'lulu (Part 2!)

I'm baaaaack :)
Picking up where I left off on our Honolulu trip--

Tuesday: We were so excited to wake up to SUNSHINE and HOT weather!! Unfortunately Max had a couple hours of classes in the morning so he took off while I took advantage of the sunshine and headed down to the beach. Of course once I got there and saw everyone running along the sidewalk adjacent to the ocean I couldn't help but jog back up to our room and lace up my running shoes to join them! It was by far the prettiest run I've ever been on....As for me and my belly, I can't promise that WE were a pretty sight to see, but oh well :) (Sidenote: I do believe this was my last 'official' run= 22weeks preggo and it left me pretty uncomfortable!)

My running path/view Tuesday morning-- such a beautiful day!

Afterwards, I treated myself to an iced coffee and laid out by the pool for a while soaking up the rays. After grabbing a quick lunch, Max was done with his sessions and we had a tee time to make at Ko'olau Golf Club. I am not a golfer, but if you know my husband then you know that he was in heaven at this course. I can't even begin to describe the views we were able to enjoy since the course was literally in the middle of a rainforest! Crazy beautiful....

Cheers to our first golfing outing together in (almost) 5 years of marriage!

isn't he cute?? 

I was so obsessed with how the sun kept peaking in through the mountains :)

unreal!

Following our golfing adventure, we hurried back to our hotel room to shower up so we could attend the ICBA silent action and drooled over all the fancy stuff that we couldn't afford :) We stayed for a bit and then had a late sunset supper at Tropics on our resort overlooking the ocean. The food was great, the ma tai's were even better (so I hear!) and Max got to creep on Karl Rove, who was also there dining with his wife... Life was good!

Wednesday:
Blessed with another beautiful day! Max had his final day of sessions for a few hours in the morning so I lounged around reading by the pool and also discovered the BEST protein smoothie I've ever had at Lanikai Juice and Smoothies. Look it up. They are SO good, I had a 'choco loco' every day from that point forward!! After he finished up with work stuff, Max went for a long run and I got to facetime with little P (who, along with ryder, was having a blast soaking up all of her grandparents while mom and dad were away)! In the afternoon I indulged in an hour long prenatal massage at a little place up the road called Red Earth Massage and Wellness.

Have I mentioned I LOVE massages?!

I had read so many good reviews about this place that I knew it was where I wanted to schedule my appointment with. They were SO friendly and my massage was perfect. I left so relaxed and found my hubby waiting for me so we could do lunch! We found a little grocery store right next to the spa and discovered their deli makes pretty awesome sandwiches so we loaded up on some goodies, lathered up with some sunscreen, and made our way to Manoa Falls for an afternoon hike! The hike itself  was definitely doable, and there were plenty of people on the trail, but the waterfall and scenery were pretty amazing!

Our view as we entered the beginning of the hiking trail.... Amazing!!

a small portion of the waterfall-- not sure where my panoramic pic of this went!! 

Afterwards I made Max drive out of the way to go to a shaved ice place I had read about from a blog that I follow and I knew I didn't want to leave Hawaii without trying it out. SO WORTH IT. If you think shaved ice is like an icee or a snowcone, that is what I was thinking as well. All I can say is: not. even. close. Uncle Clay's House of Pure Aloha is unbelievable. They make their own organic syrups out of real fruit, then top it with their own homemade organic vanilla bean ice cream (which is out of this world) and then top it off once again with their shaved ice. I believe we got passionfruit/guava or something to that nature, and it was the best thing that has hit my lips in a long time. We still talk about this place.

TAKE ME BACK!!!

After our blissful trip to Uncle Clay's, we layed out by the beach for a while and then got ready for the annual banquet. This was probably the fanciest event I have been to in my measly little 26 years but we had a fun table full of bankers from all over the states to chat it up with and delicious food to munch on as well!

it's a....

Late post, obviously. 

Moving right along though....

One of the highlights of our San Diego Trip was finding out the sex of this little babe inside of me! Thanks to Kristin for orchestrating the whole gender reveal, it turned out to be such a fun experience :) And we are THRILLED with the outcome!

Following our 20 week ultrasound, this is what we were left with. An envelope sealed by our ultrasound tech with a circled "boy" or "girl" on the inside....  After the ultrasound, Max took the envelope to his trusted coworker at the bank and had him open it, and text the results to Kristin out in San Diego. --Thanks, Ben!!  We could have just had this card mailed to Kristin, but since we were leaving for San Diego the next day, we didn't want to risk it not getting there in time! Kristin received the exciting news and was forced to keep her mouth shut until the time came to share the news with us. We decided to find out at dinner on Saturday night since we already had reservations at a really nice restaurant. The anticipation was killing us and we kept going back and forth the whole time with what we all thought the baby was.... By the time we finished our meal, we had a little surprise come to us. 

A desert plate with card. A card in a PINK envelope, that is.... That was my first clue that we were obviously having another little girl. 

The card seemed a little boyish, but since it was more of a periwinkle blue, I figured it could go both ways.... We opened it up and immediately I skimmed over the whole wording in the card to what Kristin had written in at the bottom. She had created a sweet little poem:

Since I was so antsy to figure out what this sweet babe inside of me had for 'goods' I read it so quickly that at first I told Max "It's another girl!" --but he didn't really respond, he just kept looking at the card as if he was reading it over and over. It was then that I read it again, slower, and realized that my eyes had tricked me and we were not, in fact, having another girl. 

Our excitement, as we realized that we were getting the little BOY we had (secretly) been hoping for! I love how excited Max looks in this picture :) Don't get me wrong, I would have been so happy to have another little girl to love on, and for P to have a little sister (because little sisters are obviously awesome--right Mellissa?!) but I knew Max wanted a boy to pass on his name, and I just felt it was a boy the whole time! The most important thing, of course, was finding out that baby looked great at the ultrasound and so far, everything continues to look healthy and beautiful-- finding out it was a boy was just icing on the cake! We are so thankful and blessed to have such amazing friends to orchestrate this, and to celebrate with :) 

The Long Overdue Hawaii Trip Recap :) (Part 1)

So, just how far I am behind in my blogging is unreal. I refused to let anymore time pass without finally posting a recap of our Hawaii trip. So, here we go!

In a nutshell, we arrived back 'home sweet home' on a Monday from San Diego, only to pack up once again and leave on the following Saturday for Honolulu, Hawaii. (Gosh that makes us sound like these trendy little jetsetters-- I promise you, we are not! Haha!) It was a whirlwind of craziness but believe it or not, our kids survived (and had so much fun spending time with their grandparents/aunts/uncles, etc) and so did we....

As I was saying, we flew out Saturday, March 1st. The plane ride to Hawaii is LONG. It's kind of a bummer, but since our connecting flight was in LA it worked out to be a nice little 'halfway' break to get up for a bit, grab a bite to eat, and stretch our legs. Especially important to me being pregnant and what not.... I think the first stretch was close to 4 hours and the flight from LA to Honolulu was another 5 hours. We were extremely lucky to have the seat next to us open which was amazing for such a long flight. I will say that by use of our tablets, the flights went by MUCH faster than I imagined. I don't watch much tv at home, as in, at all most days- so it was nice to have NOTHING to do but read on my kindle, and watch movies with the hubs. We arrived late Saturday night and by the time we got settled into our hotel room at The Hilton Hawaiian Village it was around midnight, so 4am Minnesota time! Ouch!! To be honest, we had a hard time adjusting to the time change for the majority of our trip. 4 hours difference can really take a toll on a person, but we managed! The rest of our week went as follows:

Good morning, Honolulu! The main beach at our hotel....

Sunday: We were bummed to wake up to a rainy day on our first day in Honolulu but we decided to tackle some of the 'banking stuff' that we needed to do that day anyway. We were up early (of course--time change) and grabbed some yummy mochas at "Lamperts" on our resort and did a little walking around/exploring before we had an orientation meeting at 9am for the bank convention. Following the meeting, we did a little shopping/exploring in our village (I don't even know how many shops the resort has, but its ALOT. They range from convenience marts/souvenier shops, to Louie Voitton and everything in between. Unreal! We grabbed lunch at the Pronto Pickle (great lunch food!) and relaxed for a bit in our hotel room before deciding to venture off the hotel property. Thankfully, we chose to rent a car for our entire stay in Hawaii. It's a decision we are so happy we made and we definitely made use of it everyday.... We drove up the beach and watched some surfers for a while and then made a spur of the moment decision to hike Diamond Head Crater. It was still sprinkling off and on and overcast, but it made for perfect hiking conditions.

We made it!

Seriously, those views..... 

After our hike, we trekked it back to the hotel to shower up and get ready for a welcome reception sponsored by the ICBA. We were so exhausted by the end of the day that we ended up turning in really early after snuggling up watching the rest of 'Captain Phillips' in our hotel room!

Monday: Max had a few hours to put in right away at the morning for some trainings, so I leisurely made my way to the beach for a bit and then to one of the many pools on the resort just to relax and enjoy my coffee. I also managed to find my way to the Mandara Spa where I treated myself to a manicure and enjoyed learning lots of fun hawaiian traditions from my manicurist, a Honolulu local. She had a lot of interesting things to say including an old hawaiian tradition of being able to tell what the sex of your next baby will be depending on your youngest child's hairline. Crazy stuff, but it was definitely entertaining! :) I met up with Max shortly after and we hung out at the beach for a while, despite the fact that the weather was still not all that great. It was a little windy, but no rain so we were happy!

Stud :)

I think I could handle that job..... ;) Side note- I SO badly wanted to hop on one of those paddle boards, but my balance is so off when I'm pregnant that I"m pretty sure it would have been a disaster! 

Each of the pools on the resort were so different and unique!

Max discovered there was an Outback Steakhouse just up the street from us so guess where we had supper that night..... Yep. He is obsessed with the wings there and since he rarely gets them back home since there isn't a convenient location near us, I decided to let it fly and boy was he happy, happy, happy! After supper we went back to the resort and spent the evening at the Tapa Bar because they had live music playing and by then the weather was perfect for some outdoor drinks! Max tried his first 'mai-tai' and quickly became a fan of them! Perfect end to a great day!