Frozen Kona

Aloha!

We wanted to start the blog off with a beautiful picture of one of our new favorite spots on the island.. more on it later.
We are back to just the two of us after hosting visitors for the last few months on and off! One of Joey's last day in Hawaii it also happened to be his birthday so we all went out for a special birthday dinner at Shorebird restaurant at the Outrigger Reef on the Beach. It was such a neat place because you started at the salad bar then after you cooked a steak of your choice (and garlic bread!) on a giant grill in the middle of the restaurant! They had great tropical cocktails and delicious food which was all enjoyed feet off the ocean, not a bad night!

"Aloha Berry" SO ono!

Enjoying his tropical Mai Tai!

My cutie chef

Pretending to cook my steak. Mark was really my chef, hehe.

Not a bad view from the restaurant while cooking our steaks.

No blog entry is complete without talking about some of the new foods we have tried since coming out here. I feel as though we have seriously neglected this blog since we have failed to mention manapua! Manapua was influenced by the Chinese char siu bao. Manapua is basically a steamed super soft yummy bun filled with all sorts of goodies including; beef, chicken and pork. Now on to my favorite parts.. the sweets! One of my favorite places to get shave ice, Waiola shave ice has a new concoction at their Ward location called milk ice. It's a hybrid between a shave ice and ice cream. It's texture is soft, creamy and chocolate-y topped off with condensed milk(which is also very popular in Hawaii atop shave ice) and chocolate chips! Oh goodness it was yummy.

I heard about Samurai actually from my mom who found a picture online of their yummy soft serve. The shop was a tiny little hole in the wall shop on a side street off a busy road in Honolulu. It offered all kinds of snacks including; popcorn, ice cream and arare. On a side note we love arare. It's a crunchy Japanese rice cracker that is flavored with soy sauce. At this visit we opted for a small chocolate and a large vanilla/strawberry soft serve. The soft serve was very creamy, soft and very refreshing on a hot day. Plus it looked very visually appetizing! We love, love, love being able to always try new and different foods. It seems like there are a never ending amount of restaurants and food stands all around Honolulu so I'm sure it's safe to say our taste buds will be trying new things as long as we are in Hawaii!

One of my favorite places to find new foods is a grocery store near our house called Don Quijote. We can always find some sort of interesting Japanese food including these oreos!
We are are SO thrilled that my mom (Jen) just arrived for a long visit!! She has already seen a bunch of Oahu when she helped us move out here last April. (It's so beyond crazy to think we left our lives back home in Wisconsin almost one year ago). We still however, have numerous fun things planned when she visits. We will be going to Maui for the first time the third week in February which will be a wonderful getaway...and an excuse to take some time off of work. Winter in Hawaii, particularly about this time is a prime spot in the world to see thousands of humpback who have migrated from Alaska to give birth to their young in the warm waters off Hawaii's coast. I have always had a huge love of marine biology so to actually be able to see a humpback whale breech has been a huge thing on my bucketlist for as long as I can remember. Even when I traveled to California in January of 2009 with my mom... and when Mark came to visit me at UCLA in the summer of 2009 we were unable to see any humpback whales... I know it's something my mom has always wanted to see as well so we will have a ton of fun doing it together!

So many goodies my momma brought us tehehe!

Whale watching is a huge deal for tourism in Hawaii. About two thirds of the worlds population North Pacific whales come to the warm waters of Hawaii-which fyi is 4k-10k! Crazy! Whale watching in all forms employee about 390 jobs and almost $27 million in revenues. It's no wonder about those numbers because it's one of the prime places in the world to see these amazing creatures. Mark and I saw our first humpback whale this past week which was one of the most amazing moments of my life (seriously)! I heard about a place about twenty minutes from our condo in the area of Hawaii Kai called Spitting caves. The spot itself is a little off the beaten path and really hard to miss. The entrance of the trail was hidden behind a dumpster, but we were able to find our way down the path. Once we arrived down the scenery reminded us a lot of the big island with all the visible lava rock. We arrived at a good time in the afternoon because we had the whole area to ourselves for about thirty minutes. Spitting caves is a popular spot for cliff diving and we were able to witness a few crazy people jumping off the side of the cliffs. We spent a good hour and a half whale watching and were able to see three whales completely breach out of the water as well as their blowholes spraying water in the sky. It was a really amazing day for us. One of my favorite things about Hawaii is you can have an incredible time without spending a penny.

^our welcome to spitting caves video lol.

Later in the day we went to Sandys beach to see the crazy high surf!

We have an entire long list of adventures to look forward to on Maui so I'm sure the next blog will be extrememly fun for us to write! :D On that note here's a few throwback pictures that are my favorite from two different California trips in 2009!

Aloha until next time from Hawaii nei...

Jen & Mark

Hau'oli Makahiki Hou (Happy Year New)!
It's crazy to think that it's almost mid January and the weather here is 80 degrees or very close every day when in Wisconsin it seems to be colder than ever.. (sorry all our peeps...sending warm wishes your way)! Last week it got down to 58 degrees which tied a low temperature record set in the late seventies... those few nights I wore fuzzy warm socks and a sweatshirt to bed. But, it's back to normal now with temperatures staying in from the high sixties at night to about 80 during the day, not a whole lot to complain about here.

We had a wonderful, relaxing Christmas which included a mellow morning enjoying warm cinnamon rolls and opening presents. It was strange without a ton of family around, for sure something we quite possibly never experience again... a quiet Christmas, just the two of us. The plus of the holidays being over now is the amount of traffic that instantly leaves the area after the first of the year. We both have had an extremely busy work life since the end of November, so it's nice finally to feel the pressure of the holidays being over with both our personal and work lives.

Chillin with Adam Sandler. Best.moment.ever.!

Mark and I lost patience with our gingerbread house pretty fast. :0)

The Sony open happening across from my hotel this week.

We swear this is Ramen etiquette!
On New Years Eve we were so beyond excited to welcome Mark's dad and Cheryl to Hawaii as our first official visitors since my mom helped us move here in April. They arrived at 3:30pm and that night after work we went to a special prime rib dinner buffet at the Oceanarium at the Pacific Beach Hotel in Waikiki. It's a really neat restaurant that surrounds a huge fish tank that houses many different kinds of fish (70 different species and over 400 fish) including gigantic sting rays! The restaurant itself is pretty dated in my opinion but the food was good and the experience was quite neat. We spent New Years Eve dining on prime rib, mashed potatoes, chicken, fish, roasted veggies, and my favorite chocolate fondue! The rest of the evening we spent pretty low key back at our apartment talking and having a few drinks with loud displays of fireworks exploding all over the city at midnight!

A little rain and wind can't keep us away from Waikiki!

Having a really good laugh, tehehe

Before....

After... lol (Our photographer thought this was the funniest thing ever)

Mango Creme brulee

It was so much fun for us to play tour guide while they were here and get to show them all our favorite hikes, beaches, restaurants, and many things we learned while being here. We hiked the Makapuu Lighthouse trail, Diamond Head and Manoa falls. We attended the KCC farmers market, the swap meet, Pearl Harbor, Kualoa Ranch, walked up and down Waikiki Beach, and ate at countless of our favoite restaurants-and even tried some new places! They were all able to visit me at my hotel while I was working as well which was a ton of fun showing them!!

One of our favorite memories was on Jeff's birthday when we were able to go somewhere we have wanted to go since we arrived on Oahu, Top of Waikiki Restaurant. The top of the building is strung with beautiful white lights which makes it specifically stand out in the Waikiki skyline. I remember the first night we arrived to Oahu driving through Waikiki and seeing the beautiful lights strung on top of the building.. so it was quite special for us as well finally be able to experience it with them! It's always hard saying goodbye but we feel blessed that we were able to spend lots of quality time with them and that we get to welcome more visitors in the next few months as well!