Thanksgiving

We stayed close for the holiday and just celebrated in Upland. Even though we did not have far to go, we still got stuck in traffic! MacKenzie was not impressed.

"Are we there yet?!"

This lead to us taking selfies and annoying Jackson who was driving.

"UPLAND!"

We spent the day with the family and were forced to take a sibling photo.

Listening to Aaron tell us how good looking he is...

Sir Alex was in town, too, and hung out with Ms. Madison. Adorable!

Alex coloring with Madison!

Justin had his senior photos taken and they're so good! When did he get so old!?

Justin and his new ride

When did he grow up?!

Adorable! 

He is such a cute kid! We enjoyed our family time and then headed back home to rest up for Black Friday shopping. I headed out at 5 a.m. with Shannon and spent about 4 hours shopping before we hung it up and came home. We got some excellent deals and had a great time!

Catching up!!!

Settling back in to home life and work took longer than we expected. We got very used to getting to the beach each day being our only "to do." HA! :) Seemingly the people we worked with missed us because we were both slammed when we returned. So it goes! MacKenzie, on the other hand, had no trouble settling back in to her old routine of laying on laundry and making it questionable if it can still be considered clean. Siiiigh. It is a good thing she's so cute! :)

Ahh back home again on "clean" laundry

The adjustment back to work and four whole days that week made us need a trip to the spa. OK, not really. We went to celebrate our anniversary. It was lovely, as always. Jackson did not get a massage because he hates them but he enjoyed using the Conrad's gym, sauna, steam room and hot tub while I did. He has a tough life, too. ;)

Ale Emporium wings...YUM

After the spa we stopped for a romantic dinner at Ale Emporium. We watched football and noshed on wings. I've never been more in love.*

*I'm not kidding.

The next day we finally got to see the Porterfield family again for dinner and dessert. I swear the kids double in size each time we come over. Jackson enjoyed playing football with Jax (he was sore for days afterwards- ha!) and Andrew while Jocelin rotated between wanting to be involved and hanging with the girls in the kitchen. Love her!

Jocelin using our reusable grocery bag as a purse ;)

Heidi made one of our favorite desserts, pizzookies, which we all enjoyed quite a bit as shown below...

"Do I have anything on my mouth?"

November 18th was our actual anniversary and Jackson was away for work. He sent flowers to my office to attempt to make up for such a scheduling error. I figured since we'd already gone to Hawaii and the spa he could be let off the hook.*

*OK, I may have given him a little crap for missing it still.

Anniversary flowers

Jackson was gone for three days which makes life tough on MacKenzie. Staying at Susie's is mostly free, but the commute is a killer for me to Muncie. If Jackson is gone MacKenzie would have almost 12 hour days while I was at work. That isn't fair so she spent some time in Upland. It is soooo helpful when my Mom swings by and gets her for us. She loves being with the two other dogs and able to roam freely around their huge yard.

Smiling puppy knows she's headed for Upland

When both Jackson and MacKenzie are out of town I have no reason to rush home so I made dinner plans with the Bates family. Josslyn is getting SO big! She's sitting up and crawling now. She also pulls herself up on the couch. Fiona, the family dog, won't be safe from that baby grasp for long! 

Baby Joss is sitting up all on her own!

And driving. They grow up so fast!

Eventually Jackson returned from his work travels so MacKenzie could comfortably come home again. She made herself comfortable, again, this time with a sun nap.

Sun naps are the best! 

Life. is. good. :)

Final day!

We popped down to Waikiki Beach to eat a famous restaurant, Duke's, for breakfast. It had a nice view but was nothing to write home about. Then it was time to check out of our hotel so we did that before heading to the beach. We spent most of the day as beach bums before finally showering up at the hotel gym and heading towards to airport. We grabbed one more dinner of fish tacos, unsuccessfully looked for a gas station and returned our Jeep. Tear!

Bidding our beach goodbye!

We met Mom at the airport and settled in for the overnight flight. Both flights were uneventful so that was awesome. The flights did feel longer this time because of the time of day, but it was totally fine.

Back home to MACKENZIE

The best part about being home is most certainly being back with MacKenzie. She was pretty happy to see us!! :)

8 years?!

We got up and had breakfast with everyone early at the hotel. The fruit here is unparalleled. We decided to head out to explore a bit together. That was a mistake as everyone else on the planet had the same idea. You've never seen traffic until you've been to Honolulu. We stopped at one beach but it cost money to snorkel there so we kept moving. We stopped in at Sandy Beach to see the seal for a bit.

The Monk Seal moved!!

Responding to Jackson making noise 

We saw a man walking his PIGS on the beach

 We watched the seal and then Jackson, while clapping sand off his sandals to put them away, startled it and he looked up. I felt bad that he was scared but happy to see his little face. We wanted to wade in the surf but as we did the lifeguards made an announcement about that particular beach holding the record for broken backs, broken necks and drownings. We opted to head back to a calmer beach at that point. We sat in traffic for another 1.5 hours to go about 10 miles. I'm not kidding. There wasn't even construction. That was just a Saturday. The weather and the scenery here are unbeatable but holy cow they've got to figure out transit.

We took a little break to watch some college football before heading down to the beach behind our hotel. We decided to celebrate our anniversary that evening since Jackson will be traveling on the actual day (November 18th).

Love bugs

We had dinner at the beach again because it was so good. We got to see the sunset this time which was awesome.

Dinner with a view

Gorgeous sunset

We went down to Kalakaua Ave. to do some people-watching and have dessert. The shopping there is amazing. Think of any expensive designer and they have a store there. There were people from all over the world just dropping massive amounts of money. It was just wild.

Jackson with a DC in a rocking chair...life is good

We walked along the beach for a bit before heading back to our hotel for the evening. We were in bed by 9 p.m. because we're old here. Ha! :) Our flight leaves at 8 p.m. local time this evening so here's hoping it is easy and uneventful.

Photo Tour & Diamond Head

Mom and I took a photo tour of the island from 5:40 a.m. until almost noon. It was too long. We did get a ton of cool shots, though.

Waiting on the sun to come up

Mom waiting on her shot

There it is!

It was MacKenzie's birthday and there was an abandoned
 tennis ball on the beach. It was too perfect.

A Monk Seal!!!

Rabbit Island 

Some bay.

Rabbit Island again

A deserted beach 

It was a gorgeous place. 

A mountain wall 

Rainforest. Not pictured? Mosquitos.

A neat tree

A small waterfall

We finally finished up the tour and I met up with Jackson. We went standup paddle boarding on Waikiki Beach. I forgot to GoPro but to picture how it went imagine me standing and Jackson falling off. Got it? Ok, repeat for an hour and you're all set. We did get to see a sea turtle swimming and all kinds of fish, too. It was an awesome place to paddle/fall. Let the record show that I did not fall a single time. I did wear the option life vest, though, just in case! :)

From there we got changed and headed out to climb the Diamond Head Crater. We wanted to save a couple of dollars so we parked near the bottom and walked in. That's $3 saved the easy hard way!

The view as you climb the 506 feet to the top

Ahhh Hawaii

I got 99 problems and these stairs are all of 'em ;)

Oh cool, more stairs

Lighthouse down below

Looks like we made it!

A shot down to where we paddle boarded an hour ago

Successful Petefish

The view was just so ugly

A shot of downtown

Only a few people live around here ;) 

Jackson in the tunnel
(it was dark that my flash nearly blinded us both) 

Diamond Head is a whacky hike with a paved walkway to start, rocks and mud in the middle, STAIRS and tunnels. We made it, though. And enjoyed ourselves. We got up it very quickly so we were pleased. We did marvel at the many Japanese women in dresses, hats and high heels who had also summited. We don't understand that ankle breaking part of their culture. 

Once we got cleaned up we met the whole family for dinner at a Mongolian BBQ venue outside of out hotel. It was SO good. Expensive, but SO good. 

Our dinner being cooked

We got to see Aunt Fe, my cousins Holly & Kimberly, Holly's two sons, Blaise and Hunter, and Kimberly's daughter, Kylie. We also got to meet Kimberly's boyfriend, Kyle. It was a family affair! There were a ton of us! After dinner the hotel next-door put on a fireworks show that was random and awesome. We sat on the beach to enjoy it.

Fireworks over the water? Awesome!

My Mother decided to use a form of child abuse known as "force you to take a photo with your gorgeous cousins." It was mean, but whatever. 

I mean really. They're gorgeous girls! 

Shortly after fireworks we were ready to pass out. It was not even 9 p.m. local time. We just cannot quite adjust to normal hours here. We're not sure what Saturday will bring so stay tuned.