HAWAII

May 22 - May 28, 2016

Please forgive my rudimentary blogging abilities. This is basically just a random compilation of pictures from our trip to Hawaii, with a little summary of some of our adventures. First and foremost, we had a blast!! We spent two days on the eastern side of the island, which is a big rainforest with lots of waterfalls. We stayed in Hilo. It is a quiet town with very few tourists. It was so pretty and fun to explore. We went to Volcano National park on Monday and did an 8 mile hike. On Tuesday, we drove down the eastern coast and went to 2 unique beaches--black sands beach and green sands beach. Both of them were really cool, but I think Eric and I both liked the green sands beach the best! Then Eric went cliff diving at the southern most point of the United States. 

We spent the rest of our vacation in Kona, which is on the western side of the island. On Wednesday, we went snorkeling and saw some incredible fish, and an eel. Thursday, we hung out at the beach and then in the evening, we went on a manta ray night dive. It was SO cool to see manta rays up close, but unfortunately the boat ride got me pretty sea sick. On Friday we hiked to a beach that we had all to ourselves. In the evening, we drove up to Mauna Kea which is the mountain on the island. We intended to stargaze, but we happened to choose one of the few nights out of the year that was cloudy so we couldn't see anything! We still had a lot of fun on our drive together though. On Saturday, we went to a state park called the City of Refuge, where we got to learn about traditional Hawaiian culture and see some interesting Hawaiian artifacts. The whole state park was on the beach. There were no complaints about that!! Saturday night we got back on a plane to come home, which was definitely the hardest part of the vacation. All in all, we had so much fun together and it was a much needed getaway from our busy lives!

Volcano National Park--View of the crater from our hike

 Aka Falls

 Hilo

Green Sands Beach

 Black Sands Beach 

 Ice cream and donuts for breakfast. We are children at heart.

South Point: southern most spot in the United States. Eric went cliff jumping into the ocean. As we were heading back to the car, we saw this sign. Oops!!

Poke (pronounced poh-kee): raw fish and rice. And absolutely delicious!

Loved everything about the beaches!

Kona temple

More ice cream. It was one of our staple meals in Hawaii.

More of the Hawaiian food we ate. We ate WAY too much, but it was all so delicious! We just couldn't help ourselves!

WE LOVE HAWAII!!

Well…It's been over a year since I've made a blog post (oops!) but I thought it's better late than never to make another one. We have had lots of fun adventures in our first year of marriage, but we have had a couple really fun/exciting things in the past few weeks. First and foremost, Eric started dental school this past week!! We're so excited for this new stage in our lives. He had orientation all week, and Friday was his White Coat Ceremony that I got to attend.

Doesn't he look good?! He is in a class of 23 students, and he'll be the second graduating class at the University of Utah Dental School. So far he said that everyone in his class has gotten along super well and that he really likes everyone he'll be working with for the next 4 years.

It's not the greatest picture ever, but here is his class. His Dean is the lady in green on the front row. Eric is on the back row, third from the left.

 As part of becoming a dental student, they have a couple traditions they have to go through. The first is getting the white coat placed on them. 

The second taking the Dental Student Pledge (kind of like the Hippocratic Oath but for dentists).

It was so exciting to see Eric start the path that will finally lead to his career. Even though it's a little heartbreaking to see him sporting the U of U colors, we are super excited for the new dental school in Utah. It's a huge blessing for us to be able to stay in Utah while I finish at BYU. He is with a great group of students and the faculty seems phenomenal, so we know it's going to be a great experience.

Mark your calendars for 2018. His appointments are up filling fast!!

Yay for blogging, marriage, and Ragnar!

I'm not really into this whole "blogging" thing, but when I started dating Eric, he told me I just HAD to start a blog if we ever got married so I could compete with all his crafty sisters and sisters-in-law. I thought there was no way I would ever actually do it, but I decided it would be a fun thing to surprise him with when we get married. So here I am!! I think I'm going to wait to post about how we met and everything until I can add it into wedding day pictures, so I'm going to start off with our most recent adventure: Ragnar.

This is the temporary tattoo we all wore for the race. It's the "Ragnar" symbol.

For those of you who don't know what this is, here is the description from Ragnar's website: "You and 11 of your craziest friends pile into two vans and tag team run 200(ish) miles, day and night, relay-style. Only one runner hits the road at a time. Each participant runs three times, with each leg ranging between 3-11 miles and varying in difficulty. So, from the elite runner down to the novice jogger, it's the perfect race for anyone."

We had a ton of fun! I ended up running about 20 miles altogether. It was a tiring weekend. Eric hurt his foot pretty bad during his first run, but he stuck with it and still did an amazing job! 

 At the end of the race there were a whole bunch of post-race festivities. Despite how exhausted we were, we still enjoyed them!

It was a super fun/crazy weekend. We're looking forward to all the craziness to come in the next couple weeks. Pretty soon we'll be Mr. and Mrs. Nelson. Can't wait!