Wow. My blog juices have not bee flowing and I couldn’t decide how/if I wanted to do it because the full recap seems so daunting! Luckily, the scenery in Hawaii is pretty nice so my pictures hopefully make up for lack of coherency. I should be asleep right now but I blame jet lag and chocolate for the fact that I’m awake!

Our first stop off the plane was a farmer’s market. I had a chicken taco, and we shared flour less chocolate cake in a jar for dessert.

The fun thing about Kauai is that there are wild chickens EVERYWHERE; they have chickens like we have squirrels.

While there, we stayed at a condo with this view:

Our first full day there I started off the morning with a hot and humid 3 mile run with my dad. Then, we visited a coffee plantation and took a tour, learning about the coffee growing and making process.

There were 22 types of coffee to sample after the tour. I had a few sips of the caffeinated coffees before retreating to the safety of decaf. I could actually tell the difference between blends! Hawaiian coffee seems to be a little bit lighter than some of the other high quality coffee’s I’ve had (read: less strong). I ordered an iced decaf latte for the full experience.

I’m not sure if I mentioned this before, but we took this trip with my sister’s fiancé’s family, as a joint vacation. Her fiancé and his brother are crazy athletic—they ran down the side of the road from the coffee place to lunch just for fun.

For lunch, I had a basic chicken salad with parmesan and papaya seed dressing.

After lunch we stopped at Auntie Lilikoi for some passion fruit products, and I had a Lilikoi (passionfruit) cheesecake ice cream bar.

Outside we found this family of wild chickens:

Our final stop of the day was Waimea Canyon. It is truly incredible. I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon, so I can’t compare, but I can’t imagine anything grander than what I saw.

Dinner was vegetable pho on the way back.

The next day was my little WIAW post.

At this point, the days are blurring together so I’ll just share some noteworthy moments.

Nike Training Club app workout with my father.

Friendly geese.

Homemade dinner: chicken and my new fav salad: papaya, papaya seed dressing, parmesan.

 

Horseback riding. I had a naughty horse with lots of personality who kept trying to eat the bushes! Highlights of this ride: the scenery, the baby wild hogs, and the kitty in the barn.

We went out for a nice dinner that night with everyone.

Many of us started out with a cocktail. Mine had champagne, lemon, and pineapple puree. This wasn’t mine, but look how pretty!

For my entree I got an avocado salad and split roasted vegetables with my mom. Both were excellent.

There were lots of cool desserts—you can’t really see it here but our chocolate torte is on fire!

New Year’s Eve morning started with a Crossfit workout at Kilauea Crossfit again. It was Fran: 21-15-9 thrusters and pull ups. We started out with PVC Fran to warm up, which is Fran with a PVC pipe (presses in place of pull ups). The strength was back squats, working to a heavy set of 5. I guess I haven’t done that much equating lately because my legs are still sore!

Afterwards, we made a final trip to the beach. I read my book—I have a nice book shaped sunburn on my legs.

For lunch, we stopped at a roadside food truck that advertised local fare. My mom and I split a chicken lau lau (chicken wrap in taro and banana leaves. Normally lau lau is pork, so it was cool to try!

The purple stuff is loin. It’s made from taro leaf. I like to eat it topped with sugar (which is NOT traditional), but they didn’t have any. Normally it is eaten with Lomi Lomi salmon, which is on the right. That’s sort of like salsa or pico de gallo with chunks of salmon added.

For the night, we ordered a bunch of pizzas from the pizza place essentially right outside our door. They had a gluten free crust which was exciting!

After eating, we broke out the fireworks are firecrackers. This was a new to me experience because they were always illegal where I’ve lived.

We then toasted the new year (at 10pm—midnight in CA) with blubbery champagne (the blueberry was super subtle).

January 1st was ROSE BOWL DAY!!!! It was also the day we were leaving which created some complications.We found a sports bar near the airport that supposedly had 9 TVs, and we arrived 10 minutes before kickoff only to find that that sports bar was out of business. Luckily we spotted a cafe across the street with TVs, and they kindly turned on the game for us. A bonus? The food was really good too!

My mom and I both had caprese salads and split the most amazing sweet potato fries.

For dessert, we all shared a flour less chocolate cake.

The game was AMAZING. We started out right away with a touchdown, and before we knew it it was 35-0. Stanford is so freaking underrated so this was fantastic to see. Because no one bothers to watch us, McCaffrey (our insane runningback) didn’t get a much deserved Heisman. Hopefully this dominant performance will give us some more attention!

At halftime, we raced to the airport and got through security as fast as possible. As it turns out, we were able to watch the game from our ESPN apps on our phones will going through security and checking in. Once through, we settled at a restaurant to watch until nearly the end.

SO MUCH STANFORD PRIDE RIGHT NOW. A Rosebowl win to start my Stanford career and a Rosebowl win to end it. Here are some throwbacks from Rosebowl 2013:

Ok, now I ACTUALLY need to go to bed!