Tsunamis Tsuck

Well, as expected, nothing happened and instead of heading to the hills to sit in mud with 3,000 other people while it poured rain, this year I sat in my house with E'a' the rabbit and Cutie the rat (downstairs neighbors pet). I'm on the second story so I decided I was safe as the news reports came in and NOAA downgraded the threat level.

One of my friends in Laie made this, it is horrifically accurate but still quite funny.

I hate deployment

I MISS MY HONEY!!!!!!!!!
Whooooo. Just had to get that there.
Really, though.
Come home.
Now.
T-minus 5 weeks AND COUNTING!
Can't wait to see you my love.

Ryry turned 31!

We started the day with a scuba dive trip! We dove a plane wreck and a turtle cleaning station where we saw over 8 turtles, with one about 2 feet away just cruising up to us, and one that followed

us like a puppy. It was a cutie, we also dove the turtle on Nitrox! Go us using our newfound certification! We then got some sushi for lunch, hung out a bit, and I made Ryan a chocolate hell cake complete with our favorite Rainbow Sprinkles! The fire was blazing and melted the candles all over the cake but totally worth the ingestion of wax.


 Ryan's present still hadn't arrived because the USPS is completely incompetent in Hawaii so his birthday got extended another day! We hiked up Diamondhead Crater and had fun learning about WW2. Afterwards we went to the zoo and had a blast with all the birdies screaming at us. It was hilarious and the birds are my favorite part of the zoo.

Ryan got a bunch of shirts for his birthday and the octopus was my favorite one. He kindly modeled it for me. After the zoo expedition we ordered Cheesecake Factory to go, walked to the Moana Surfrider, into the hotel, took the elevator to the top floor, walked out onto the back Lanai that overlooks the ocean, dragged a bench and chair to the rail and sat down to enjoy our dinner whilst being serenaded by the live music of the restaurant below. It was a beautiful night out with quite a few stars considering we were in Waikiki but all in all a perfect day with my sweetheart.
To make things better the next day we followed up on our WW2 education by going to the Hale Koa US Army museum. We got to walk around the old base where they used to hold the disappearing guns. Really cool and free! Needless to say every day is an adventure and we love play!
Happy Birthday Honey Bunches!
<3<3<3OjbakCT<3<3<3

Engaged to be married

 

I'm not sure why that's a saying, obviously if you're engaged your intent is to get married. Rather redundant, like an ATM machine (Automatic Teller Machine machine). Before we begin the engagement story there is a little back up work to be done.

Another popular thing to do

The Love Lock

On top of Makapu'u there are a bunch of locks on the fence also known as love padlocks in Uruguay, Taiwan, ect. You write your initials on the lock and once locked onto the fence your love is locked together forever.  Cutsey wutsey and we just had to join the fun. 

Such a good picture

Engagementation

Our story starts deep in West of Kaiena point. Ryan and I decided that in order to properly celebrate my last day of undergraduate school we were going to go camping! After my finals were done we went straight to Kaiena point, got to the gate, drove all around in the dark trying to find a good place to camp. There are no designated camp sites just fyi for those of you that would like to camp on the island.   After mountainman Ryan braved the night and found us a spot we set up camp. 

There was a fire so everything is dead

The next day we decided that we were going to hike Kaiena point, which at the very end there is a bird sanctuary with rumors of monk seal sightings. 

Pretty arch

It was a beautiful hike out there complete with arches along the coast. And lo and behold there out among the rocks was this cute guy!

Seconds before the attack

So we of course made him our friend!!! 

Unfortunately he did not want to be our friend and made the I will kill you if you don't leave me alone noise. We promptly left him and continued our rock hoping further West until we decided that we could go no further without swimming in our packs. This being said we took a picture for photographic evidence of our time that we were the most western people on the island. 

Here we are being that couple 

As you can see it was a little difficult to get our picture and not fall in, at the same time a guy offered to take our picture so I carefully made my way over to him and placed our camera into his hands, and returned to the boyfriend. After precariously positioning ourselves I noticed Ryan was starring at me instead of the camera, I turned back to the man holding the camera and heard "Bri, look at me" and turned to find this.

How he didn't fall I will never knowNeedless to say I was pretty confused, with my exact words being "What are you doing?" followed by "Are you being serious?" and then an embrace with a few kisses. With him still on his knees he replied "I'll take your silence as a yes". I then realized that I hadn't actually answered him and retorted with a quick yes.  

Still on his knees trying to figure out if I will say yes

We had a blast and on our way back towards land found a baby snowflake moray and a BEAUTIFUL bright red nudibranch.

We then squated down for some lunch in a cave. 

We then headed back, got some pizza and trip antibiotic ointment for our various cuts, back into the mountain for a sunset photo shoot. The next morning it was raining and like a trooper Ryan started the fire while I sat comfortably dry in my tent. 

The good life, note the sparkly ring

To reward such manyly man efforts I made him the breakfast that "sealed the deal" in his desire to marry me. Yes, I am that good of a wilderness cook. 

This is a short video of Ryan flipping the pancakes and his smug mug for not dropping it.

Like a boss

Why yes, that is from top left: Hot chocolate with marshmallows, all natural syrup, water, nutella and peanut butter, steak cut bacon, and PUMPKIN pancakes!!!!

On the way home we hit electric beach to do some snorkeling and on the way out I almost sat on a sea turtle, and then we got caught in a pod of about 30-40 spinner dolphins. They were everywhere! Infront, below, behind, and all extremely close. Ryan dove down and was practically touching them as they swam along the side of him. It was that experience that sealed the decision to get a good underwater camera ASAP. All in all it was the best weekend of my life, I seem to be having a lot of best things of my life when he's around. 

Best day of my life, thus far. And the nude tranny

Aloha!
So, i'm a little behind on the whole blogging thing. Saipan was not conductive to the internet, energy, or any desire to do anything outside of sleeping and eating at the spare moment. Anywho, that was a party and a half. If you desire more go look at facebook.
Now! Back to the topic at hand! Yesterday <3
I had the best day. It started with breakfast in bed for kicks and giggles provided by Ryan.

Yogurt with oats (my favorite!), egg over easy, grahm cracker with nutella, strawberries, toast, and oj!

We then headed to the exchange to get an electric double burner because I am going to accidently throw it off the lanai into the lake. We got a Go Girl and Ryry got a drink. Small side note, I am in love with Go Girl's they are by far my absolute favorite energy drink of choice! We then continued on our adventure via H-3 and H-1 up Kamehameha to the Dole Plantation! I have never been there so we figured it was about time to fix that.

As you can see we are very good at being pineapples.

Of course I needed a picture of a pretty flower as well.

We found another booth! Closer to completing the maze!

Modeling the shorts 

 See those shorty shorts? I made him wear them. They were from his dive school so technically they are swimming shorts. Neither of us anticipated the amount of people we would actually see today. It was raining quite hard and we definitely didn't think about going places other than the beach. Oopsies! Good thing he loves me. <3

I found a station all on my own!

At the Dole plantation we did the maze! You clock in as you enter and then there are 7 little phone booth things that you stick your piece of paper in and color in the stencil.
All those little things on the ground that look like leaves are actually snails. African Land Snails to be exact, the rain brought them out and about so it was an adventure trying to not step on them. There were a few casualties.

I hate getting stuck behind slow people

And we finished! With the amazing time of about 40 minutes!   

 It was a little on the muddy side so we were quite splattered. 

We then took off to the beach, so beautiful, we snorkeled with a big ol' Honu <3 But that wasn't the best part. The largest surprise was the individual to the right. At first glance I thought it was a naked woman, her overly large bosom was uncovered and she was placing lip gloss upon her face. And then she rolled over and revealed......MEN GENITALIA!  It was quite the surprise. This isn't the first tranny at the beach that I have laid my eyes upon. Most of the time they do some pretty tricky tucking and rolling into a bikini bottom. But not this time! He/she was bearing all for the world to see. It was quite exciting. 

We then were a bit on the hungry side so we drove into Haleiwa to snag some grub. We shared a piece of pizza and got the most important item of food- ICE CREAM! At the wonderful Scoop of Paradise where they serve only homemade ice cream. It was delicious, Ryan got Rocky Road and Chocolate Mac Nut, I got Cappachino and Cookies and Cream. Both wonderful but my favorite flavor from them is the Lemon Lavender. So delicious. Anywho, after that we continued down Kam highway into Waimea where we decided that we were going to jump! On our way back out we found a new path that we had never discovered! Pictured as below.

 

On the way back to the car we caught a beautiful sunset

I love this picture

On our way home we hit Ted's Bakery for a shared slice of Chocolate Haupia pie and some Wailua rootbeer and red fruit soda. We also did a drive by of the Laie temple on our way home. All in all it was a beautiful day with a wonderful person! 

Old Post

Old post I found in the gangies of the interwebs. I figured if I spent the time to type it I can post it.

President Monson.- Dear President Monson came to the Laie temple rededication. The day before the dedication he came to the PCC fo watch the night show and go to a few of the islands. Well, the fact that he was coming to the night show was well advertised and seats were selling for only $10 which is how much I get in for with my employee card. So, most of Laie and several students were there. The night show was a little extra special just for him. At the end the cast sang "Teach me to walk in the light" It was great. Monson just stood there while they sang to him. The next day was the cultural celebration in which all of the youth in the Laie temple district, which is all of Oahu and I believe Kauai came and did this amazing performance in the CAC. However the CAC on sits a couple thousand people. Which means the only seats available were the very privileged and the ones with children in the show. It was broadcast to a few of the stake centers in Laie, and  being as I live 2 houses away from a stake center I went and plopped myself into a seat and watched the show. My cousins who live in Kailua performed, though I saw their stake I never did see them. It was amazing, the show was a timeline of the church, with dancing and stomps and a few lines of commentary all about the temple. At the end the youth sang a few songs and the prophet came down and shook a few of the youths hands, while all 2000 of the youth surged forward to try and touch him. Apparently Ryan my cuz got to shake his hand. Well the next day was the temple dedication. It was broadcast in 3 sections. a 9am 12pm, and 3pm. I went to the 12 pm alone which was so nice. Love my roomies and friend but lord above knows I needed some alone time. It was great, Pres Monson was just so happy and funny. Brother Eyring and Brother Cook came as well. They had a few speakers and the pres monson got up to speak about the temple and then give the prayer. He spoke about how we will remember this time, and how we are so lucky and blessed to have a temple so close and to be able to be here for the dedication. The temple was first dedicated on thanksgiving, we then rededicated it on November, 21st, 2010. Almost 50 years since our last dedication. This is really a once in a lifetime experience. On Monday I went and did baptisms for the dead with my ward. Little did we know that roughly 20 girls would show up and only one male. That makes things a little difficult. So, we started at 630 am, which means the sun isn't up, and the temple is on a hill, in fact the tsunami safety spot is on the hill behind the temple. So we sat, waiting for more boys, Kammie and I. And as we sat we watched the sunrise over the ocean and town it was amazing. We were the first group to do baptisms since the closure of the temple 2 years ago and the rededication. It was really cool. Especially to know that the jumpsuits were clean. I had to get an extra large, but it they were still floods on me. One of the girls there is a convert and none of her family are members. So she was baptized for some of her family. She did her grandmother, which I assume was special for her because everyone was whispering when the name was read and she went under. The bishop was then baptized for her grandpa. It was so great, I really enjoyed it. The temple is peaceful, because it was that early in the morning the surf was large and you could hear it crash from the temple. I loved every second of that time. Watching the sunrise, at the temple, listening to the ocean. I don't think I could have made a more perfect moment.

Bishop
Blessing

Insomnia

Ever have one of those nights where you can't sleep but can't get up to go brush your teeth because you're too tired? That night is tonight Ladies and Gentlemen, I cannot sleep but am simply far too exhausted to be able to pull myself out of this chair, down the hall 10 feet and brush my teeth. So here I sit, knowing in 7 hours I will be awake again. I think this is my first true bout with insomnia, on the bright side I now know why zombies make noises such as blugh, ugggghhhh, snnarfflefeliffluffgh, and uuuuhhhhhhrrrr