They looked at me and said it IS for sale, they are moving to the mainland. The man had said he'd give it to me for what he got it for, which was a great deal. So on a whim I said okay, we want to check it out. We made plans to take the boat out today and we FELL IN LOVE with the boat.
Hubby started the day out perfectly by falling into the water when he was helping us get untied from the pier. See the boatload of tourists in boat behind who witnessed it?? ROFL.
We went to a small island and snorkeled. Then they took us around the back end, just GORGEOUS.
Then we went to a submerged shipwreck and anchored there. We ate, they scuba dived, and we snorkeled and hung out. It was the most perfect day. Turtles, turtles everywhere.
Here's the beautiful boat while we were washing it down. I had started to consider it mine. Until the very end when the man said he actually has to sell it for $1,500 more because of the money and work he's put into it. I was crestfallen. Already I couldn't imagine spending as much as he originally quoted and was going to ask him to go a little lower. Now he wants more? I dunno...
SoooOOoo, is it over, or shall we just go for it and have perfect days anytime we want (but be even more in debt?)
Here's us with my cousin and her boyfriend. It's his birthday today..Happy Birthday J!
¶ 4:56 PM 9Mana'o 
Now brace yourself for a blow by blow account of my fantastic weekend like no other.
It started on Thursday with a pre-wedding celebration beach day on the bay. There were jet skis, inner tubes, a water slide and a boat to get to the sandbar. The house was beyond gorgeous, with bedrooms that looked straight out of magazines. Too bad it was pelting rain when we got there. It was a lot of fun anyway. There was a personal chef who made THAI FOOD. My favorite. So even though I just had to eat at my favorite spaghetti place on the way over, I filled up with two more plates. So much for a pre-wedding diet.
The next day was rehearsal and then the rehearsal dinner, which actually included all the friends and family that traveled to get to the wedding. They closed the restaurant for this party and every seat was filled.
This pic is the bridal party with bride and groom at rehearsal dinner:
This pic is our table. It was like, a 7 course meal or something. The twins were with our neice who took them to Chuck E Cheese.
The next day, we got up early and flew home with the twins. I had to just pack my dress and turn right back around to go to the airport and fly back . I was SO TIRED.We checked into the bridal suite at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, all six of us girls. Hawaiian Mark works there and hooked us up with a couple of drinks before the big day. Mahalo Hawaiian Mark! I wish I got a better pic of you. He is Mr. Aloha for sure.
This is photography by HawaiianMark: Mango martini, yum. For the record, I am not really a drinker at all, so this weekend did me IN. 
We got our bridesmaids' gift when we returned to the room. Can you believe it, we each got a Coach clutch purse! I was floored.
We turned in as early as possible for the big day. And woke up to the entire hotel shaking. We have never had a big earthquake like that before, and were pretty much freaked out. I wondered whether the hotel was going to crumble and we were going to die! Everyone else stood under a beam or something because they lived in California together during college days and knew what to do. I ran straight for the window to see outside. They all screamed for me to get over by them. When it was really over, we looked out the window like everyone else in the hotel, and there was a man swimming laps in the pool who was completely oblivious to it all. Did he not feel it??
Then the power went out. And the full realization hit home. TODAY is the wedding day. What would happen? This pic is the bride pretty much how she was all morning, on the phone with the wedding coordinator, the hotel coordinator, the florist, photographer, guests, etc. Poor, poor Bri.
We decided immediately to seek coffee. Good idea, because they ran out soon after at the coffee vendor and the line grew very long, only for people to find out there was only decaf left.
Then we asked the restaurant if we could eat at the buffet, and they said no, everyone is asking to eat, and they can't let us, there wasn't enough left. We explained that we had a wedding that day, we couldn't go anywhere and the bride definitely needs to eat. The manager became SO NICE and accomodating, seating us right away and let us get the last pickings of the buffet, and comped the whole thing. Amazing. The guy from the Dog Whisperer was sitting right next to us but I have never seen that show so I didn't make a spectacle : )
Then it was time for hair and makeup, because it was decided that regardless of whether there was going to be a reception or not, they were going to have the ceremony and be married. There was no power for hairdryers or curling irons so we were panicking. The hotel manager set up an outlet for us that was hooked up to the generator that was in some storage room. We had no mirror, only one outlet, and just 20 minutes to do four people's hair before our makeup lady would be coming down with the bride to do her hair. People walking the stairwell had to pass us and one guy saw us frantically curling and said "hey, my wife is a hairdresser" we joked that he should send her over and sure enough, ten minutes later, she came straight from off the beach and did our hair for us! (I dropped off a gift basket for her this am to thank her)
This pic is right before the event. Hubby was nice enough to wait in a long line just to get INTO a grocery store (where there was a news crew filming too) to get us come Patron so we could have one last toast before the ceremony:
It was a day of miracles. The weather cleared up long enough to hold the wedding at the coconut grove as planned. It started to rain again the very second the bride and groom walked down the aisle after the ceremony.
The power was still out so the reception was held by candlelight, very pretty. They also had lightsticks all over and some lanterns. The hotel used gas to cook all the food. The music was live for two hours, then the DJ hooked up to a generator, I think. We ate and danced and had so much fun.
But there were still drawbacks to the power outage, like having to pee in the dark, and most of the toilets stopped flushing. The whole bathroom flooded later on. Yuck. And having to walk FOUR ENTIRE flights of stairs anytime we had to go up to the room all day. My one job for the night was to make sure the bride and groom got food sent to their room because they would be too busy to eat. I asked the waiter to accompany me with the food, up those four flights of stairs, because I also had the card box and some gifts to take to the room. I thought he was going to have a heart attack with his huffing and puffing! lol.
Not so funny though, when I returned and MY heart was giving me a hard time. I had palpitations that wouldn't go away for 45 LONG minutes. I got sweaty and short of breath and everything. A friend saw hubby taking my pulse (he was tapping it out on my leg so I could see how irregular it was) and she asked what was wrong. Turns out, she also had palpitations for a year and a half before they figured out that it always happened when she was dehydrated and drinking alcohol. Bingo. So I abandoned the thought of going to the ER just to get an ekg to catch my arrythmia and walked into the lobby to rest and catch my breath. It finally went away and then we were going to check into our room for the night to rest when we saw HawaiianMark again and talked story with him. I returned to completely normal and decided it'd be fun to return to the party. Then the lights finally came back on! They were able to show the slideshow after all. Hubby's table took bets on what time the power would return. He missed winning by 15 minutes. The party ended and we finally, finally, went to check in.
We got up really early and had to face the madness of the outside world. Most streetlights were still out, some had policemen directing traffic, but most were unmanned. The airport was PACKED. Luckily we made it home.
Now...time to prepare for a weeklong visit from my cousin and her beau!
hehehe. It's such a bad pic. You can't tell, but there are little daisies painted on my ring finger. The guy doing my nails said I have to come back every two weeks to get it filled (they're acrylic) I said I can't...I have to stick my finger up people's butts at my job and I don't think they'd appreciate my nails as much as I do : ) lol
¶ 9:00 AM 4Mana'o
The bachelorette party was super fun...until all the drama started.
Then it got even more fun. haha.
Here's the bride with three of the five bridemaids at the very start of the night:
The drama started when all the girls that are the groom's friends showed up (really late, I might add) after having promised VIP tables at certain places then not following through or returning phone calls, demanded to know why we did not have tables reserved at the next stop. These girls then decided another club would be better than the one that we decided on so it pretty much was us-vs-them mentality.
At one point, the bride-to-be and I went to the bathroom and while we were gone, the girls asked the guys at the next table over to come over one at a time and approach the bride "Eh, I know you! We met this summer...etc" it was so funny. They were HUGE guys. By the third guy, she caught on that it was set up.
For me, the best part was waking up in the hotel room early the next morning to giggles and laughter about everything that transpired the night before. We talked for hours about everything and I felt like it was a high school sleepover.
Next up: two days of work, then a prewedding party day at a sandbar in a bay, a dinner night, a rehearsal night then the actual wedding. Then...breathe....ahhh
¶ 4:21 PM 6Mana'o
Though right now I have to put that on hold until the wedding is over. Then I have one week until my cousin and her boyfriend from San Francisco comes to stay with us for a week. So my to-do list for that one week before will be to clean out my old bedroom, take off the wallpaper, paint the room, and buy new furniture for it. Right now there's nothing in it but a bookcase, a six drawer dresser and piles and piles of clothes with nowhere to go. This bedroom will turn into oldest son's bedroom when we are finished with it. It might be blue, though the blue hubby bought (and painted a square foot of it on the wall) is an eye-popping blue. Too much for me, but perhaps suitable for a teenage boy? I dunno.
Prior to our redecoration efforts, our house has always been very plain and minimal. I mean, how much can you do when you live paycheck to paycheck? Anything we had was just functional. Now we've gone hogwild over changing things, painting walls in the same room different shades, like we're fancy or something lol. It helps that our lovely new neighbor is an interior decorator and helped us choose.
Here's our before pic from years ago:
Here's after: (the flash makes the far wall look pink, but it's actually a mocha color, and the "accent" wall is a darker chocolate brown)
Yes, those are candles on the entertainment center. Can you believe my fire-phobic husband relented to that?!
I'm totally ashamed to show you my before pics of my room, because it's the kind where you'd walk into it and go "my goodness, how can people live like that?" But I will show it when we're done with it. I've already warned dear cousin that she's coming to the ghetto.
Well, it's off to get ready for another adventure: the bachelorette party! I got the bride-to-be a sash like the beauty pageant contestants wear that says "bachelorette" on it and a deck of "dare" cards. We're off to three different venues though I am skipping the last one.
Have a great weekend : )
Where was I during all this? My friend's bridal shower. Yes, this is just the first of two weeks of events leading up to the wedding, which we have to fly back and forth for, so I will be crazy busy and tired. This pic is of some of the girls. The bride-to-be is wearing a lei, standing next to me.
It was my responsibility to run the games, so I had to lug an entire suitcase full of games and prizes from home. MIL was like "Are you going to be gone for a whole week??"
This game is the one where each team had four rolls of toilet paper and ten minutes to design a wedding dress made out of TP, including veil and other accessories. One team bowed out right away so we only had two entries, guess which one won? We made them walk down the aisle to model the dresses while we sang the wedding march and people from the outside stopped to look in and watch. I bet they thought it was a lesbian wedding!
By far the favorite game was one called "rolling for prizes" where there were 7 prizes of various shapes and wrapping, one of which was only worth 50 cents (Skittles) and each prize varied in worth (a white g-string, a silver photo album, a set of four salad plates) But no one knew which were the good ones, because they were wrapped. Everyone stood in a circle around the table and rolled the dice for the prizes, you had to get doubles to pick a prize, and anyone getting doubles can take away someone else's prize, since there were less prizes than people. Several of the girls focused on a particular bag that they thought was nice and kept taking it away from whoever had it. It was hilarious. At the end of ten minutes, whoever was left with the prizes got to keep them. (But I also walked my prize box around and let the rest of the folks pick one out for themselves)
As my friend drove me back to the airport, she said "Thanks so much for coming even though it was your anniversary" and I went "OH NO!" I remembered to tell him happy anniversary the night before, but was so busy yesterday that I forgot all about it. So I rushed home and was able to make it back in time to have dinner together. Hubby was so sweet. He gave me a brochure for my fave sunglasses to let me choose a pair to order, a Billabong shirt, a super sweet card, AND a handmade coupon for an hour massage, he even made it on card stock and used my zigzag scissors from my scrapbooking supplies.
Well, the kids keep bothering me to take them to the beach "for research for a school project"
Have a great week
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