We *heart* Hawaii {Part I}

Our first blog of the year will be about our trip to Oahu island, Hawaii. We had a chance to go to Hawaii for a 10 day vacation in November 2010. I never had a chance to update our blog with the pictures from the trip. It was such a blast. After the break, we were so busy moving in completely to our house, with work and other things I just never had time to work on the pictures and update the blog. Now, I'm slowly getting back to it. Hopefully, when our new computer arrives it will speed up my photo processing time so I could work on the rest of the pictures from the trip as well as from the holiday season :) I'm still quite behind on everything.

The whole family of 7 of us cruised around town like locals in our big giant white Suburban. It was packed with luggage and 7 people--quite amazing. I'm thinking about getting one if we have more than 4 kids. Spacious!

Because we are in a big family, my in-laws decided to rent a condo that we could all stay in together and feel more like home. This is the picture right outside of the condo in the North shore of Oahu Island.

 

And the big golf course as our back yard, too bad we're not into golf otherwise we certainly would enjoy it here

 

The whole time we were there, it was so much fun to see the wild chickens running around. We even heard the rooster singing every morning, which woke Megan up almost every single day we were there. It reminded me of the old days living in Vietnam and how the chickens ran around in our back yard since my grandma used to raise them.

 

Because we were there during the winter months, the waves were monstrous. These pictures are from Waimea beach on our second day being there.

 

The kids loved playing the game 'last man standing', lol

Brett was so proud that he didn't get knocked over by the previous wave. But wait, there's a big one coming his way :) 



Beautiful beach scene; ahh writing this blog made me miss Hawaii so much.

We were there on an overcast day so it was raining a little bit. I was able to capture this picture of the sun ray hitting through the thick cloud.

The famous rock where we saw a lot of people jumping off. I don't know how to swim very well so I didn't have the guts to do it. One thing about the beach here, it drops into deep sea very quick. It was pretty deep right by the little rock there. Molly and I used a boogie board to swim out there once.

Molly was being buried under sand, then made into a mermaid

Tasty dinner at Haleiwa Joe's, a must have when you're in town. We loved the food here.

The family at the dinner table

Huntington Beach {California}

What a lovely Saturday today! It's been raining the whole morning and finally it stopped. The weather is supposed to cool down next week and snow in the Salt Lake valley. I'm not totally excited for that since the last time it snowed here was at the end of May. Oh well, I'm sure excited for the holiday season though as Christmas is my favorite time of the year.

Yes, I should have posted these pictures a while ago. I just haven't had time to process all of them yet. I finally finished that today although I'm still behind on a lot of food posts. I still have pictures from a year ago that I haven't done anything to. Also, I've been baking like crazy so stay tuned for some yummy delish bread, muffins, and cupcakes :) Just figure, I need to take care of this first...

After checking in to our hotel by the PCH, we went out for dinner at The Crab Cooker. One of the best seafood places in the area. Everything was so tasty and fresh. If I lived here I'd have to come here probably once a month or so. It's so good but could drain out your wallet in no time. We spent over 100 dollars just for 2 plates of seafood and a small bowl of clam chowder.

Snapshot of the chef making delish grilled lobsters  

Brett's plate: lobsters on a skewer, rice pilaf, and cold slaw. Seriously, the best lobters ever.

 My king crab legs were also very yummy

The mashed potatoes were also my favorite. It was so cheesy and delicious...

 
And a very interesting and good clam chowder...

They also sell fresh seafood for home cooking. I wish I could take some home with me.

 The store across the street

 After dinner, we rushed over to the Huntington Beach pier to watch the sunset.

One intersting thing I learned was the palm tree is not one of California's native plants, but it's everywhere and makes us feel like it is.

The pier

As we walked on the pier, we saw a man catch a small leopard shark and processed it right there :)

The paranomic picture of the pier: I took 5 different pictures to make this one

California {Coronado Beach}

Brett and I went on a mini-vacation to celebrate Brett's birthday and our first anniversary. It was our second time in Cali; last time we were here for a short time visiting Grandma and went to Disneyland. We really had a wonderful time. I love it here; there are tons of stuff to do. I love the beaches--beautiful beaches I might say. All I wanted to do was to hang out on the beach. The weather couldn't have been more perfect.

We stayed at the Marriott by the harbor. Here is the view from our hotel.

Another view of downtown San Diego from our hotel balcony.

View of the harbor

We had such a great time there though we didn't even do much. We spent most of our time there hanging out on Coronado and Huntington beach.

 This pic shows an awesome view from Coronado bridge. I took almost hundred of pictures as we were driving on the bridge, then used Photoshop to create the panoramic pictures. Not sure how to fix the distortion on the right side of the photos, it makes the buildings look like it's falling.

Sunset on Coronado beach

Seriously, I can't stop taking pictures of these beautiful scenery. I think I'm going to print a large one out and hang it in our living room :)

And a random couple showed up in my picture :) I didn't plan it at all... They happened to walked by as I snapped this picture.

Brett and I on the beach with 2 different focus mode
 


My sweet pickle :)  I bought him those beach pants for our vacation and Hawaii trip on Thanksgiving :)





I look really yellow, haha.

Jumping out of excitement :) Oh how much I love the beach. Crazy hair, haha

Silhouette

Hotel Coronado

We love it so much that we came back the next day to have seafood for lunch. The Brigantine was pretty good and not too pricey. Yum yum


Brett got grilled Halibut with creamy avocado sauce, rice pilaf, and chips

I had the seafood combo: deep fried fish, calamari,  and scallops