Random Hodge Podge

Well, my head cold has almost completely resolved. Ugh, I don't like being sick. A couple days into my cold, I decided I was going to put a stop to the dry air in the house and invested in this...

...a Crane Humidifier. It's wonderful! Thanks to Amazon Prime, I was able to order it online {in between naps and nose blows} and it showed up on our doorstep two days later and we didn't have to pay for shipping :) This thing has been running non-stop {well, actually only when we are home} since it arrived and I can tell the difference. Not only am I breathing better, but my skin isn't so dry! I love it! And you can't beat free shipping!

The weather here is really weird. Just this past Sunday it rained and rained and rained and rained. And at times, the sky down right opened up and poured. Needless to say our snow is almost gone. Ryan and I both were able to get off work a little early yesterday and it was 55 degrees outside. We took advantage of the nice weather and went for a long walk and got lots of fresh air. When we got home, I promptly fell asleep in a sunbeam {I was in heaven. I now can relate to our cats and my parent's dog Sophie. I'd sleep in a sunbeam all the time if I could!} We get tons of sunlight through our front room and those sunbeams can get pretty warm. But the warm weather was short lived, there's a cold front moving in and the weatherman reports that it is bringing snow :(

In other news, work is going fine - frustrating at times, but fine. I can't wait until I'm not the low man on the totem pole. I'm getting pretty tired of poop flowing downhill, if you know what I mean. *Sigh* *deep breath* Just a few more months and I'll be a "mid-level" resident instead of a lowly intern.

Sorry for the boring post, but not much is new around here - just sleeping and working and sleeping and working :)

~Ashley

For Valentine's, Cupid Brought Me....

....a raging head cold :(

I hope everyone had a good Valentine's Day! I spent a majority of the afternoon sleeping and blowing my nose. My poor nose is SO incredibly raw. Thank goodness for Puffs Plus Lotion and for a husband who makes me chicken noodle soup! Even though I sanitize my hands multiple, multiple times a day in addition to washing with soap and water, a little virus successfully attacked me! Hopefully I'm on the mend.

~Ashley

Our Kauai Digs

For vacation, Ryan and I found a place to stay through homeaway.com. We ended up renting a condo in the Princeville area. The location was good but the price was even better. We ended up paying for seven nights what people will pay for 2-3 nights at a hotel. It was nice to have a kitchen at the condo so we didn't have to eat out for every meal every day {that would have broke the bank!}. Here are a few pictures of the place we stayed.

This is the view from the bedroom.

bedroom view - see our nice red jeep?

It was such a fun, little vehicle to rent!

View of the bedroom.

View from the bedroom into the living room. The wall behind the TV in the entryway and just to the right of the french doors was the dining room and kitchen area which I managed not to get pictures of {likely because I was taking these pictures as we were packing to leave and the dining room and kitchen were a mess!}.

I have other views of the outside of the building, put they are on Ryan's computer which is being occupied at this time. I'll definitely be booking my never vacation living arrangements on homeaway.com again!

~Ashley

Somethings wrong with Ryan's shoe

While on vacation, Ryan had a little mishap with his shoe. It happened the evening we were checking out the parking situation for Tunnel's Beach. We parked the car, walked through the sand to see the beach and then left to get dinner. While we were in the resturant parking lot, Ryan was standing there with a weird look on his face. When I asked what was wrong, he told me he figured out why he was walking weird. {I hadn't even known there was a problem but apparently there was.} Well, something happened and Ryan lost the entire bottom of one of his sandals - ha!

Now, Ryan HATES to spend money on footwear. He normally finds the cheapest pair he can and then he is set. I don't understand why. I think good footwear is an investment, especially if you are going to be on your feet all day. Since we were planning on going hiking within the next couple days of this event, I told Ryan that we had to get him a pair of nice, new sandals that would likely last a long time. I told him he was getting a pair of Keen sandals and he just about had a stroke thinking about paying more than $20. I told him getting a cheap-o pair of sandal from wal-mart was not an option. So, check out his new sandals!

A little upgrade from his bottom-less sandal, that's for sure!

~Ashley

Let there be heat!

Recently, we installed a new thermostat that was "internet programmable" {ohhhh.....ahhhhh.... :)}. One that we could control the temp from apps on our cellphone. When we were in Hawaii, we could check in and see what the temp of our house was. Before we left for vacation, you turned the heat down to save on energy. When we got back from vacation, the thermostat didn't seem to be working right. I'd keep turning it up but the house was still cold.

Yesterday, when I got home from work, the house was freezing {and not to mention I was super tired}. I turned on my heated blanket, jumped into bed and went to bed after talking to Ryan about thinking that this new internet-programmable thermostat was on the brink. I fell asleep in now time and Ryan continued to figure out what was wrong with the heat. He came into the bedroom and woke me up by saying "I think there is a big problem." To tell you the truth, it actually scared the you-know-what out of me because I woke, Ryan was looking at me and then I heard "big problem."

Well, turns out there was something wrong with the fan on the furnace and it wasn't the thermostat. Our house at this point was 58-60 degrees. {Brrr!} We have a small space heater that Ryan turned on for me in the bedroom but I was worried about the rest of the house. Ryan ran to the store to by a bigger space heater and we left our gas fireplace running all night. We were able to keep the house warm until a repair man was able to come this afternoon. I'm glad it was a fixable problem and that we didn't have to purchase an entire new furnace! The house is now nice and warm again!


~Ashley

The Best Part of Vacation....

is coming home?!?

We had 8 to 10 inches of heavy wet snow in our driveway, not to mention even more at the end of the driveway where the plow went through. Our snow blower has never been fantastic and it did not manage to exceed my expectations when we got home either. Ryan and I ended up shoveling all 8 to 10+ inches of heavy snow by hand. There was no pushing this stuff. Shovel full by shovel full we managed to clear the driveway. {It was during this time that I really missed living back in Minnesota, where our neighbors with snow blowers that worked would take care of us in situations like this instead of stopping at the property line. *sigh*}

There were two little kiddos who I did miss while we were gone and who were very happy to see us...

We left an extra suitcase out while we were gone because we know Zoey likes to sleep on top of them.

Cooper still hangs out on the back of the couch...wrecking my couch cushions one by one - ha!

It is good to be home regardless of the snow and endless hours of work that I'll face on a weekly basis until my next vacation in June :) We had such a fantastic time. I would recommend Kauai to everyone :)

~Ashley

Our Last Day in Kauai

Yesterday was our last day of vacation. We had a full day to occupy as our flight didn't leave until 9:30pm and our check-out time was 10:00am. Since both of us had gotten way too sun in the past few days, we needed activities to do where we could stay out of the sun. We drove around the island, taking a bunch of different roads that we hadn't previously been on. This island is so pretty!

We did stop by a blowhole as well, which I managed to not take a picture of {our camera was packed up in the luggage and my cellphone was charging in the car}.  The blowhole was on the southwest side of the island and this part of the island is gorgeous. If I ever owned a piece of ocean front property, it was be on Kauai's south to southwest side.

We ate lunch in outside at an authentic Mexican restaurant...

We did a little touristy shopping and laughed at this...

After all of this, we went to the local cinema and saw the movie Man on a Ledge which actually turned out being better than either of us expected. After the movie ended, we still had a couple hours before the rental car had to be back/checking in for our flight home. We drove around and pulled off at a little beach park. We sat on a brick wall overlooking the ocean/lighthouse and were accompanied by some wildlife :)

Do you see him?

A HUGE sea turtle! This guy was massively huge. There were other smaller ones as well but this huge one got really close - right under our feet as we sat on the wall.

The view of the ocean and lighthouse.

One thing we noticed while in Kauai, we could see the moon at almost any time of the day.

After being at the beach park for a while, we said goodbye to the ocean and went to the airport :( to start our long journey back to Omaha. As the plane took off and we said bye to Kauai, I felt like I had tears building up {goodbye to warm weather, goodbye to sleeping in, goodbye to hanging out with Ryan all day and hello 80 hour work weeks :(}. Neither Ryan nor I slept much on our flight from Kauai to LA as there was a little traveler in the seat behind me that screamed at the top of her lungs for a majority of the flight. That and when she wasn't screaming and crying, she was kicking the back of my seat until her mom would make her stop and then she would start crying again - ha! The joys of traveling with children huh?! The next two {shorter} flights {from LA to Denver and Denver to Omaha} Ryan and I slept and I think it was likely from outright exhaustion :)

~Ashley

Getting Up Close and Personal with Wildlife

What a day! What a day! We woke up at 5am, drove to the other side of the island and hopped aboard a charter boat for a day on the ocean. We went from the south part of the island all the way around the west side and up to the Na'pali Coast on the north side. I was really windy. I wore sweatpants and a fleece packet over my swimsuit for nearly the entire ride - ha! Even though we smeared the sunscreen on pretty darn thick, we still got too much sun. We are going to sleep like little kids tonight after all the fresh air we got. Ready for some pictures? Here they come.

Our first humpback whale sighting of the day.

There, that's a little better. The island in the background is Ni'ihau which is a private island owner by the Hawaiian Robinson family and they do not allow tourists {although they did allow some scenes from Jurassic Park to be filmed there}.

View of the west coast of Kauai. The fields to the left are growing corn. The mountains in the background are those of Waimea Canyon.

These whales were so close to us! It was an unbelievable experience.

Two for the price of one!
We learned that the underside of a whales tail {the white in the above picture} is their finger print; no two are alike!

This is actually just one whale - from blow hole to tail.

Another view of Kauai's west coast.

This is a Navy base on the north west part of the island. The beach is called Barking Sands beach and it is actually 15 miles long. The sand is coated with silica and therefore when water runs over it, it sounds like the sand is barking.

This picture is just to give perspective at just how close we got to these humpback whales.

These humpback whales are huge. This is only one whale in this picture again. I guess they can be upwards of 45 feet long!

This is the beginning of the Na'pali coast. Up top is a military/NASA establishment.

We ran into a pack of bottlenose dolphins. These next pictures are straight out of the camera - no zooming in. This dolphins were right up next to the boat!!

This is the first thing we saw and knew we were in for some wildlife!

Bottlenose Dolphins!! Look at how close the got to us and how blue to ocean water is!

These dolphins were everywhere!

Last year when I was on the Big Island, we took a boat trip and went through a pack of Spinner Dolphins but Ryan wasn't with and he's never been able to see dolphins up close so I was so happy that we were able to see them today! It was awesome!! After the dolphins left, the crew on the boat informed us that they had been seeing a humpback and her young calf in the vicinity for about the past week. Shortly after that, the little calf literally came and swam right along the side of the boat - the side of the boat that we happened to be standing on. You'll have to take my word for it, because these pictures didn't turn out, but the whale was literally within inches to feet of us! It was incredible!

The baby humpback is right under these waves.

The babe was so close. Note the shadow on the water from the boat. Literally right under foot.
{I'm sure this kids mom had a couple words with him - ha!}

Momma humpback was not far away.

Now onto the Na'pali Coast. I must say that I was kind of disappointed when I looked at these pictures tonight. I didn't realize at the time that I had sea spray all over the camera lens for a vast majority of these pictures! It was so stinkin' bright out there that it was even hard to see anything other than the outline of the Na'pali Coast.

This valley is where they filmed a large portion of Jurassic Park. {Disregard all the water spots.}

The sun was soooo bright!

The Na'pali Coast. It's even more beautiful in person.

After we turned around and started heading back down the coast to the port, we came across a momma humpback and her calf. They were so close to us that the captain just shut off the boat's engine so we could sit and watch them. According to the crew, the calf was less than a week old. For a majority of the time, the mom was nursing her baby so she stayed close to the surface. When these baby humpbacks are first born, they can gain 100-150 lbs per DAY in the first few weeks! The baby hadn't learned how to come up for air yet, so we saw the mom pushing the babe up to the surface every so often. The baby was also learning how to use it's fins as well. It was so cool to be so close to these huge animals. This was literally a once in a lifetime experience.

Mom and baby!

Baby is testing out it's {his? hers?} fins.

Big momma humpback whale.

Baby whale tail.

The babe is coming up for air.

Look ma! No hands!

This little baby humpback was about 10 feet long. You can almost see the entire baby in this picture.

Mom is pushing baby up for air as the baby is trying to figure out how to coordinate movements.

Baby fin!

Goodbye.

 And are you ready for the grand finale of this Mom/Baby humpback whale encounter? Here it is!

Believe it or not, this trip actually does get better from here. Our next wildlife adventure was a Hawaiian Monk Seal. I can't believe we got a chance to see another one.

We did make a pit stop to snorkel.  We were planning on actually scuba diving but Ryan unfortunately has a sinus infection and we didn't think a sinus infection and the pressure from scuba diving would mix very well. We snorkeled for all of about 10-15 minutes before going back to the boat. The water was pretty rough and although there was a lot of coral to look at, there weren't too many fish. Oh well. It was fun to get out and swim in the ocean though.

Our self portrait prior to going swimming.

As we were almost back to part, the captain came over the loud speaker to inform us that their appeared to be a "heat run" taking place. Apparently a heat run is where the male whales run after the female whale who is in heat and in the process make a lot of ruckus. After the announcement of the heat run, they started playing Bay Company's Feel Like Makin' Love song - ha!

Making lots of ruckus in the water to draw attention to himself.

Three males after a female.

This is a none-zoomed-in picture just to put things into perspective regarding how close we were to these guys!

Ok, here's another grand finale photo op :)

How awesome is this picture!

All-in-all is was a fantastic day! I'm not wanting to leave for home tomorrow considering Omaha is getting a bunch of snow right now :( I'm sure we'll have a driveway full of snow by the time we get home.

~Ashley