I'm joining in on Lauren's fill in the blank friday again, I tend to get around to it on saturday mornings however...

1. If I didn't have to work anymore I would

Travel the globe and write a vegan travel book.

Have a clean house.

2. My favorite thing about a vacation is

Seeing and learning things that never occurred to me before.

Low stress, and equal parts high fun and high relaxation.

3. When packing for a trip I

Lay all of my clothes out on the floor in outfits (shoes, underwear and jewelry even), and have them there for about a week, unable to decide which ones I actually want to take. Of course, this always makes for an incredibly exciting playground for my dogs and then I usually end up doing an extra load of laundry. Oh, and I seem to take too much, I'm indecisive.

4. If I could go on a road trip with anyone (dead OR alive) I would choose

All of my closest friends! A road trip with a celebrity would probably make me want to kill myself, so that seems like a poor choice.

Because...

I already know that I like you guys!

And we would go...

Well, I recently heard about this guy who walked around the world. My response to that was that he couldn't have walked the entire way unless he was on a treadmill on the boat or plane that was carrying him overseas. Or unless he 'walked around the world' just walking around one of the poles. Regardless, if he can walk around the world, then we can have a road trip to anywhere, so lets hit up a bit of europe, shall we?

5. My top 3 absolute travel essentials are

My camera

Pen and Paper

and books or magazines or ipod...something to entertain me a little

6. Vacations are

Amazing. Can you imagine if there was no such thing? I imagine that as a dark, industrial, jail sort of world. Ick. Bring me the sunny beaches with palm trees, I need my vacations!

7. On vacation you must always

Try new things

Splurge a little somewhere

Venture off the beaten path

Not be afraid to be a tourist

Relax

And eat :)

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And now for a few pictures from a personal favorite vacay.

Stillwater Date

We've decided, for date nights, to dedicate a night to a town.  We've lived around this area for most of our lives and have never walked around Stillwater before.  I know, I know.  That is almost a sin.  So we decided to fix that!

Stillwater is such a cool little town, and we didn't even venture off of the main road.  It has quirky little new shops, candy and ice cream shops, old antique shops, bookstores and a co-op that we didn't know about (that was especially exciting)!

The buildings are all old and beautiful and many of them are covered in vines.

If I'm ever feeling in the mood to spend too much money on beautiful fabric, I'll head on over to Darn Knit.

This was just in a window of an antique shop!

This was all in some stationary/ribbon/ice cream/pastry shop.

At the Christmas store.  I want to head back there in a few months!

We used our Co-op gift card (a bridal shower gift from my boss) for some smoothies and a couple groceries.

These smoothies were a blackberry speck disaster in our teeth afterwards.

Ya, I don't know.

Do you see something strange in this picture?

Here, I'll zoom in.  Is this something for luck?  Or what?

Our purchases from the co-op, some random gift store and a spice store.

Yes, that says Minnesalsa!

Then we ate at The Kitchen.

It was a pretty place to sit in the back of the restaraunt.  Despite the huge spider on our table.

And the food wasn't bad.  Not an ideal restaraunt for vegetarians however.

The next time we go, I want to hit up this tiny little jewelry shop that looks like a castle and Malachi wants to check out the caves.  Alot of the stores were closing at the end of our walk, so we missed out on a few.  Anyways, it was an exceptionally fun night and I hope the next towns we explore treat us just as well!

Honeymooners - Part 2...Oahu

When we went to Oahu, Malachi had reserved us tickets for a Luau at the Polynesian Cultural Center on the north side of the island.

But we got there early and walked all around and watched some demonstrations and shows.

Then we decided to rest and wait for the Luau to start.  So we sat on a bench by the river and watched the canoe tours go by.  And then on one of them, we noticed a guy standing up in the canoe.  And who was it?

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Jonny!  And Alyssa and his parents!

It was so random.

So anyways, we went to the Luau and somehow got treated to 'Ambassador' seating up at the front.

And then we went to a show called "Ha".  Which was not nearly as cool as Ulalena, and a bit long, but still pretty neat and entertaining.  But out of this giant theater with seating for probably a thousand people...4 rows behind us (with no one in between)....

What are the odds?  It was really funny.  I love small-world stuff like that!

Some fire stuff during the show (my favorite part)

The cast

Eating at Dukes (the picture pretty much says that)

On our ferry boat out to the submarine (a highlight of our trip)

On the last day, we did alot before our flight.

We hiked Diamondhead.  Which is nowhere near as much hiking as the Kauai hike, but its like hiking in the desert, up a million stairs.  So it was a bit exhausting even though it was so short!

Some of the stairs, but at least this part was indoors!

Malachi, cheating death, at Diamondhead.

The view from the top (Waikiki)

After the hike, we went Kayaking.  And yes, my water nerves actually got to me a little with this adventure, and that was disappointing for me, I like to kayak :( 

But I was able to do a little mind over matter when we got out of the freaky deep clear ocean water and into the polluted murky river water.  I know that seems backwards, but it's the truth!

And last but not least, we tried ourselves some Poi.

Here we go!

Ya, it tastes like a dirty ground up bitter weed.

Well, that was our honeymoon!  It was marvelous and I miss our entire Hawaii experience and probably always will!  When can we all go on vacation again!?!