it's the little things ...

... drawing hearts in the sand.

... clean dogs.

... chicken noodle soup for dinner.

... drinking tea in bed while reading a book.

... a cheeseburger on a friday night.

... waking up to a dusting of snow.

... old books.

... candles.

... valentine's day. so soon!

... wearing uggs to work. (don't judge me. my classroom is actually 55 degrees)

... clean laundry.

... super bowl parties.

... president's day weekend. 3 days off, baby!

... reading books over charlie's shoulder. (he hates it).

... daydreaming about an unbroken table.

... pottery barn catalogs.

... buying cakemix in hopes of making cupcakes.

this weekend i will be:

... reading, studying, & doing lots of homework

... making a jeopardy game.

... watching a movie.

... drinking two cups of coffee in the morning.

... not waking up at 6 am.

... cleaning our house.

... thinking about Valentine's Day.

... grocery shopping.

... getting ready for some visitors this week.

... "watching" the superbowl with some friends.

... praying for snow (lots of snow) monday.

... walking the dogs.

... not grading a single paper.

(photo credit)

this was exactly what i needed

i have a confession to make, i've been an emotional mess lately.

on sunday night i had a total meltdown about everything. my job, school, our dirty house, everything.

luckily, i married someone who has the ability to calm me down when i'm completely freaking out.

hawaii was wonderful. seriously. but i also had a lot of free, alone time, and used that to freak out about everything that i needed to get done but couldn't because i was in the middle of the pacific ocean. i couldn't get my book for school before leaving (even though i went to the bookstore twice and charlie went once) and so i couldn't do any of the work for my class. totally frustrating. i also was thinking about work. i did get some papers graded on the beach, which helped a lot, but still ...

monday was rough. i haven't been sleeping and after traveling all night and then trying to get ready for the week ahead i was so, so tired. the thing is, i'm usually not this much of a head case. i've never had problems sleeping, ever. i've slept through a thunderstorm, in a tent, with my sleeping bag in 3 inches of water.

last night charlie and i climbed into bed early, with tea, and books, and henry snuggled between us. it was perfect. must do that more often. have i mentioned i love our quilt?

tuesday was better than monday and wednesday's looking even better. i've calmed down a bit, gotten a ton of work done and charlie's picking my book up for my at the bookstore today. (5th trip. a little ridiculous, no?) he's awesome. really, really awesome. i should bake him a cake or something. or cook him a steak. dudes, like meat.

oh, i miss this!

holy vog, batman!

vog.

what a weird word.

apparently it's what the hawaiians call the pollution from the volcanoes.

vog = volcano + smog. who knew?

let me tell you there is A LOT of vog on the big island.

our second day in hawaii i dragged charlie (or he dragged me) out of bed at 5 am to start the 2 hour drive over to hawaii volcanoes national park.

first of all, i had no idea this island was so empty. aside from a cattle ranch, some coffee farms, and a tiny bit of tourism there's not much here.

oh, there is a military training camp in the middle of the island. with no signs. seeing armed tanks come out of no where can definitely scare the crap out of you.

anyway, volcanoes.

there is a lot of pollution. sulfur dioxide to be exact. stuff that is not good for your lungs, or old people, or pregnant people. luckily charlie's not pregnant.

a lot of the park was closed because the air quality was so bad.

we ended up doing a 4.5 mile hike into and across the Kilauea Iki crater.

this is the view from the top of the crater.

the huge plume is a sulfur dioxide vent that recently opened up. there are two open in the park right now. see how hazy it is?

you can sort of see the trail that goes across the crater.

it's not really a trail. just where people have broken up the lava rock from walking on it.

first we hiked through some rainforest down to the bottom of the crater.

there were a lot of cracks.

and i was wearing a sweatshirt because when we started out the temperature was in the 50s. and i had no pants.

plant growing on the lava rock.

looking across the crater.

we didn't spend a lot of time in the park. we just did our hike as quickly as possible and then left. i figured the less sulfur dioxide we breathed in, the better.

besides, the beach was calling us.

kahalu'u beach

yeah, hawaiians aren't so fond of us mainlanders.

we had fun anyway, staying out of everyone's way.

our second day in kona, we woke up pretty refreshed.

12 hours of sleep will do that to you.

we got some coffee {love} and breakfast, wandered around kona some more, then rented some snorkeling gear and headed to the beach for the rest of the day.

this is (according to the sign) hawaii's first church.

now the coolest thing about this church is that there are huge windows along the side. only, they're not really windows, just holes in the building. because kona's weather is so awesome and it almost never rains there, a lot of the buildings are like that.

since i hate air conditioning i liked kona a lot.

we drove down to kahalu'u beach, which is just a public beach a few miles from the town of kona. this was the view half way through the drive. not bad, eh?

the beach.

charlie was looking for whales.

there are a bunch of humpbacks off the coast. they come down to hawaii for calving season.

some very nice man took this of us.

we snorkeled. and looked super cool while doing it.

we saw a bunch of tropical fish, green sea turtles, and charlie saw an octopus.

and of course, we played with the camera a lot.

charlie claims he wasn't posing for this one .... not sure if i believe him. :)

aloha ipo

{hello lover}

i've always felt that hawaii is my lover.

the mountains, the beach, the desert, the rainforest + perfect weather = love.

we flew into kona, got a rental car, dropped our bags off at the hotel and left immediately to wander around.

kona is awesome. it's little, cute & you can walk to everything.

i loved it immediately.

it was sort of late when we got there (and we weren't used to the time difference) so we wandered around for a bit ...

this kitten wasn't too sure what to think of us.

we watched the sun set...

and then headed over to this sweet spot for some dinner.

crabcakes for charlie (please notice his fruity drink in the background)

and fish tacos for me. they were amazing.

after dinner (at 7 pm) we went back to our hotel, where we slept for 12 hours with the windows open. it's worth coming to hawaii just to get some sleep like that.