November, Thanksgiving, and Gavin's 27th Birthday

November started with the cutest tea party at my friend Ashley's house for her birthday. We all wore cute dresses while eating bread and salads. We spent more time twirling under the sunset than eating. But hey let a girl do what she wants.  

 We both knew we would be working on Thanksgiving so making a feast that day was out of the question. I really wanted to have all my favorite homemade recipes. So we decided to have Thanksgiving on Monday when we were both off. We would prep and bake all day Sunday while we set up our tree and watched some Christmas movies. We were really looking forward to this. Unfortunately, we were wrapped into going to Elf the Musical which was cute but had some really cringe acting. On our way home Tony started overheating. We had to pull over and let him sit the rest of the night to cool off. Thank goodness a member of my ward was in Lihue and helped us get home. We came home around 9pm and were too tired to do anything. Which means the next day we did everything! 

We worked together from the start of dawn baking, cleaning, and putting up the Christmas tree! While we listened to tunes and had movies playing in the background. By 6 pm we had the holiday spirit in our house. Outside our landlord's boyfriend's daughter (Jessica) decked the house out with Christmas decor. We had a blow-up Santa and Frosty in the garage. Sparkly candy canes lined along the fence. And silver star in the middle of the house that shoots out scented bubbles that smelt like pines. Along with a whole lot of bright colorful flashy lights on every other inch of the roof and gutter. The holidays had officially started! We had the fire going on our TV and a feast to eat. We made sausage stuffing, mac and cheese, sweet potatoes, Rhodes rolls, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, and gravy along with a Costco pumpkin pie. We were in heaven. We invited Savannah over to eat with us. After dinner, we were so full we decided to start a Christmas movie on the couch. Gavin and I were seriously so full we didn't have the energy to do anything else. We were in a serious food coma we passed out on the couch a few minutes into the movie Home Alone.I must have been in such a deep sleep because I don't even remember when I fell asleep during the movie. All I know is I could hardly open my eyes when the credits started rolling. I felt so bad for Savannah that we totally left her hanging.

We feasted on our leftovers all week long. It honestly was a really fun Thanksgiving I didn't even mind working on Thanksgiving day later that week. Gavin, I sat in the cafeteria that afternoon eating watery potatoes, cold stuffing, and not-so-good turkey under the fluorescent lights. Because we work at The Sheraton we decided that we wouldn't let our work schedule keep us from doing any of the fun holiday traditions that we like. If one of us works on a holiday we will pick a different day that month to celebrate. It's worked out great. We haven't been stressed about missing out on anything because we celebrate in the way we want when we can! I did go over to a Friendsgiving for dessert after work on Thanksgiving with a bunch of our couple of friends. Poor Gavin got stuck at the hotel. The restaurants ran out of turkey and Thanksgiving food they ended up stealing the employee cafeteria food to feed the guests... I think that caused a lot of problems. 

November ended with Gavin's 27th Birthday! Gavin had to work on his birthday so I made sure I had special lunch for him in the cafeteria. I had a friend drop it off right before. We had some Poke, soda, and snacks. That night we were both so sugared out from our Thanksgiving fest we had bean dip for cake and played games. We of course celebrated Gavin all weekend long. One of his mission friends came to town so we went on a hike in Waimea Canyon and ended the birthday weekend with pizza and golfing. But Gavin turned 27 and I couldn't love a man more. He is everything good and brings so much happiness into my life. My life wouldn't be the same without him. Cheers to 27 years of living and many more to come. 

AUSTRALIA

I got an email one day from Jetstar saying that my flight credit from 2020 was going to expire. I was tickled when I saw this! We jumped on the computer right then and booked tickets to Australia! We decided to stay in Sydney to explore everything we could about the land down under. 

Our first stop after navigating our way through the city was Pad Thai! Afterward, we enjoyed the lights from Darling Harbor and ice cream in Japan town. Pretty much the whole city shuts down at 6pm. One thing we were not expecting was the chilly weather. We assumed it would be hot because it was their summer. But rookie mistake! We spent hours our first night searching for pants with no luck. we only lucked out with sweet ice cream deals!  

The next day was our Sydney City day! We visited cathedrals, shopped around malls, and even took a boat ride around Sydney Harbor.  We loved seeing the Opera house from the water. Different parts of Sydney are easier to access by ferry rather than car. So to get around to different parts we rode on these huge farries.

That afternoon we went to Bondi Beach which is a small beach town in Sydney. We rode the public bus and loved how easy it was to tap on and off of the buses. With Google Maps traveling in foreign countries is much easier. We are sure spoiled by our beaches on Kauai we didn't even bother getting in the water. Also, the water was also FREEZING cold. Everyone was wearing thick wet suits in the water.  Everyone in the water had wet suits on. We were not brave enough to get in without one. Instead, we walked along the coastal path to see the infinity pools that are along the coast. The path was packed with people who were talking away from our experience. People were stopping on the path to take pictures of what looked like garbage. There was a jumble of silver trashcans all stuck together and some graffiti on the rocks.  We saw odd-shaped pole's and rusty items. As we walked further down we were stopped by someone asking if we wanted to donate to the artist fund. This is when we found out that the trash we were looking at was actually art... We felt bad but we really didn't see anything cool about the rubbish that was made into art. 

We poked around some shops before heading back into the city for some pizza! We ended the night with watching the sunset over the opera house. 

The next morning we got up bright and early to drive up to the Blue Mountains for our abseiling adventure. We were not prepared at all for this experience. We pulled up with a few minutes to spare and decided to grab some breakfast at the grocery store. From the 2-hour drive and freezing cold air we had to pee the second our feet touched the ground. We ran into Woolsworth which is bar the coldest grocery story I have ever been in. We were sprinting around trying to find the bathroom. Once we found the bathroom and ate some muffins we realized were not prepared to go on an 8-hour adventure through freezing cold water... I was a bit worried. We checked in and I was just in my bathing suit and swimsuit cover-up skit. Gavin just had a t-shirt on and board shorts. Because we thought they were going to provide us with a wet suit and gear. We were not ready for this morning's dry land abseiling experience. Luckily I brought my pants otherwise I would have been just in my swimsuit bottoms. I was definitely nervous about how I was going to make it the rest of the day in the cold weather. And I was really worried about jumping into cold water.   

We found some fleece that was supposed to be worn under our wet suits when it was time but instead we threw those puppies on right away. The sun did end up coming out and we had a great time abseiling. We were definitely glad we booked the afternoon half because the morning half was a little disappointing. The view was pretty but it's not like Australia is known for its amazing mountains. We did however have a real fun time chatting with the other people on the tour. All of them were from other parts of Aus out vacationing for their holiday. 

That afternoon after lunch we geared up for our water absaling adventure. We had one other person in the group with us who was every quiet I kept forgetting he was there. I choose to put on all my layers to keep me warm in the 50-degree water. I had my fleece thermals, 5mm wet suit, hat, booties, and a raincoat. I was feeling good! 

We went through this slot canyon making our way down by jumping into the cold water. And walking through slots. When I first jumped in the water my breath was literally taken away. It was so cold but we had an amazing time canyoneering. This was my first ever doing something like so I was all for it. We ended with a huge waterfall descend. 

We stopped at the Three Sisters Look Out on our way back down to the city.

The next morning we got up bright and early again so could see both the north and south sides of Sydney. Our first stop was Dharawal National Park where we went on a short hike to this beautiful lookout that overlooked the coast. It looks nice and sunny in the pic but there was a freezing cold breeze coming from the ocean that was hitting me in the bone.  

On our way to the lookout, we saw a sign for Symbio Wild Life National Park . We got there right when it opened at 9:30. We paid a bit extra for food so we could feed the kangaroos. We ran there first because it was in the back of the park. A trick I learned from my mom. As we quickly walked we saw the koalas moving and the cutest Wallabies. We were so glad we fed the kangaroos first because we had the whole place to ourselves. We had about 20 kangaroos to choose from and they all loved us. Once were finished we saw a school group of about 100 kids coming in along with other groups. By the time we left all Roo's were in the don't bother me zones. 

The meerkats and kolas were some of our favorite animals to see. We stayed for the animal show and loved every second of it. The gals giving the presentation had the thickest accent it didn't even sound like they were speaking English. 

After enjoying the rest of the park we found some yummy lunch before heading up to Ku'gai'ring National Park! We stopped by the Syden temple on our way! We did a short hike to the American Bay hiking trail. We were the only ones there! The Australian hikes are very different than Hawaii. They have very large lizards on the trail and snakes! Thankfully we didn't see any.  

We wanted to do more hikes after this national park so we headed to Royal National Park! We enjoyed hanging off this rock! We had to do some serious searching to find this place. Gavin was flying his drone over the side of the mountain and we were bush-wacking. We wanted to find the hanging rock and we did! The hike was supposed to go to the lighthouse but we thought the hanging rock was much more fun! 

On our way back to Sydney we stopped at a local pizza place. It looked like a family business to us. We saw the dad passionately tossing the dough and carefully making homemade sauces. The daughters were on the register, pizza toppings, and dishes. We couldn't help but just stare at what was happening the whole time. We felt bad because I think they knew we couldn't stop watching them. When our food came we ate away when I came across a long hair in the pizza. The father of the business saw me pull it out and I felt so bad. That was the last piece of the pizza and we didn't want him making a whole other one when we would only eat 1 or 2 pieces. Hair happens and we didn't want to make him feel bad. He gave us a generous discount when we checked out. Not a bad day. 

We spent our last day in Sydney looking at the Opera House, riding the Ferry to Manly, and eating all the gelato we could. Sydney surprised us by a long shot. We had so much fun running around this beautiful city, eating the most delicious food, and seeing another part of the world!