Gettin' to Hawaii

SO the journey continues....

This was right before we left for Hawaii. This was us in the process of turning our big room into a big tent! That was a lot of fun to do. My dad is really creative and innovative, Lance is great at making my creative projects logical and do-able, and I'm the idea generator.... Actually the tent idea was originally my dad's. I just found the way thought i felt would look best. A few weeks before we left for Hawaii, Lance and I cleared all the couches, furniture, pictures...everything...out of the room and SOMEHOW managed to place it all into a very small small room. It was like doing a life size jigsaw puzzle. Later that day, Lance, Dad and I laid on our backs and stared up at the ceiling, trying to figure out how in the world we were going to engineer this thing. There were a lot of elements which came into play with this decision: the weight of all the fabric, how to get the bolts into the cement, what to string the fabric with... the list went on but we got it figured out. Good thing I'm surrounded by smart men! after all was said and done, after we ran into a few hiccups...it ended up looking really pretty.

(i just noticed mom over there in the corner hanging out. haha.)

SO onto Hawaii. It was quite the adventure, that's for dang sure. The penny-pincher Lance is usually comes in handy... however... when it comes to traveling, saving that extra $50 is NOT worth it. I will tell you that. (I think I may have Lance convinced after this.) We found a cheaper flight out of Houston. I'll tell you our adventure.

Pretty sure I mentioned that Lance and I sold cars all summer so we could get a solid foundation to start our life with. Well, we had one last truck that we hadn't sold, and our departure date for Hawaii was rapidly approaching. We spent a lot of time asking the Lord to help us find a way to get it sold. Well, our prayers were answered.... but the guy who wanted to buy it lived in San Marcos (three hours away) and wanted us to bring it to him. (The Lord has a sense of humor, yes?) SO since we were driving down to Houston anyway, we for some reason thought It'd be no big deal to hit up San Marcos on the way. Check out the map.

Start at the northern big cluster of red. We start there... with a truck and trailor with a truck ON the trailer. We head down to the heart of the southwestern cluster of red. Drop off the truck, head to the DMV to register the truck for the guy, then head off to the southeast cluster of red. Please note the red, and please note that originally we were going to go from the north cluster to the southeast cluster.... anyway you see my point, yes? quite the amount of driving, ill say that much.

Lance and I have a secret though. We found a way to make the time pass. We had to make a few trips to Utah and back this summer... So, SOMEHOW Lance talked me into watching Smallville... Uhhh it's a show on the WB about Superman when he was a teenager. Yes, laugh if you will. I did. I was extremely skeptical about this. But i decided i would humor the boy (after all, he does do 95% of the driving). SO i will admit it, i got hooked. We bought the last three seasons and watched them all in one trip to Utah. Brilliant idea though. It's like watching 24 hours of one long movie. So for this really cool adventure down to Houston, we bought another season of a show we liked: Friday Night Lights. (let me disclaim: we're not huge TV watchers, so we kind of had to guess which shows were more wholesome than the rest... because we all know that's not the easiest thing to find. This one actually has morals to it.)

Anyway, we made it to Houston safely. One of my friends from high school had just moved there, so she was sweet enough to let us stay there that night and take us to the airport that next morning.

We finally caught our flight. the 8 hour flight. We scored big though because we had TV on demand, two and a half meals and free drinks on our flight. Apparently no other airline provided that. CJ said a cookie he bought on his flight cost like $5.00 . That's a bit rediculous I'd say... Anyway. We made it into Honolulu. Oh did I mention we also had a 2 1/2 hour layover from Honolulu to Kona? yeah, that was a money-saver thing we did too. So we park our tired butts in the terminal and I went walkin around to find some food for my hungry fiance. As I was trying to find a place to eat NOT McDonalds and NOT Wendys and NOT a million dollars (this took a while) I saw a lady who looked short and really cute, and i thought - "Hey! That totally looks like Mom." and as I got closer I realized HEY! THAT IS MOM! so i ran up to her and started hollerin, and she took me over to the rest of the fam. That was so fun running into them! Who would have thought. They weren't on the same connecting flight as us, but it was still fun all the same to have them in the same terminal as us. (This is Lance waiting in the terminal)

The 45 minute connecting flight to Kona felt like a blink compared to what we had just done, and it was so nice to be greeted by my darling soon-to-be-mother-in-law.


I was SO excited because I had always seen in movies where people land in Hawaii and get leid with beautiful Hawaiian flowers, and I always have secretly wanted to have that happen to me. It's like Clydie knew it, and she leid us!!!

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We had to wait for Lance's dad, Rob to get there. Not quite sure what happened, something with traffic and what not, but it took about an hour... and guess what? we ran into the family AGAIN!


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We ALSO ran into Lance's very best friend from his crazy high school days, Dave, who was also dubbed his Best Man. It's always so cute to see these two reunite. They're like two little girls. They get so giddy and hug each other really tight and just talk nonstop. Finally we got into the car and were on our way to our beach house. The highway that ran from the airport to the house was pretty close to the beach, but there were some pretty large hills obstructing the view. Lance hadn't seen his Hawaiian ocean since long before his mission, and I think the same with dave, so they both had their faces pressed against the window, craning their necks, vocally getting annoyed with the hills because they were in the way. It was so cute and funny! finally the hills departed and i heard a collective "DUUUUDE!!!!" and they high fived each other and started talking about how excited they were to get into the ocean, and that it was the first thing they were going to do once they got to the house.



the rest are just pictures of my family at the beach and at the house the night/morning before the wedding. I love you guys! thank you all for coming!!