I'm baaaack!!!

Hello everyone! I am officially returning to the land of blogging. I am happy to report that the wedding on April 14 was absolutely beautiful (at least from my point of view). The weather was gorgeous, the site was gorgeous, my husband was gorgeous... you get the picture. And speaking of pictures, I will be posting some, but there are something around 800 wedding photos to go through, so it might be a while. In the meantime, I do have a few photos from our honeymoon that I am ready to share. We left for Oahu two weeks ago today (much cheaper to fly on a Tuesday, and we really needed that resting time between the wedding and our trip to rest and pack). What a beautiful part of the world! We were greeted at the plane with beautiful, fragrant leis:

I went into the bathroom immediately after receiving my lei, and heard a voice from a nearby stall, "I smell a bride! Is there a bride in the bathroom?" Although I knew that meant she could smell the fragrance of plumeria wafting from my direction, in retrospect, that is a really awkward question to be asking in a public bathroom! Our hotel was in Waikiki, across the street from the actual beach. After having dinner at the local Hard Rock Cafe (what can I say? I'm in love with their Haystack Chicken Salad!), we wandered along the beach:

Gorgeous, right? We walked around for a bit, then settled in and watched the sun set. It was so relaxing. And yes, very romantic. The next morning, we headed to Pearl Harbor. We were up bright and early to make sure that we got tickets. Turns out, we didn't need to be up quite so early, because it wasn't all that crowded. Pearl Harbor is really a beautiful place. In some ways, that makes the horror of what happened on that December day all the more stark in my mind. It must have been so tranquil until the drones of the Japanese attack planes filled the air. We watched a short film about the attack, walked through several exhibits about what was going during that time period and what led to the Japanese decision to bomb Pearl Harbor, and rode the boat out to the Arizona Memorial. We chose not to pay to see any of the other museums.

From Pearl Harbor, we drove into downtown Honolulu. We visited 'Iolani Palace, where I got a fabulous, up-close view of the Queen's Quilt. No photos allowed, but I did buy a small book lots of detailed information about the crazy quilt. We also wandered around Chinatown, buying our lunch from a stall in one of the open markets. A little grotty, but quite tasty! One of the places that we walked by was the State Supreme Court. Does anyone else start humming the theme to Hawaii 5-O when they see this?

We finished our first day with a short scenic drive up Tantalus Drive. It was an amazing, tropical drive up the mountainside, topped with a beautiful view of the valley and Diamond Head Crater. A good first full day of our honeymoon. Well, that's about it for today. I realize that I've missed both the WIPocalypse and the TUSAL updates for April. Since very little stitching was done, I think I'll just save what little updating I have for May's regular days for updating. I started a new project yesterday (new project for a new marriage, that's my rationalization). I'm going to be working on La-D-Da's "Spot the Cat" for the next little while. I don't have a job right now, so I'm focusing on trying to put our house in order. There are boxes everywhere. The kitchen is almost completely arranged, but that's the only room that's close to done (unless you count the downstairs half bath, which I don't). And my poor craft room is jammed full of boxes. I need to get it at least half sorted out so that I can do some scrapbooking this weekend in honor of National Scrapbooking Day! We'll see if that happens. Til next time, happy creating, everyone!