Photo Shoot and Renewing of Vows or The Cyclist goes 7 Days Without a Bike Ride and Contracts an STD

Last week Megan and i were luck enough to have been invited to go to Kauai while Cousin Long John Leather Couch and his wife Lindsey renewed their wedding vows. He only invited the people he really, really likes.

It was a simple and elegant service performed on the beach.
John works at the Hyatt at Lake Tahoe, so it made sense for us to stay at the Hyatt in Hawaii.

We had all of the employee benefits without having to do any work while we were there.

We were there for a week and the service only took 10 minutes so we had lots of time to kill laying around drinking Lava Flows.

This time of year it can be rainy and on the north end of the island, one of the days, they got 23 inches of rain in one day. I guess that is a lot. We tried to go for a hike to a beach and then up to a pretty waterfall. Lindsey was quite literally a wet blanket and had the trail not been so muddy, at mile 3, she would have sat down in the middle of the trail and refused to go any further. Since the trail was muddy, she eventually stopped and just stood there until she convinced everybody else that the waterfall wasn't really that pretty and we should just turn around. See how happy she is once we decided to turn around. I can't figure out why John wanted to renew his vows to her.

Instead we went and found some surfboards and hung out on the beach for a while. See, Lindsay can't even surf. What does he see in her?

Here is a picture of me jumping out of a tasty barrel.

Megan Paddle surfing in a hurricane Luke being a jerk and making fun of Bunny because she is pregnant.

Megan had a great time doing the ziplines.

The other thing John wanted to accomplish while we were there was to get a few pictures for his portfolio. He is looking to do some more male modeling and was looking for some swimsuit shots.

We tried to fly home sunday night at 9:50 but the plane broke. At 2 AM, we finally checked in to a hotel. We set an alarm to wake up at 4 AM hawaii time so we could call megans mom at 7 AM Utah time and let her know that we would not be coming home and she would have the kids for another day. I guess being stuck another day in Hawaii is better than being stuck for and extra day in North Carolina.Megan taking it easy on our extra day

When we finally got home, i had some inflammation, irritation and infection in a very sensitive part of the body. I was examined by a doctor and told that i have a very painful case of Otitis Externa. Thanks Hawaii, I owe you one.

And now for some interesting educational facts about Kauai:

Years ago, polynesians came to pick sugarcane and brought chickens with them as a food source and for fighting. A hurricane hit the islands in 1992 knocking over cages and freeing many of the chickens and roosters. On kauai, there are no natural predators so these fighting cocks roam the island at will and start crowing at 4 AM. It takes an average of 21 days for a chicken egg to hatch so you can see that in a short time with no predators and only one KFC, there are a lot of chickens.

All but one company producing sugarcane on the islands has stopped and there is no more commercial pineapple growing being done in Hawaii anymore. They can both be grown cheaper in South America. Now the land is either being built on or being used for GMO corn. The locals are very excited about all of the chemicals being pumped into the land and water. THere are still a few small pineapple fields that sell their fruit at farmers markets, but most of the pineapple that you buy in stores today is grown in Ecuador.

A picture of an old sugarcane processing factory that is now converting to corn production.

Halloween '09

This year the girls were out of school on friday so they had the festivities on thursday, then we had trick or treating at my work on friday afternoon followed by a neighborhood party that night and then the real holiday on saturday.
3 days worth of halloween this year.
In years past we have enforced a limit to how much candy they can actually keep and do what they want with, and the rest goes back to work with me.
This year we decided to let them have as much as they want after explaining to them the advantage of moderation in thins like sweets.
After eating more than their share of sugar for three days straight, we thought they would be sick of it.
in the middle of the night, we were awakened to the sound of #1 throwing up all over her bed and then all the way down the hall. She did actually get a few drops into the toilet, but most of it was in her bed.
Luckily for megan we have these.
There was some arguing and some yelling(we tend to do that when we are woken up in the middle of the night to clean up vomit) mostly about how #1 was old enough to know when enough was enough and she wouldn't have thrown up if she didn't eat so much candy.
We finally got back to bed, but were awakened 2 more times by the sound of someone vomitting (luckily into her throw up bowl at this point)
The next morning there was some more yelling about eating too much candy.
It wasn't until her fever of 103 that we figured it might not be the candy.
She was officially diagnosed with the swine flu that afternoon.
The rest of the kids fell like dominos, one after the other.
It is amazing the difference in kids when they are sick.
Some get nicer than usual, some get meaner.
here are pictures before we became a sick ward for the week.