I Love You, California!

Literally! We love the beach and try to get there about once a week. On one of my trips to Hawai'i with Will we visited Lanikai Beach and were in awe by its beauty. When we visited we weren't prepared for a long visit. There are no facilities, amenities, or shade on the beach (which is actually one of the greatest things about the beach since you feel a little more remote) so it's important to bring your own supplies - a lot of water, sunscreen, chairs, and beach umbrella. Now that we're locals, we have all of these things! So we packed up our beach gear and a picnic basket of drinks and food and set up at the beach for the day. We went swimming, snorkeling, and walked along the beach. The highlights of the day were seeing a turtle about 15 feet away from us while were swimming and right at the end of our day at the beach I got stung by a jellyfish! Luckily it was just a common jellyfish and I didn't have a severe reaction. I had a mark around my arm where the jelly...

It's just part of what I do! I work all day, then come home to get ready to go stand by my man at his business events. The company that awarded Terviva its grant is the Energy Excelerator. They have been working over the last year to renovate their space in Downtown Honolulu and hosted a housewarming party to celebrate the opening of their renovated office! It is a beautiful space and we really enjoyed our time at the event! Will presenting his group exercise card - his idea for promoting sustainability is planting pongamia, of course! Credit here goes to the photographer for the Energy Excelerator. Terviva's section of the wall that featured the growth companies in his cohort. That's Cha-Cha, the Energy Excelerator's pongamia tree. It was so fun to actually be here in Hawai'i with Will for this event rather than him coming from Oakland. This is why we are here! (among other things . . .)

While living in California and now Hawai'i, we have always been fortunate to be able to set up a house to call home, and we always manage to find places that tie us back to our roots. Remember The Loring in Oakland? The Wisconsin bars in SF? And there are certainly more. On our night our on the town tonight we stopped in an Irish bar to play shuffleboard and there on the wall was a stadium seat from Wrigleyville! Earlier in the night we stopped at a whiskey bar where the live musicians were playing "Sweet Home Chicago." It was a night that got us reminiscing about the great town of Chicago and my dear sister and brother-in-law who live there!

Our dearest friends Nate and Emily planned their wedding for August 16th, 2014 a year ago! Once we had an inkling that we might be moving to Hawai'i, we knew for sure we would do whatever it took to get back to the mainland to attend their wedding. It was just something I wasn't going to miss. So, we pulled some strings, I accepted my job under the condition that I would be gone for about a week, Will had work meetings taking place on the mainland, and we pieced our trip together like a puzzle to have most travel costs covered by Will's trip already planned for the mainland and the many points that he has earned and graciously allows me to use. It was a very quick trip but we got to see several friends and our families while we were in the Midwest. I am so thankful that we were able to be a part of Nate and Emily's day. It was an absolutely beautiful weekend in Walker, MN on Leech Lake!

So, we're a month in to officially living in Hawai'i, and what better way to get welcomed to the state than by two hurricanes! Not one, but two! Earlier in the week the state started getting amped up for the possibility of two hurricanes hitting the islands. The first hurricane, Iselle, was forecast to hit the Big Island Thursday and Oahu on Friday. I spent the days leading up to the hurricane stocking up on water, canned goods, supplies for the cats, and toilet paper. Apparently during hurricanes you need a lot of toilet paper; I don't quite understand it, but everyone was buying it up! Water was hard to come by, too. I went to a few stores and couldn't find any. Finally while meandering through a Safeway store a worker brought out a flat cart filled with boxes of beverages. Only two of the cases were bottled water and I was able to grab one! But for the remainder of my shopping trip I feared for the security of my bottled water as people came up asking me where I foun...

This is what I found myself saying over and over again while up on the North Shore! I can't believe I forgot to post about this, but in late July Will had a couple of meetings on the North Shore where his planting site is. I hadn't started work yet so I decided to tag along. While Will was at his meetings I found plenty of ways to occupy my time; I did a little window shopping, got a great picnic lunch from Waialua Bakery consisting of a veggie patty sandwich and a vegan peanut butter cookie, and walked down to the beach to enjoy said picnic lunch and relax. After hanging out at the beach for a while and studying my surroundings, I thought about how we had never left the immediate area of Haleiwa Beach Park the times when we had visited. I took a peek on my phone to see what might be up around the point that goes out along the bay and saw it was Pua'ena Point Beach Park. Seeing as though it was a legit place, I began walking. As I walked I passed a few beach goers and a c...

Will and I try to get to the beach two times per week if we can. I love that my schedule allows me so much free time in the afternoon and evening hours, and Will's schedule is fairly flexible. So today Will picked me up from work and we went straight to the beach! This is just how I like my happy hour! Cheers!

Have you ever ridden in a helicopter? Have you ever been scared to death even thinking about the rotor blade chopping your head off, let alone taking off and landing in what appears to be a toy? Well, me too, but when I've been given the chance to view a volcano erupting up close in a helicopter, all of those thoughts fade away and excitement takes over. Let's back up a little here. In the eastern part of the Big Island, there is an active volcano that has been erupting consistently since 1983. Here's a little info from nps.gov: Kīlauea Volcano has erupted lava almost continuously from its east rift zone since 1983. These lava flows have added about 500 acres of new land to the southern shore of Kīlauea and covered 8.7 miles (14 km) of highway with lava as deep as 115 feet (35 m). During the day a robust plume of volcanic gas is a constant and dramatic reminder of the molten rock churning in a lava lake within the crater. After sunset, Halema'uma'u continue...

Can you believe it has been five years since our wedding?! Five years! Where has the time gone? As we sat together reflecting the last five years, we were trying to decide what the highlights were. We started rattling off things that were particularly memorable, and found that we couldn't stop listing the many events and moments in our married life (and of course those before marriage) that we will *hopefully* remember forever. We are so fortunate to have the friendship, partnership, and loving relationship that we do. We try to never take a day for granted, and no matter where life takes us, Minnesota, California, Hawai'i, and who knows where else, as long as we are together, we will be home . To celebrate our five year anniversary we planned an overnight trip to Volcano on the Big Island. I had been here briefly with Will last August and he's been to the area a few times as well, but we hadn't had the time to explore. We arrived on Friday to a very wet and rainy H...