a little o' this n' that

Last night Luke was kind enough to take me to see UP. I LOVED IT!!! I didn't cry, but my eyes were misty for at least 75% of the movie. I really liked the Pixar Short that was shown with it too. Pixar always does amazing animated movies!! I'm so buying it when it comes out on Blu-Ray!

Today Luke and I went to the Bishop Museum with a couple friends and saw the Planetarium there. Let's just say that I have been to more interesting places of a similar nature. We won't be going there again that's for sure!

After that non-eventful trip we went to lunch and then Luke was kind enough to take me to get my nails done. Granted it took about 3hrs to get them all done, but I was in heaven for those 3 hrs :) Here's the pic of the results:
I love what she did! I can't get this done very often, at least not while I'm still in the Military. But since I'm in a class right now and I don't have to be in uniform for it, I thought I would treat myself to something a little more fun than just plain ole white french tips :) Can't wait until this can be a semi normal thing for me.

Well, that's all for now. I'm gonna go see what Luke is up to now so cya later!

~Nicole

oh man...this could take a while...

Since it has been almost 2 months since my last entry I have quite a bit to catch up on...so here it goes!

May was fairly laid back for us. I was on the Early Bird shift (4am-2pm) all month which was nice since I was able to spend all my free time with Luke due to us getting off work at the same time during the week.
For Memorial Day weekend we went to the Big Island with a few friends and had a blast! We flew in on Friday night (22nd) and went and saw the new Terminator movie since it was too late to do anything else. Saturday we spent the day looking at waterfalls (Rainbow Falls and Akaka Falls), went to the Thurston Lava Tube and explored the undeveloped section of the cave (it was soo cool!), and we went to the Volcano Park and saw the volcano. Sunday we went to the black sand and green sand beaches (both very cool) and along the way we saw a real live Zebra in someone's yard. Turns out that the zebra was the owner's inheritance..that's they only way she could have legally had the zebra! She had other animals there too, but the zebra was the coolest. That night we went snorkeling with Manta Rays (well I stayed on the boat due to having a major headache :[ ). Didn't get any pics though :[ , but they had fun swimming with them! Monday we had an early flight back home so that's where we ended our little adventure. Anyway, here are some pics of what we did while we were there.

Luke and I at Rainbow falls...which we lovingly called trickle falls ha ha..
Luke and I at Akaka FallsLuke at the Volcano Park
Luke and I inside the lava tubeThe gang (John, Mindy,Chris,Mei, and Luke) at the end of the caveLuke and I at Black Sand Beach
our feetGreen sand!Green Sand Beach! We hiked a little over 1 mile one way to get to this place, but it was worth it!

Zebra!!

And that's all the really good pics of what we did that weekend. I can't wait to go back!

I started language class this month and it's been going well so far. My plan is to take the DLPT after the class ends in July to see if I've improved since December. Here's hoping I pass it this time! Luke's brother Sean and my sister Jessica will be coming out to visit us in July so things will be busy around here, but it will be great to have them visit us!

And my last news of the day, we finally got out kitchen table!! We put it together today and I'm so happy that it's here! Now we can eat at a table like normal people and when we have guests over they will have somewhere to sit too! And playing Settlers on the table will be much much easier to do than on the floor, and more comfy too ha ha! Well, that's all the news I have for now. I'll try not to wait for 2 months before posting again. Playing catch up isn't as easy as I thought ha ha. Have a good one!

~Nicole

all better...finally!

The car is back and almost as good as new! We finally got to pick it up from the shop on Monday after dropping it off a month ago. So happy to have my wonderful car back! But we have discovered some other things that are now wrong with it. Like the locks don't like to unlock sometimes...keyless entry or not. And the seal on the driver's door is broken too...both things were fine when we dropped the car off. So we shall be calling them to see what they did that made this happen and get it fixed. At first I thought the batteries in our keyless entry things needed to be changed, but we noticed that the key doesn't work sometimes either. It's very strange. Anyway, here are some pics of the car looking oh so much better :]

Weekend Getaway!

This past weekend Luke and I took a trip to Kauai: The Garden Isle! It was a lot of fun! Here are some highlights from our trip:

We went on the Just Live! Zipline Treetops tour on Saturday morning. It was soooo much fun, although I admit that I was slightly nervous for the entire tour since we were about 60-80 ft about ground in these Norfolk Pines for the entire tour (about 3 hours). We were safe though thanks to the very strong cables and gear that we were using. And we had some pretty awesome tour guides too :]

We went over about 4-5 suspended bridges and about 7-9 ziplines on the tour. Got to learn about the scenery and wildlife in the area too so that was a bonus in my opinion. The picture on the right is of us on the first bridge on the tour. It was really windy that day so it didn't help my fear of heights that I was swaying in the wind with the trees...really high off the ground. As you can see I'm holding onto the ropes with all my might lol!

After the Zipline tour we went to Wailua Falls and took some pictures. If you look closely you can see the rainbow at the end where the waterfall ends and there's all that mist. Absolutely beautiful!


After the Falls we went to our next adventure for the day, Wings Over Kauai. This was the first time either of us had taken an Air Tour before (otherwise known as Flightseeing) so we knew this would be an interesting experience. Here's a picture of us all ready to take off!


Here are some pics we took in the air over the island.

the Sea Caves

this is the aerial view of our hotel that we stayed at

Wailua Falls

As we were descending for our landing...I decided that it would be fun to vomit in the complimentary barf bags...you see, it was still really windy that day and that didn't make the flight very smooth. Infact it was very turbulent. So of course about 5 mins before we land I hurl. I was soooo embarassed! Luke told me that I was a trooper cuz he started to get queasy too at the end. I was feeling sick for almost the entire time we were in the air! But I still enjoyed myself.

That night we went out to a Japanese Hibachi Grill for dinner. It was alright...normally the main reason people go to them is for the show...well..our wasn't great at all. The chef wore military fatigues and a Notre Dame hat. The food was alright though. It was just boring. And we waited there for a looong time to get our check too. So the service wasn't great either. Won't be going there again the next time we go to Kauai that's for sure.

archway of trees near a sugar plantation close to Kolohe

Spouting Horn

Sunday we spent time at the beach. Went to Kolohe, Spouting Horn, Poipu Beach and the shopping center there. It was a very nice and relaxing day. Our flight home left at 9:36pm so we didn't actually get back to our house until about 11:30 pm last night. Luke was tired at work today, but I think we both still had a great time together in Kauai. Can't wait for the next trip!

6 months....

It's been 6 months since I moved into our new place and it has also been 6 months since I purchased our kitchen table...and we still don't have it.....AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!! Can we say ridiculous?!?! I'm supposed to hear back from them tomorrow about the status of my table since I've been calling them for the past couple days asking what's up. They informed me that they got a conformation number but they aren't sure why...WHAT?? What does that mean? So I'm hopefully gonna get to the bottom of this tomorrow so I can have my table by next week. I want to eat at a table like normal people for once gosh dangit!! Then we can feel good about having people over for dinner or have a game night and not need to play on a broken down box on the floor (so embarrassing lemme tell ya!). I cannot wait!! I've been waiting for 6 months, that's long enough I think! Anyway, that's my new stress for the week.

Our House Hunting is moving along. We looked at three homes yesterday and thought that one of them was really nice and would be good for us. The only problem is the price. We still are keeping an open mind about all this and will not just "settle" for something if we think it isn't meant for us. Plus we want something that we can afford to keep even after the military as long as we have the income to support our family. If we end up not finding anything we will hopefully be able to live on Schofield which is really close to work and that will reduce alot of strain on the both of us and we won't be spending sooo much money on gas anymore.

Anyway, that's our little update for now. Talk to you later!

~Nicole

No more candy!!

I had a Dentist appointment yesterday and was informed that I have not one, not two, but three cavities....so not cool!! So now I am cutting waaaay back on sugary snacks and such. Especially since one of them might be severe enough to need to have a root canal done on it....AAAAAAHHHH! I am not looking forward to that, but I guess it showed me that I should be better about what I eat and making sure I take better care of my teeth. Luke had to have a filling done last week and blames me (of course) for that happening since I'm the one who kept buying all the candy...(but I did not force him to eat it...that was his fault). Now I'm on this fluoride program where I have to brush my teeth with this Rx toothpaste every night before bed and I'll be getting treatments done at the clinic too...joy. But on the brighter side, I think I have learned my lesson about eating so many sweets and how bad it is for me. I don't think I will be able to completely stop eating candy, but I can cut back on the amount that I eat as a whole.

Anyway, that's my little problem as of late. Nothing else too exciting to report about..wait..umm oh yeah! Luke and I are thinking about buying a home out here in Hawaii...but as of right now we don't think it will happen since the homes here are very very expensive and we could get a home of the same size and quality for half the price back on the mainland. So more than likely we will end up moving onto Schofield Barracks which is much much closer to work (like 5 min away versus over an hour depending on traffic). We are definitely going to be saving up money for a nice down payment on a new home once we work out job stuff and things like that after we are out of the military. Anyway, that's all I can think of to share with you so I shall go to bed now. Good Night!

~Nicole

Clean House!!

bed in the spare room

boxes in the spare room

These last couple of days I've been doing a lot of cleaning and organizing. I decided that I needed to make our spare bedroom look more like a bedroom and not so much like a storage room and the computer room look like one too. I went through sooo many boxes and threw away a lot of things that we didn't need or were never going to use. It felt good to get this all done and now both rooms look so much better!

our new bed frame :]

We also got a new bed frame a couple weeks ago and I realized that I never posted pics of it so I took care of that :]

Now that the house is clean that's even more of an incentive to come visit us...we have somewhere for you to sleep! (hint hint hehe) Enjoy the pics of the nice, clean house!

the computer room

the trash! (see below)

Happy Birthday Lucas!!

The decorations with some friends too

John and Joy being goofy

Today is Lucas' 25th Birthday!!! We celebrated it last night at a friends house since I have to work today :/, but we definitely had fun! I baked cookies and homemade brownies for his cake. We put waaayy too many trick candles on it and had fun trying to take them off too lol.
We played a really long game of UNO and just sat around talking. All in all it wasn't extravagant, but it was still fun to hang out with friends. I can't wait to play the new Settlers of Catan games I got him!! I love that game! Even if I'm not very good at it lol.

Hope you enjoy the pics and the video (I filmed him this morning..it's pretty funny). Gotta go to work now so talk to you later!

Luke Sleeping on his Birthday

...drumroll please....

I found out last night that I will be switching to the day shift starting our next work set (Monday). I'm feeling mixed emotions about it, but really glad that I'll get to be back on a regular (and more normal) sleep schedule so that's what I will focus on and not the other stuff that makes me wish I wasn't being switched. I will be working with different people too so I will have to adjust to that. I'm glad that my friend was able to switch too so we can keep carpooling together, and I'll have someone to talk to too :]

Anyway, that's my news for the week. We are "lucky" enough to be having a formation bright and early this Saturday morning in our Full Service Dress (the blue uniform aka Blues). This is possibly due to the chance that someone in our Squadron got a DUI and we were warned that the next time that happened that we would have this formation. Now let me just say that the weather has been crappy these last 2 days with winds up to 60mph and rainy and such. Almost everything is closed today (schools, government offices, etc) because of the severity, so if that means anything to you you will know that that is what we might also be dealing with tomorrow. I am so not looking forward to that, but crap happens. And then we volunteered to work at a car wash to raise money for Squadron functions (aka the Holiday party every year). We'll see what the weather does to this plan too...

Anyway, I can't fall asleep (been up since 3pm yesterday) and I blame the 5-6 sips of Redbull that I had at 3 am today...or the fact that I'm cold too and I can never fall asleep when I'm cold. Warming me up takes a while too :/ But yeah, I'm going to go get ready for the day since there is no way I'm gonna fall asleep when I'm this wide awake. I'm sure I'll be taking a nap later.

still waiting...

on what is happening with me and changing shifts. Had a talk with one of my supervisors yesterday and found out somethings that are a bit hard to swallow, but I'm a big girl and I can handle it. Just have to step it up and work harder I guess. Now that I know the reason why they want to switch me though (and I can't really talk about it) I don't think I want to switch for something lame. Because it is lame. But if they want me to I can't complain about it because I'll be getting back on a normal sleep schedule again. Anyway, I guess we will be finding out for sure tonight at work. I'll let you know the outcome tomorrow.