I Made it to Hawaii! Day 1!

Yesterday was my first day in Hawaii (today was my first day with wifi though so I’m posting this at 9:00 in the morning instead of last night).

Hawaii is absolutely beautiful. But before I start overloading you with tons of pictures, I thought I would attempt to go through what happened that day.

6:00 AM: Get up and load all of our luggage into the limo to head to the airport. Yes, you read correctly… our family and my grandparents took a limo to the airport. My grandma was the one planning how we would get a ride there, and discovered that it was the cheapest way to transport 10 people to the airport. So we rode in style.

7:00 AM: Deal with airport shenanigans.  Out of the whole group my sister and I were the only one to be frisked. I guess we were the sketchy looking ones. We also people watched (excuse me lady wearing platform stilettos this early in the morning, at LAX you’re just a tad ridiculous) and got breakfast at the airport McDonalds. Don’t judge me, but I love egg mcmuffins… like a lot. I never eat them unless we’re traveling though so I was happy camper with the continued tradition.

8:45: We’re flying! This is only my second time in a plane (first time was a 2 hour trip to Texas), and I had an ok experience. I could not for the life of my fall asleep, so I won an easy level Sudoku and read some of my book “Look at the Birdie” by Kurt Vonnegut. My little brother only made a mild scene once when we hit some turbulence. My lunch was half an airplane turkey sandwich and a carrot cake cliff bar.

11:30 (Hawaii time, 2:30 CA time): We arrive in Hawaii! The next few hours are spent renting a car, heading to Costco and eating lots of free samples before we get to our hotel

Our “official” vacation began when we got to the hotel. We’re staying at the Kaanapali Alii hotel and our condo was absolutely gorgeous. I was seriously speechless when I walked inside. We quickly grabbed our bathing suits and went for a swim in the ocean which was pool water temperature. Everything was amazing.

I’m a huge fanatic for hotel rooms so prepare for an extensive virtual tour. 

Outside of the hotel!

My sister and my bedroom

Living dream

Kitchen and dining room (yay tons of food!)

Master bedroom

Bathroom haha

The boy's room

The best part about the condo/hotel room is the back patio. It's beautiful and leads to a path that goes straight to the beach

The path to the beach!

Since yesterday was my Mom's official birthday, we went out to eat at the Hawaiian Grill. Honestly, this was one of the fanciest meals of my life.

Fresh mango smoothies

Crab dumplings with chili water (shared with my sister)

Fresh fish special of mai mai and swordfish and tomato fondu with sauteed veggies and rice (shared with Jessica)

Mom's ice cream birthday cake

The food was crazy good. The whole day was unbelievable. 

I can't believe this is only the first day. I'm so excited for the rest of the trip (don't worry the other posts will NOT be this long). Thanks for hanging in there on this one!

So close!

I had a full post planned earlier today that included some simple food and lots of dog watching, but I'll save you from that for today.

In less than 6 hours I will be heading to the airport for Hawaii! 


WHEE! I'm not sure how everything is going to exactly work yet, but I am planning on blogging about my trip while I'm there :)

I'm headed to paradise!

Packing and Pizza Parties

 I woke up this morning with a headache (not in a sketchy way haha), so I decided to sleep in. Eventually I got up because (1)my sister and I share a room and she was being ridiculously loud and (2) I was starving.

I made myself a quick bowl(s) of cereal with the last of the milk. I haven't had my Honey Nut Cheerios in a while, so it was a nice break from my usual toast or oatmeal.

Since I had gotten up pretty late, I had my lunch just an hour or two later. I tend to be a creature of habit--if it's around 12 then I automatically get hungry. I just made myself a small peanut butter and jelly sandwich. 

Trader Joe's Boysenberry Jam

Sadly I still was feeling gross, and ended up going back to bed to take a nap and some advil. When I woke up I felt a lot better, and got busy on completing the main task of the day. Organizing and putting away this pile of clothes...

... and then packing that small suitcase with stuff. It was not fun since I strongly dislike cleaning, and hate packing almost as much as I hate unpacking.

When I finished I rewarded myself by taking my little brother up to get Jamba Juices. He wanted to go because he had two gift cards, but it was a little disappointing when the combined savings ended up to be less than 50 cents. Our smoothies made up for it though! He got the Chocolate Moo'd and I got a small Caribbean Passion.

Yes, the walls, seats, dashboard, floor, and steering wheel of my car is maroon. No, I did not pick the color scheme when I bought it.

For dinner we went to a nearby pizza place to meet up with some family for an early birthday dinner for my Mom. It was really casual since on her actual birthday we are flying to Maui, Hawaii (I know some were wondering)! 

My sister and I decided to entertain ourselves while we were waiting for food. Here's a pretty little picture story we made for you:

"Take my picture in this lovely establishment, Jessica."

"Wonderful! Now hand me back my camera, please."

"I SAID GIVE ME BACK MY CAMERA!"

Tender moments with my family. And that last picture was a joke...I don't make faces like that in real life...too often. I'm taking a second to reward myself for my bravery of posting this for the public too see.

Dinner consisted of salad with Italian dressing and lots of toppings and pizza.

Yum

The 2 pizza slices I ate were mushroom and peperoni. I actually don't like meat on my pizza, but am obsessed with mushrooms so I just picked some of the toppings off and grabbed the pieces with the most veggie pieces. Here's the before and after shot.

We ended the meal with some birthday cake. My grandma had brought some Angel Food Cake with a little bit of icing and strawberries, and served vanilla ice cream on the side. For a dessert, it actually tasted pretty light.

Sorry about the "action shot"

Even though I had some yummy food like the angel food cake and smoothies, I'm really missing the freedom of having/being able to make my own food. My family gets a little crazy about making sure everything is clean before we go on vacation, so having baking adventures in my house is a little bit of a no go for now. Sigh, I'll just look longingly at everyone else's food pictures :)

I ended my friday night by heading over to my best friend's house for some quality hang out time. Some unpictured, unhealthy snacks were also eaten, and I had a great time just hanging out and talking.

Happy Julia: having an abundance of pictures for this post, making ridiculous videos for friends at Sarah's house, Jamba Juice trip with my brother

It's the little things

...that entertain me. Like going to my friend's house and feeding her 100 year old tortoise. It was so adorable. 

Dinosaur Bite 

I also had a meal at my friend's that consisted of everything that Trader Joe's owned. While it was delicious (seriously Trader Joe's can do no wrong), it was not the healthiest or most well rounded dinner. I feel a little icky from it now, but I'll do better tomorrow.

Actually, our kitchen is running a little bit low on food since we are leaving for Hawaii in 3 days. I've been eating some random stuff, so I'm sorry about the lack of picture recently. I promise I'll be uploading beautiful foodie pictures soon.

This morning I went for a run on the beach with Ali. It was really hard to get up when my bed was beckoning to me and the weather was awful and drizzling.

June Gloom

We just headed over to the beach and ran 3 straight miles on the strand without any breaks! It did take us 33 minutes, but I'm just happy we made it. We also walked a quarter of a mile to warm up before and another to cool down. After today and yesterday I can feel my legs getting a little sore, and I can't wait to crawl in bed tonight. Especially since tonight has just been one of those tiring nights both mentally and physically. 

Oh dear pillow I promise I shall come to you soon... Don't worry guys, pillow poetry is totally normal.

Happy Julia: finishing my run, getting an adorable text this morning that included a picture of an omelet, rocking out to Enrique Iglesias when I was driving back home, going for a walk around a dog park with my friend Carly