to toe from rain and flood water, I chase around paramedics because they don't know where to enter the house, paramedics come in and take out Henry, Jeanne is upset etc. etc. etc.
Luckily we hear Henry is doing fine. We found 4 really big leaks in Jeanne's house... my goodness.
Here are some pictures from today:

Brown dirty water everywhere!!

Ya see all that stuff in her drive way that's brown, ya that's a huge river going from the mountains, through Jeanne's yard and into the ocean.

Friday at 5 p.m. will be bliss. (Or I hope so.)