Submarine Birthday Ball

The Submarine Birthday Ball was held at the Hawaiian Hilton Village this weekend. We had a wonderful time enjoying a formal evening out with not only the wardroom from the USS Louisville, but all the submarine officers and spouses stationed in Hawaii. The guys all looked so handsome in their dinner dress uniforms and all the spouses and girlfriends were beautiful! Notice Sam's new "chest candy"... the little gold pin above the medals are his "dolphins" indicating he is a fully qualified officer.

The USS Louisville wardroom! What a bunch of handsome (and goofy) men! We feel very blessed to be part of this wardroom. As I was taking this picture I was chatting with a friend of ours from power school who was jealous of how much fun the guys seemed to have together.

Before and after the ball we all hung out up in the Captain's suite with this amazing view of Waikiki and Diamond Head.

Dolphins!

Sam earned his "dolphins" last week! Which means he is a fully qualified submarine Junior Officer. His Captain and I "pinned" him Saturday night at the Submarine Birthday Ball. And Sam got to cut the cake for the ball because he was one of the two newest qualified officers.

(I'm not sure what happened to that cake cake cos I never got any.... haha!)

The new bedroom furniture

My mom's been bugging me to see pictures of our new bedroom furniture ;-) So here it is Mom! It is kind of hard to see I think in these pictures. It is dark brown and distressed. You can't really tell it's distressed in the pictures I don't think though. I think Sam's favorite part is the new matress. He has a much harder time getting out of bed now than usual because he is "so comfortable" :-)

Painting Project

When we got married we had generous families that gave us their old furniture so we wouldn't have to buy new bedroom furniture right away. I've always had an issue with our bedroom furniture because it didn't match since we got different pieces from different people. So I recently finally decided to paint it all one color and get new matching hardware. We were pleasantly surprised with how it turned out. Sam also took the opportunity to patch up some holes Bella chewed in our footboard when she was a puppy...

Now that we re-made our furniture so we like it... we bought a new bedroom suite... haha! That arrives this weekend so I'll post pictures then. So this is currently our guest room and will become my sister's room when she moves out to live with us. A step up from the aerobed I think;)

Spring Break!

Just when we thought we were too old for spring break...

I had two LOVELY weeks off from teaching. Yea... Hawaii spoils their teachers like that:) And Sam had 10 days of leave which is unheard of! We had our good friends from Charleston, SC, Art and Leanne visit us for a week which was a total blast! We also did some things around the house and painted all our bedroom furniture so that it matches now... yay!

Here's a pic of Art and Leanne in front of the famous Matsumato's Shave Ice on the North Shore. We waited in line for probably 45 minutes for this shave ice but it was amazing and worth the wait:)

We went to a luau while our friends were visiting which was pretty cool. My favorite part was getting to see them un-bury the Kalua Pig from the imu. They cook a pig in a whole in the ground surrounded by hot rocks. Then they shred it like BBQ and it is delicious!

Here's another picture of us at the luau. I discovered that I love Mai Tai's... so yummy!

We had heard such great things about Sunday brunch at the officer's club on the Kaneohe Bay Marine Corp Base that we took Art and Leanne and it was a-mazing! The food was delicious and the view was even better.

We also took a quick flight over to the Big Island one day to see the volcano. We found this gorgeous spot while driving along the coast and had to stop for a picture.

This is the four of us at the lava park watching the steam plumes as the lava hit the ocean. It was pretty neat as it started to get dark out cos you could see the orange glow of lava in the steam plumes.

We took a couple of hours to hike through the lava tubes in Volcano National Park while on the Big Island.

This is on the South Shore of Oahu while we were showing Art and Leanne around the island.

Another pic of the four of us at the South Shore.

And we did finally go see the Arizona Memorial. It was pretty amazing and heart wrenching.

And now it's back to work for both me and Sam tomorrow. Which means I should be getting to bed...