Sorry for the long pause...I was on my honeymoon!

Actually, I'm still on my honeymoon...and have been for the past twenty years!

Look at those cute kids at the Salt Lake Temple on August 20, 1988!

And there they are again, on August 11, 2008!

And here they are a few days later, celebrating their 20th anniversary in Hawaii!

(Twenty years...ten addresses...two kids...four beagles...and one brain tumor later.)


This hug at Hanauma Bay is courtesy of my mom, who not only gave us the trip, but also came to our house and watched the kids while we were gone.

We spent our first night as classic tourists in Waikiki. Since Texas is five hours ahead of Hawaii, we were able to wake up, walk the beach, and eat breakfast before heading up to Diamond Head to watch the sunrise.

(Photography just doesn't do it justice.)

Then we were off to Laie, to immerse ourselves in the island experience at the Polynesian Cultural Center. (It was like Epcot Center for Polynesia!)


Here we are with our tour guide, "Rock":

And here I am, at a demonstration of Maori New Zealand (Aotearoa):

It's not the most flattering picture, but I like it because I'm imitating their distinctive quivering hands while dancing, which they do to represent that they are full of the life force. It was definitely blog-worthy!


After a fun day and a monster feast of seafood and fruit (no pig, thank you -- gimme Omega 3's and antioxidants) and a spectacular Horizons pageant, we spent the night on the north side of Oahu, at the beautiful Turtle Bay Resort.


We spent the morning walking the beach, and then got some toes-up time with some good books on the balcony of our room:

And then we headed back to Laie to check out the BYU-Hawaii campus and thank the bookstore manager for having my book on their shelves...


...and to spend a couple of hours inside the "Taj Mahal of the Pacific": the Laie Temple, which to us is the most peaceful of all the peaceful places in Hawaii. We headed back to Waikiki and played in the ocean. We also tried to have another toes-up moment with a book on the balcony, but this time I was sixteen floors up so it wasn't quite as relaxing. (Cancer hasn't cured my acrophobia yet!)

So we opted for some other forms of relaxation: 1) shopping and 2) good Japanese food. My husband served his mission in Tokyo, and loved being around so many Japanese people and getting reacquainted with the language.

(I figured eating rice with chopsticks made for another reassuring neuro test.)

We spent our last day checking out more sights, including Pearl Harbor and Queen Emma's Summer Palace (could not resist that one, since our daughter's name is Emma) and having the ultimate schmaltzy tourist's lunch at the Cheeseburger in Paradise restaurant. (After four days of fish and fruit, I splurged on a burger topped with a huge slab of grilled pineapple and sliced avocado.)

One eight-hour flight later, we were back home being greeted by a hand-made welcome sign from the kids. It was a long enough trip to enjoy some solitude, but short enough to get home just as we started to miss them.

A taste of paradise to celebrate a twenty-year down payment on forever...