Spring in Arizona

 

 

 

Hawaii October 2011

I've been completely behind in updating this blog. I still need to add photos from our amazing trip to Australia last year. But for now here are some photos from our trip back to Hawaii last October. This visit we decided to give Kauai a go. I'd been with family so long ago I barely remembered and Kyle had never been. A couple of friends went at the same time and it was a wonderful trip!

 One of my absolute favorite photos of the trip is this one of Kyle. He is such a kid around the ocean and loves it so much.

Again playing with my macro converter.   :)  

No trip to Kauai is complete without waterfalls!

And the highlight of the luau, the fire act. 

NJ-NY Trip Part 3 - NYC

Sunrise over NY City.   We stayed in Jersey City on the other side of the hudson river.   It was cheaper and had a view of the city.   A win - win.  






Our first full day we headed out to Liberty Park to catch the ferry to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. The crown tours were all ready sold out so we settled for the pedestal (besides we'd done the crown as teenagers).    She was spectacular, although smaller than I thought.

We continued on the ferry to the NY side which dropped us off at Battery Park.    From there we headed to ground zero.    The memorial construction is currently underway so the site itself lost any impact that it would have had initially.   We looked through the small temporary memorial, and visited Trinity Church.  Later during our visit we would stumble by firehouses in neighborhoods with memorials for those lost out of that house.    Those were hard.  

From there we took the subway up to times square square and headed to find Crumbs.  We found it, hehe.    I had to admit those were some seriously good cupcakes.    I mean these are really crazy cupcakes.  

On our way there was a huge commotion that turned out to be Jennifer Aniston shooting a movie.   Kyle captures this snapshot!

We then tracked down lunch at a place a coworker recommended.    Then we headed to the top of the rock.   What an amazing view of the city.    It was totally worth it.   

We tracked down the rockefeller center skating rink,  but it was being set up for something.   The tree was decorated by still covered by scaffolding and awaiting the big reveal.   By now we were getting pretty tired and still needed to figure out the transportation back to the hotel.    So we started heading the right direction, and stopped in greenwich village.   We stopped in at a pretty cool bar so Kyle could enjoy a few drinks.    We then looked around the neighborhood a bit and headed back to the hotel.

The view at night from our hotel.

The next day we got up and headed to central park.   We went by the dakota hotel where lennon was shot and then had a wonderful lunch.     We then headed back to the hotel, picked up the car and headed to the brooklyn bridge.    We walked about halfway across (it was brutally windy, half seemed more than far enough).    Then it was off to the airport to catch our flight home.    

  

NJ-NY Trip Part 2 (Philly)

We decided to drive through Philadelphia on our way to NY. We'd both been in our early teen years and wanted to see the city with adult eyes. Besides the ridiculous security check points (I'm truly not sure what they were trying to prevent. Non secured areas were close to any of the points of interest, so... I'm not sure how security helps, but I guess it's a show of force.)    It was interesting to see the historic sites again.

 We were also there around lunch time and had the best food from food carts. Kyle had to have the Philly cheesesteak, I opted for the egg roll truck (which by the way was out of egg rolls?). I'm not entirely sure what I ordered given the language divide, but OMG delicious... It was chicken in a sauce over rice, and WOW was it amazing!!! It would be worth a visit to the city just for that again.

Lastly we took a quick pass through the Mint exhibit before heading toward the big apple.



Outside of Independence Hall

Liberty Bell

Independence Hall Under Restoration




Next....   NYC

NJ-NY Trip Part 1

I've been downright terrible about posting in a timely manner when we've got pictures to share. I seem to be pushed to publish when I know I'll have more coming soon. In any case these pictures are from a work / pleasure trip to the east coast. I needed to go back to NJ for work, and since Kyle's schedule permitted he came along with me. We were crazy and took the red eye to NY on a Saturday night, and got to the hotel at 11am on Sunday beyond tired. We rested some and then decided to venture out to Atlantic City.

Here's the atlantic ocean behind us, from the atlantic city boardwalk.

Our last night in Atlantic city we decided to head to the Tropicana for dinner. We ate at Cuba Libre and OMG yumm!! It was one of the best meals of the trip. Inside the Tropicana it was all decorated for the holidays complete with a snow maker pumping out snow from the ceiling. I loved it!!!

Next up...... Philadelphia and NYC.

Oregon Trip - part 4 of 4

Portland had the best food! Especially if you are talking breakfast. We had Voodoo donuts the first morning. Seriously the best donuts ever! I'm not even a donut lover, but had to admit those were pretty darn good. There were also street venders on practically every street!
We had waffles morning #2, Kyle got the best one with ham, cheese and maple! I had the "lemon pie" one with lemon curd and whip cream, also good, but not as good as the one with the ham, I'm still dreaming of that one. The 3rd morning we had biscuits at pine state biscuits, we both went with the egg, cheese and bacon. Oh ya, very good!

Sun rise from our hotel.



We had a full day in the portland area before we needed to think about packing up to head home. We ended up heading out to the Dundee Region outside of Portland. Turns out Oregon has a very large wine region. We hit perfect weather and it was during harvest so there was lots of activity happening. We stumbled into the Winderlea Winery which didn't necessarily have the best wine, but without question had the best view and tasting area. We hung out on the back porch for at least an hr just enjoying ourselves. Even made a couple canine friends with with the wineries labradoodles. The Argyle Winery had our favorite wines of the day and a pretty cool place too. We got a couple of glasses and just hung out in their garden for awhile. We wrapped up the day eating at Farm to Fork, amazing food!!

Oregon Trip - part 3

After the wedding we spent a little more time with family and then headed back to portland. One of the best things, ok the only good thing, about the drive between Grants Pass and Portland is the Winston Wildlife Safari. This was our second trip and it's one of my favorite zoos we've been to. Here are a few of my favorite

Oregon Trip - part 2

The big event. Saturday Oct. 16th, 2010 Kyle's brother got married (again). It turned out to be an absolutely beautiful day! The wedding was outside at a wonderful location along the river. Without question the best part of the day was spending time with family, particularly my wonderful nieces!

Oregon Trip - part 1

Kyle's brother got married a few weeks ago and since we had to make the trip anyway we decided to make a mini "vacation" out of it. Granted I would have rather been in Maui, but all things considered we wanted to make the best of it. We flew up a Thursday night, got up early Friday and headed to the Roloff Farms. We've been fans through the years watching the show so it was a great opportunity to check out the farm in person. We did one of the tractor tours and Jeremy actually drove the tractor for our tour. Kinda cool, right?! We picked up pumpkins for our nieces and nephew and headed towards Grants Pass.

Week 28ish - Seattle

The week after 4th of July I headed up to Washington state for a class for work. I flew out tuesday the 7th and Kyle came up and joined me friday. From there we headed into Seattle to our hotel. We stayed at the Alexis. It was a nice hotel, parking was a little difficult and expensive. And seeing as how I'm not really a city person, we decided if we ever go back we'd stay in Bellevue or something instead. After checking into the hotel we took a quick stroll around the city and then hit the sack for a good nights sleep!

Saturday was a lazy day around Seattle, hit pike's place and got 2lbs of rainier cherries (my favorite). Kyle wondered if I'd be able to eat it all before we left.. game on. Yumm. We went to the university mall and then tracked down the Fremont Troll. And headed out for dinner at Tulio (on a recommendation from someone in the class I was at earlier in the week). It was one of the best dinners I've had in a long time. We shared a small portion of TORTELLI crab, spinach, fresh herbs, crab oil. Then I had the ORGANIC FIELD GREENS red wine vinaigrette & SWEET POTATO GNOCCHI sage butter, mascarpone. The gnocchi was amazing! The whole dinner wonderful

Sunday we headed to Victoria, BC. We wandered around the city and had lunch at Earls where we were able to catch the end of the indy car race. It was a perfect lunch! We toured the Royal British Museum and wandered around a bit more before heading back to the US. The customs guy was trying to be nice when he noticed we didn't have any stamps, and stamped for the US.... kinda silly.

Monday we were flying out so anything we were going to do needed to fit into the time we had before getting to the airport. So we went to the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium. It was a cute little zoo. Then time to head home...

Bellow are some favorite pictures from the trip.

sky line... mount rainier behind the stadium.

pikes place

at the mall, just waiting for a rainy day.

Looking under the bridge of the Fremont Troll.

On our way to Victoria.

Seattle at night.

Tiger at the zoo.