Final Week of the Honeymoon

I know it's been well over a week since my last blog, and I apologize for the complete drop-off in blogging the details about the honeymoon, while still on the honeymoon. We had been having such a great time doing a whole lot of nothing for a week that we realized we were running out of time to see the sights and be active! So we filled our days pretty full with things to do from sun up until sun down, and by the end of the night, the last thing I wanted to do when we got back to our rooms was pick up the computer and blog. Sorry! I was just soo exhausted! And since we were rushing out of the room every morning, I didn't have time in the morning. I kinda knew that once I decided to blog every day about the honeymoon, that blogging EVERY day would get difficult, but I was determined to do my best and stay current. I made it one week, which I think is still pretty good!

So, now that we're home, we're rested, we're used to the time change again (kind of) and we have our Wiley Bear back with us, life is good, and I can finish out the blog and let everyone know what we did our final week in Hawaii. Instead of doing a post for every day, I'm just going to run all of the days here together in one final post. So I'll try to keep everything as smooth as possible, but I said "try" so don't kill me if it is confusing. :-)

So, Friday was our 8th day, I believe, and Mike hadn't golfed yet. He was itching to golf, and I was itching to get my nails done. So we hung out by the pool in the morning and had some lunch, and Mike headed off to golf 18 holes while I had some "me" time. I stayed by the pool for a few hours and finished reading another book, "The Associate" by John Grisham. Great book, I'd recommend it for any Grisham lovers. I've now read I think all of his novels, except maybe one? A few days back I had finished reading "Belly Laughs" by Jenny McCarthy, which was a book given to me by my great friend Danyelle, because it's all about pregnancy but in a funny way. Jenny McCarthy does not hold anything back, and it's a funny read for any new mommy-to-be. Anyway, back to Friday....

So I finished up my Grisham book out by the pool, and by this time, I gotta say, I'm loving my tan! Poor Mike was already peeling but had been able to hold onto some of his color, but he was still loading up on the sunscreen so he didn't turn lobster.

After the afternoon by the pool I headed out for a pedi/mani down the street at the Lahaina Cannery Mall. When I was in Maui three years ago, just a few months before I met my dear husband, actually, I found this nail shop and decided I'd go back this time around. As I'm typing this, I'm sitting here thinking to myself, wow, I can't believe, to this day, that I actually paid $45 for a pedicure. BUT, I just reminded myself, because I somehow forgot, that I actually got a manicure that day too! So, I guess $45 for a pedi/mani isn't such a raw deal after all. I probably would've paid around $40 in Irvine, so I guess it's not that much more expensive.

After my "me" time, Mike finished up golfing at the same time so we decided to freshen up and head out for dinner. While we had been staying at the Westin, the first half of the trip, we had noticed that they had an Italian restaurant we wanted to try out. We decided to head back to that Italian restaurant called Pulehu Grill and go for some Italian, since we were both Cancelleri's now and I fully embrace the Italian culture and its food!

Can I just say - the BEST garlic bread EVER! Wow, words can't even describe how much I love bread, and then to have such wonderful, tasty, yummy, warm, buttery garlic bread! Aaahhh! My mouth is just watering thinking about it now. We had such a yummy dinner, we are so glad we went back and Pulehu Grill did not disappoint!

Since we were back at the hotel we had gotten married at, we decided to walk down to our wedding spot and check it out just one last time. It was, of course, still windy as ever! If you go to Maui and don't want the wind, don't stay up by the Westin. If you are north of the black lava jutout point, which I think is where the Sheraton is located, it is sooo windy there! If you go south of that point, where we stayed the second half of our trip, down by Whaler's Village, no wind at all! It's amazing the difference!

Here's a picture of us at our wedding spot, standing in the spot we said our vows :-)

Okay, so we've never taken a picture of ourselves kissing, I promise. And this is probably the last time we'll do it. We smashed our noses together, it was awkward. We won't be putting ourselves in front of the camera again while trying to take our own picture - but it was fun just this once! (by the way, notice the lovely connect-the-dots zits on my cheek? Thanks pregnancy acne....that looks REAL GREAT in pictures!)

Me at the wedding spot....

This is the boardwalk I walked down to meet Mike. Right where the little right sign is on the right, is there you turn to the left and that's where Mike was waiting for me.

And of course, Mike had to show how athletic he was and how he's still 'got it' by climbing up a tree...he climbed up further than this, but the picture I took wasn't all that great....ask him how he got down :-)

So the next day was Saturday. Our busiest and longest day yet! But today marked one of the coolest days in history! We woke up and headed out nice & early (yep, we had to leave at 9 AM, yuck!). We got some breakfast and headed to the airport. Why were you going to the airport, you might ask? Well, because next to the airport is the heliport! And we were taking our helicopter ride!!! I was so excited to see Maui from above! But, I knew it would be a rough ride for me what with the queasiness and everything, but I actually did okay, and only felt like throwing up like twice. And since I didn't throw up, the it was a success! We had a lot of fun. So worth the money!!

We got shafted and had to sit in the back row with another couple while the tiny, little, 20 something couple that probably weighed only 200 pounds BOTH, together, when dripping wet, got to ride shotgun right next to the pilot. Not fair...however, we still had a great view of everything. The pilot was really awesome about doing 360 turns in the helicopter so everyone, from every seat in the helicopter, could see everything. Like if we came to a waterfall head on, he would still turn the helicopter all the way around so those of us in the back could see and get photos. He was a great pilot and explained a lot of the history about what we were seeing.

We opted for the 45-minute flight from Maui to Molokai (which is the closest neighboring island to the north side of Maui). We didn't know at the time, but apparently we were very lucky to see what we did, and to be able to get as close as we did to the waterfalls and some of the mountains, because there happened to be no clouds during our flight. The clouds are usually really thick over the mountains that are located in the middle of Maui so the pilot can't take people in to see much of anything, a lot of the times, but we were lucky enough to get right up next to the mountain and see everything up close with perfect weather!

This is a shot of Lahaina from above. The football field you see in the lower right corner of the picture was Lahaina's High School football field.

This is the coast off of Molokai. The water there is gorgeous! There's a huge sandbar off the coast, which is why you get the lighter shade of water, but if I had to describe it to you the way the pilot did, I'd be sitting here all day trying to remember what he said and trying to put it eloquently like he did. And that just ain't gonna happen :-)

This is one of those shots we were lucky to get. This valley is sometimes so covered thick with clouds and fog that you can't go near it, but we were lucky enough to get a clear shot the whole way through.

Coast of Molokai, the other side of the island, opposite of the sand bar side. The pilot, I think, he said this is the only steep cliff like this in Hawaii. Out of all of the islands, this is the cliff that's the highest and it just went straight down, at least I think I remember him saying that :-)

After our trip, the pilot is doing the shakabra (spelling?) outside the window. I was so queasy at this point, I just wanted to go pee and then sit down! But such a great time!!

My belly just looks fat and wrinkled here, not pregnant.

So, after our helicopter ride, since we were at the total opposite side of the island that we were staying on, we figured since we were already an hour into the drive to Hana, we might as well do the road to Hana drive the same day. Otherwise, there was going to be no other day we wanted to drive over to this side and do the long trek. Mike had done the road to Hana and didn't think it was all that great, but since I hadn't done it, for some reason we thought that is was just something that we just HAD to do. Boy, were we wrong!

For those of you who have been through the Provo canyon, up past Sundance resort, it's like driving on that road, for 2 1/2 hours, with just a few more trees and a little bit more green here and there. But it's windy, it's narrow, it's down to one lane at times, and it's BORING!!

And then, after the long ass drive, pardon my language kiddies, we get to Hana Bay and this is it! It's like 100 yards of beach with nothing but a bunch of locals barbecuing with their families and playing in the water. This is what we just drove almost three hours to see? I didn't realize that you drive to Hana to experience the ROAD, I thought we were driving to Hana to experience HANA. My mistake.

But, since we're here, we may as well make the best of it, right? Let's get something to eat and enjoy ourselves. So, we go to this little cafe that's right there by the beach and of course, they only accept cash, and we only have credit cards. We had used all our cash at this point and hadn't gone to the ATM left. Mike managed to scrounge together four bucks so I got a snow cone and with that we figured it was time to head back to town in time at least for dinner, and poor Mike would have to wait a few more hours to eat. And maybe I shouldn't have used the four bucks for a snow cone and should've gotten something with a little bit more substance? On the drive up though, we both had loaded up on Chex Mix and Sprite, so I wasn't in the mood for much food. I did want a hot dog though, but our four bucks could've bought about 3/4 of a hot dog. (Come to find out, I forgot that I had a $20 in my wallet from earlier in the week, so we both could've gotten lunch!)

So we headed our long trek down the 'fabulous and wonderful road to Hana'! Except it was now 'the freaking long ass road that we have to wind back down just to get to some real food, and didn't we just see all of this like an hour ago?' road.....

We also said, I guess we should take some pictures while were here, right? I guess we should capture this moment forever?! So, while Mike pulled over so I could pee, for about the 16th time that day, I took this picture of him in the car. By the way, I wouldn't recommend a three hour road when you're 13 weeks pregnant. Here's why. You have to pee like every 25 minutes. And it's not a tiny little tinkle tinkle. No, you have to pee like there's no tomorrow or you will wet yourself and the whole seat you're sitting on! And you have to keep drinking water, because you have to stay hydrated, so you just keep peeing, and it's a vicious cycle (at the end of the night we counted how many times I had peed that day, since we had to pull over at least four times for me, and from the time I woke up until the time I went to bed we counted like 17 - 18 times I had peed. Count how many times you pee in a day and tell me if it's anywhere NEAR 17 - 18? If so, you drink a looooot of water!)

Oh look it's a waterfall...I guess we should take a picture of it. Let's pull over and take a picture.....(can you sense the excitement in our voices at this point in time?)

The happy couple, getting the hell out of Hana!

So, we finally made it down the road, finally made it off the road, and were finally able to get something to eat. We stopped at the famous Mama's Fishhouse because everyone was raving about it, and Mike's dad had told us it was an amazing place to go with great food and we should go there if we could. Since we were driving right by it, we stopped for dinner. Poor Mike was starving at this point, we had eaten all of our Chex Mix and he just wanted some real food (I hadn't discovered the $20 in my wallet just yet). So into Mama's Fishhouse we went.

The restaurant itself is really cool, it's set up on a beach that's in this little tiny cove, and you have to walk down stairs just to get to the restaurant. There are no windows in the restaurant so you get a nice breeze coming in from the ocean (which also means you get the flies and gnats that want to eat your food), but what we forgot to ask about Mama's Fishhouse before we got there is what they served to eat? Oh, it's JUST fish you tell us? Oh, that's IT? What if we're not real, big fish eaters? And we're about two hours past the time we should've eaten?

Let's just say it was a huge disappointment after a long and tiring day. Mike and I decided to share the salmon, since it was the only fish on the menu I'd really ever heard of or tasted before in my life, and we figured it was safe. Mama's Fishhouse is great for those of you who love fresh fish. For those of ou who don't, stick to what you do know and avoid it.

We did stop outside for a self portrait of ourselves at dinner, becuase that's our tradition. So here's our nightly dinner picture.

On to Sunday!! Sunday was a whole bunch of nothing, really. We decided to head out early to Front Street and get some breakfast and we pretty much spent the whole day on Front Street in Lahaina. We found ourselves at Lahaina Pizza Company for lunch (we found ourselves there because I told Mike we were going there because I deserved a damn good piece of pizza at this point in time) so we settled in for lunch right when the Laker game was starting. Nice timing. We always seem to find ourselves in front of a TV when the Lakers are going to play! We finished up our pizza and decided to call it a day and head back to the hotel to watch the rest of the game. Yeah, we were calling it a day at 2 PM. I was exhausted and the pizza wasn't sitting well with me, which sucks because pizza is my favorite, but oddly enough the pizza didn't set well with Mike either. We both got tummy aches and felt sick so we gladly went back to the room to lie down and watch the game. I fell asleep somewhere in between the 2nd quarter and half time and woke up at the end of the game. Oops, missed the whole thing. But I was tired!!!

At this point, Mike was getting stir crazy and wanted to leave the room and my head was pounding, so I didn't feel like going anywhere. Mike went for a walk down to the beach and decided he'd walk a couple of miles while he was at it. After I thought someone had kidnapped my husband, he finally came back to the room and said he had a surprise for me. We headed off to the boardwalk and headed out for a stroll. Well, it wasn't really a stroll, it was a loooong walk to somewhere I didn't know, but he told me it'd be worth it. We passed like 15 hotels and a couple of restaurants on the way, so I knew we weren't going somewhere to eat, where could we be going? But he didn't want to tell me, he just wanted me to see for myself.

We finally came to a hotel and Mike stopped and said there it is! And right in front of me, the greatest thing I'd seen all week, was a hammock! I know, you're wondering, what? Who cares about a hammock?! Well, I care about a hammock! I told him the one thing I wanted to do while we were in Hawaii, well, one of the many things I wanted to do, was lie in a hammock with my honey and rock back and forth and listen to the ocean. But there were no hammocks to be found! But somehow my man found a hammock like a mile down from our hotel. It was the best!!! We rocked in the hammock and talked about our week, our future, our kids, our Wiley Bear and how much we missed him, and just enjoyed relaxing. It was awesome, I loved every minute of it!

Here's our picture for the night, of us in the hammock. (I promise I had clothes on).

After the hammock we decided it was time for dinner, we hadn't eaten in hours, so we walked back up to Whaler's Village and got some food. I loved the hammock! I miss the hammock right now! I want one for our backyard! I'll just have to get a CD with ocean waves crashing and then I can rock back and forth in my hammock and it'll be like we're in Maui all over again. Thank you for the hammock babe!!!

Monday was the next day. Our honeymoon was in the last few days of its life and everything was coming to an end. It was sad, but we were ready to come home and sleep in our own bed. Hotel beds suck! Monday we decided to spend the day out on the beach, instead of at the pool, since we hadn't really touched the sand much since we'd been there. We rented a little cabana/lounge chair thing that had two cushy lounge chairs and a cover over the top if you wanted to give yourselves a break from the sun, and it was right on the beach. We spent our whole day there in the sun, we did go in the ocean a few times, but I absolutely hate salt water and the one time it got in my mouth and I had to taste it, I was done with the ocean.

After a long day at the beach we headed into our rooms to get ready for our big dinner plans. Tonight was the night we cashed in our wedding gift from Mike's dad and step-mom and we went on our dinner cruise! (Thank you again Dan and Anita!) The cruise ship left at 5 from one of the slips in Lahaina and we were out there until the sun went down. We got paired up with a couple that was on their honeymoon from Chicago and they were a really nice couple. It's weird to have dinner with people, across the table from each other, when you don't know one another. Good thing they were cool people!

While we were on the dinner cruise we saw a rainbow. That means good luck! I was like, sweet, that means I'm not going to throw up and the ship isn't going to crash. Tonight will be a good night!

I got to wear my new dress that I picked up from White House Black Market the week before we left for Hawaii. I knew I'd be cold later so I wanted something with sleeves, but it was a little warm there for the first hour while the sun was still up!

The cruise was great, the dinner was really good, and we had a good time. The ship went all the way up to the north point of Lahaina and then back down. We had some people take our picture when the sun was going down behind us, but it didn't turn out well. You can't take a picture with the sun setting directly behind you. It just won't work.

While the boat was getting ready to dock and we were ending the night we snapped this picture of us on the side of the boat and this quickly has become one of my all-time favorite pictures of Mike. He didn't shave at all while we were in Hawaii and I LOVE his stubble growing in. And he has such a great smile, he looks sexy and adorable in this picture and I love it!!

The next day was Tuesday, and it was just a day of not doing a whole lot of anything. We headed out for a drive down the highway and I started to see brown smoke. I said to Mike, we've seen those kinds of clouds before, that's a fire. Sure enough, as we drove further down the highway, we ended up driving right into a fire that was on the very mountain we just flew over a couple of days previously in the helicopter. I took more pictures than this, but this is the first initial picture I took when I saw the brown clouds.

Luckily there wasn't too much damage done, and the fire grew quite a bit that day, but with the help of volunteer helicopters and an endless supply of water next to the island, they were able to put out the fire that night.

We didn't really do a whole lot for the next day and a half but just rest up and get ready for our time home. I wasn't feeling very good at all, and was really exhausted most of the day, so I did a lot of lying around and taking naps. Mike stayed busy with books and the laptop. Our honeymoon was coming to an end and maybe my body was just saying no, stay here!! At least that's what my mind was telling me!

Here's a picture I took of the view from our hotel room. We had a great view, even though it was a not so great room at all. We will still, forever and always, remember the Kaanapali Beach Hotel! Although we'll definitely remember the Westin a lot more fondly!

That's it folks, signing off on this way too long blog and that's our honeymoon all wrapped up! Thank you for reading and enjoying our blog, there will obviously be more to come! I'll post the wedding photos when we get them from the photographer, and stay tuned for baby updates! We have LOTS of those to post here as well!

With love, The Cancelleri's