Bright & Sunshiney

Happy Anniversary to us! 

Our official anniversary is on May 29th, but because it fell in the middle of the week this year, we decided to celebrate the weekend before by taking a much-needed vacation to California. And it was fantastic!

We started off with the San Diego Safari Park.. 

They have this awesome train that takes you around a 100-acre preserve full of animals! Besides that, you can walk around the rest of the park and see a ton of other exhibits. 

My feet were incredibly tired after that day.

That was about as adventurous as we got. The next few days we planned to do nothing but beach.

Corona del Mar is gorgeous.

That was our first beach. After chilling there all day, that night we headed over to a cousin's wedding.

Sorry, we we were too busy dancing to take any pictures. {true story.}

The next day, we decided to try Laguna Beach. We spent the first half of the day walking around the hundreds of little shops that surround the beach, eating eclairs and cream horns from a sweet little bakery.

And then it was just beach and more beach.

With the occasional pause.......

....to enjoy the water.

And then we found this awesome lookout point and wanted to get a picture. But since the only people to ask were a homeless man and a hippie doing a drug deal, we decided to improvise.

Not bad. 

All in all, we got sunburned, ate too much food, drank too much ginger ale, got to play with my aunt's two crazy dogs, and had a great vacation.

 

Three years, and we're still pretty much in love {pretty much}. 

Part 2 {Hawaii continued}

And now we're on to part 2 of our Hawaii trip.

Wednesday morning my brother dragged himself out of bed and went with my parents to the wedding rehearsal. 

There he is, pushing fake grandma in her fake wheelchair.

Chris & I, however, had the morning to ourselves. So where did we go? 

The open-air, four-story mall of course.

And since we were in a high-class mall with stores like Cartier, Kate Spade, and Juicy....

....we had to go to PretzelMaker.

Then we met up with my brother and headed to the International Marketplace while my parents enjoyed a night to themselves for their anniversary. 

Thursday we woke up BEFORE the crack of dawn to get on a bus that would take us to Pearl Harbor.

This turned out to be a terrible idea. What would have, in our car, taken us maybe 20 minutes, took us 2 and and a half hours on the bus. TWO and A HALF hours. With commentary from the bus driver.

Once we got to Pearl Harbor, we taught the pigeons tricks, walked through the museums, and took a ferry out to the memorial.

It's a beautiful memorial. It makes me sad to think of how many people died and are still trapped on the ship even now, decades later. 

There's a spot on the Arizona that still leaks oil, even today. 

After the harbor, we headed back to get ready for the main event--the WEDDING.

{i love weddings!}

The leis were in honor of the groom's {and my mother's} parents, who have passed away. 

It was lovely. The beach, the sunset, and the gorgeous, eloquent ceremony. My mom totally cried.

Then we headed inside the GIANT {ridiculously expensive} hotel they were staying in {seriously, they had a dolphin pool in the backyard}for dinner and dancing. 

Kim, the bride, is a nationally-renowned dancer, so she performed a dance just for her husband. 

{awwwww.}

The next day was BEACH DAY! We started out with a submarine ride.

Which was pretty cool for everyone. Except Chris. Who apparently gets mad motion-submarine sick.

But he did recover.

There's totally a turtle in that last picture. 

Then we squeezed every last hour we could out of the sun and enjoyed the beach to its fullest. 

It's so great to be a sibling.

Then we had a crazy-good dinner at this suuuper high-end restaurant. Like the kind of restaurant where you get teeny  tiny portions because the food is so good.

Saturday we packed up our hotel rooms and went out for a last breakfast with my uncle and his {now} wife. They're cool like that.

This is what Chris had:

Yep. That's a burger. 

{granted, it did have an egg, hashbrowns, and bacon on it...but still.}

Then we caught a bit of a parade, went shopping again, and found the best shave ice stand ever.

Then we spent the last of the afternoon on Waikiki beach, watching crazy people jump off the boardwalk into water clear {and shallow} enough to see the rocks at the bottom.

Oh, and Santa was there. No biggie.

Moral of story? Hawaii is awesome. 

One day I'll make it back.