Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Goodbye Hawaii...

Wednesday we headed to Hanumana Bay.
We spent the morning there snorkeling, walking on the beach, and just hanging out.
Danielle and Chad enjoyed feeding the birds. This provided some quality entertainment not only for us but everyone around us.
Patrick and I decided we could have spent all day there. The weather was perfect and the water was clear with tons of fish to see.
Everyone went snorkeling!
In the afternoon we headed to the Polynesian Cultural Center. We were able to visit a few of the villages.
Patrick tried his hand at making fire.
We went to a Luau for dinner.


After dinner we wandered around a bit more before we went to the evening show, Ha-Breath of Life. The show was great! It was filled with all different types of traditional island dancing and fire dancing, which was the highlight for me.


Thursday morning dad, Chad, Danielle, Patrick, and I hiked Diamond Head.
It had a nice path and at one point had a TON of stairs.
We all made it to the top to see the beautiful view.



We caught up with mom and Tay for lunch.
Patrick and Chad decided to try surfing in the afternoon while Danielle and I cheered them on.
They both got up a few times!


Our last day was Friday. We ate breakfast on the beach across from our hotel and spent the morning playing there until we had to check out.
Patrick and I decided to build a sandcastle.
Mom and Taylor enjoying the beach.
Patrick strolling on the beach one last time.
We had such a great vacation! We enjoyed not having to think about work and school and being able to spend a week together with everyone.



Thursday, June 21, 2012

I'M BACK!!!


I know, I know it’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything but that’s going to change. Ashley and I love setting goals and, I might add,  we are usually pretty good about completing them. Every year on our anniversary we take some time and look at our previous year's goals and see how we did and also we set some new ones (1, 5, 10 yrs and a bucket list).

This year, however, we’ve added something new. Each month we are going to pick something that we’d like the other person to do once a month for the rest of the year. Then each new month we add a one more until we get to our next anniversary. Ashley occasionally encourages me to write on the blog but I hadn’t gotten around to it. So being the sneaky girl she is she made it her first request. So at the very least you’ll be hearing from me twelve times! Kidding, I will write more often. I promise.
                                                 
That said, my first post is regarding something that Ashley and I discovered by mere coincidence (as is often the case). Last Friday night Ashley and I decided we wanted a little treat so we headed to the Burger King down the street for some shakes. Ashley decided that she wanted it 50/50 chocolate to strawberry. Thinking that our odds would be better inside we stepped in. Little did we know that upon doing so we were stepping into the future! Directly ahead of us, standing as tall as a man and in all silver was a new soda fountain machine. We could tell by the look of it that this was no ordinary coke machine. With it's sleek curves and illuminated striping it captured our eyes and we both began to approach.

Staring at the large touch screen display we could see the it had quite a number of flavors at least 20. I was already impressed if nothing else than the design. There was a small handicap button at the bottom but out of respect I got the attention of a worker and asked what would happen if I pushed it. The employee walked out from behind the counter and pushed it. Buttons glowed that were not visible previously. Wow! Very Cool! Then the friendly worker continue her tour of the machine by showing us that by selecting any one of the 20ish flavors visible a new screen appears with other additional sub-flavors.

For example there was a Diet Coke button that after selected provides additional options of diet coke with lime, cherry, raspberry, vanilla, and even orange. Tip the diet coke with raspberry is fantastic!

To cut a long-story that should be a short-story sorter I will summarize that this new machine is AMAZING! Over 130 flavors of soda and designed by a Ferrari team member using technology from medical drug dispensers so that there is no cross-contamination of flavor from the previous customer. That’s right WOW!!!

The one downside is that there is usually only one per BK and with a 95 drink per hour max rate and 130+ options you might be in a line for a bit.

How’s that for my first comeback post? Didn't think it was possible to write so much about a soda machine?

You're welcome.



Sunday, June 10, 2012

Aloha, part two...


Here we are on Monday waiting for the bus to take us to Pearl Harbor.

My dad walked around on the submarine behind them. It was something he always wanted to do.
We explored the museums and equipment all around.
Taylor and mom being serious by the seriously large guns.
Patrick with big guns.


 We watched a movie in the museum and took the ferry over to the memorial.

 

Enjoying our pizza dinner poolside back at the hotel.

We woke up early to watch the sunrise on the morning of our anniversary. The plan for the day was to go parasailing, ride a motorcycle around the island, and eat someplace fun for dinner.
On the bus ride to go parasailing!
We were both a little nervous to go up but once we got hooked in we were excited.
We got to go up really high and had a great view of the coast.

On the way back to the boat.




Everything was going good on our ride until the motorcycle overheated when we were at a light and shut down. We had been riding for 45 minutes and it would not start back up. Patrick pushed it over the three or so lanes of traffic and up the hill to Burger King. We got something to drink while the motorcycle was able to cool down.
After the motorcycle rested it started up and we continued our ride. We stopped at a nut farm were we bought some tasty macadamia nuts.
We kept riding and found a nice park. We took the opportunity to take some pictures and enjoy the view.



We loved riding a motorcycle again. We finished the day by eating dinner at hula dog and eating cupcakes. We had a great anniversary!

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Aloha, part one...

Patrick and I were lucky enough to spend a week in Hawaii! My parents scored a sweet deal through a travel agent that their friends from the ward knew and they decided to take all their kids along for the trip. It was fun to be in a place that was new to everyone and to have the Portela family all together.

 Here we are on one of our flights. We had a brief layover in LAX.
Enjoying breakfast by the pool.
The hotel we stayed at provided complementary breakfast including bagels, donuts, muffins, danishes, fruit, cereal, miso soup, rice patties, and lots more. They even gave each room a lunchbox so you could fill it up and eat on the beach or have extra snacks for later.
The view from our room. We were on the 15th floor.
We went to a swap meet that was huge. It wrapped around a stadium. After we were done we went wandering over a crosswalk to get a better view.

 

Then we hit up a Japanese noodle place for lunch. Everyone loved it and it was served cafeteria style.
I was really excited about trying my dish. You ate it by taking the noodles from the wooden bowl and dipping them into the sauce in the little bowl.

Along with our noodle dishes we each had some tempura.

Here we are ready to go on our second day. Since it was Mother's Day my mom picked the agenda and we were off to the North Shore area.

At the Dole Plantation.

I had no idea how pineapples grew so I was excited to find out.

On the Pineapple Express where we learned all about pineapples and got to tour the pineapple fields.


The plantation had a large koi pond. We loved watching the fish go crazy as they were eating.

My mom wanted to eat at a shrimp truck so that is what we did. Here we are waiting.

Danielle and Chad eating the delicious shrimp. It was quite messy but good.

Because it was going to take so long to eat my dad bought some barbeque corn for us all to try. After eating lunch Patrick decided that he wanted a little more.

Here we are at the temple. It was beautiful and more amazing than any pictures I've ever seen of it.


We stopped for a little break on the drive back to the hotel.