The Hapuna Prince Beach Resort

Here is the view from the lobby of our hotel of the pool and beach!

Pretty incredible isn't it?


There is nothing quite like having a vacation on the company dime. When I vacation, I am afraid that I try to go economy in the accommodations and activities. When the event planner at the Hartford plans a vacation there is nothing economy about it!


We stayed at the Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel on the Kohola Coast of the Big Island. For a virtual tour of the hotel, with much better pictures than we could have taken, click on the link.

Here is the entrance, and walkway up to the golf course and spa.

Our room was large and beautiful. It had optional shuttered doors on the balcony and front door so that we could enjoy the cross-flow if ocean air in the room too. Here is a picture of Flint and Isaac looking out over the balcony, ready for an afternoon at the beach. I admit that I took others that showed more of the view, but I'm a sucker for a close up of Isaac in his shades.



Isaac loved the pool, and charmed everyone with his giggles and Mr. cool glasses. In fact, after our trip to the pool, he enjoyed the ocean water too!



The beach was crystal blue, beautiful...

and perfect for snorkeling, boogie boarding,

and/or just gazing out on...

One of my favorite spots to watch the sunset was the lounge level just below the lobby. They had a little four man Hawaiian band and a hula dancer there every evening. If you look in the bottom right hand corner of the picture you'll see the dancer.


It was perfect! The music and dancer kept us, and most importantly Isaac, entranced while we looked out at the view of the sun setting over the ocean.

We were spoiled and pampered, and loved every minute of it!

The Beautiful Black Sand Beach of Punalu'u

This beautiful beach was one of our favorite spots on the Big Island. It was over on the Volcano National Park side of the island and the black lava rock has become an amazingly beautiful beach. The sand was not super fine (more like the size of coffee grinds) but it somehow felt cleaner that way.

Isaac liked digging his little toes into the sand, but wasn't quite sure what to think of the cold ocean water.

Since he was born in October, and it has been winter for most of his life, he has not spent much time outside; except when he was all bundled up for walks. (Here he is on one of our early Feb. walks.)

We were thinking that he was pretty lucky to be getting his first experience with ocean water in Hawaii. (On a black sand beach, no less.) But he felt differently!

He was not very happy with us at first; and he let us know. (I love his face in this family shot.)

Perhaps because the black sand provides a nice camouflage. This beach is a popular feeding and resting spot for Sea Turtles. We saw 4 or 5 during the hour or two that we spent there. We saw some when we went in with our snorkel gear, some near the shore feeding by the rocks, and this one just crawled up onto the sand to rest in the sun.

Isaac liked watching the turtles from Daddy's arms. Especially if he kept his feet out of the water.

From the lookout point on the rocks just below the beach we could see spray and occasional tails of the migrating whales. Isaac just has eyes for his daddy with the camera.

Hawaii is definitely an amazing and beautiful place. Stay tuned for more pictures and travel-log over the next couple of weeks.

(Since we were in Hawaii for 9 days, and have a digital camera with 2 GB of memory, we were not very selective in our picture taking (taking several shots of the same thing to make sure we at least got one good one). When we got home we realized that we had taken over 950 pictures during our trip! It has been quite a project to sort out/organize and trim down. Don't worry, it takes far too long to upload pictures to blogger for me to post more than just the highlights. ;)

Hawaii!!!

I haven't posted in ages because we just spent 9 days in Hawaii!

I am planning on posting lots of pictures and giving a details of our adventures, but I am afraid that once I am still trying to unpack, catch up on laundry (one more load still in the dryer)

... take care of a baby that is still adjusting to our time-zone and being home, and catch up on my calling/other responsibilities.

I hope to have an update for you soon.

Great in 8!

I love food! I love cooking, baking, barbecuing, crock-potting, steaming, sauteing ... good food. Or just reading through my cookbooks and dreaming about cooking, baking, barbecuing, crock-potting, steaming, sauteing ... good food.

I am slightly obsessed with it in fact. I am usually either thinking about making and eating something delicious, or thinking about how I can resist eating something delicious. Sometimes I even think that I can make something delicious, and then resist eating it. :) Since I seem to have a hard time resisting, I have always struggled with my weight.

Weight Watchers and exercise worked for me a few years ago, and I thougtht I had figured out the balance... (enough exercise and appropriate resisting)... Then I got a full time teaching job and all of the sudden my exerciseing became a little sparatic. Then I got married. Then Flint started working evenings, and it wasn't uncommon for us to eat dinner at 9:00-9:30 at night. By the time I got pregnant I am afraid that my sparatic exercise rutines had dissapeared. Then I had a baby (enough said). Finally, I bacame a ravanous nursing mother at about the same time "the holidays" hit.

Needless to say, by the time January came around, I needed to make some drastic changes. When I found out that the Relief Society was sponsoring a "Feel Great in 8" competition, I was excited to participate. Those of you that know me best, know that I am slightly competitive. It was just what I needed!

We earn points by keeping track of several "good choices", and deduct points for "bad choices". The great thing about it is, it's more than just a weight loss program. It is aimed at improving health (rewarding good foods, exercise, water drinking, and weight loss), spirituality (rewarding daily scripture study, and personal prayer) and service (rewarding the completion of assigned tasks). About 50 sisters in the ward signed up to participate; and teams of 4 are keeping track of points to see who can score the greatest improvements.


Here is what the form looks like.

Since I realize it is too small to read, here are the three sections:

First, the "Good Food List".
We can earn up to 10 points a day by eating food from this list.

Second, the "Activity" points

and "Daily Challenge" points.

(The "Daily Challenges" change each week.)

Notice how high the scripture reading and exercise points are.
Notice the no eating after 8:00 p.m. points!

Finally, the "Bad Food List".

We keep track of our individual points during the week and then report the total to our team captain. (This was extra motivation for me, since I let down my team if I cheat or get lazy.)
The truth is, I could find the loop holes that would let me eat poorly and still get the maximum number of points, but I have to remind myself when I start to rationalize bad food choices that I am trying to loose weight. ("Butter is not on the bad food list!", or "Since portion size doesn't count...")

I am proud to say that after the first 6 weeks, I had lost 16 lbs. and was the highest individual score. (Did I say I was competitive?) It has been a wonderful way for me to break old habits and reintroduce good habits. I make "dinner" at 2:00 or 3:00 now so that we can eat before Flint goes out on appointments. (No more 9:00 meals!) I haven't missed a single day of scripture reading! I even joined a gym and have started exercising again (I'm debating one of those "tracking" page elements to keep me motivated). I even made it through Valentine's Day without eating any Valentine's candy!

I admit, I was weak and had 4 "Bad food" items last week, (I did throw a baby shower with delicious food.) but I really think that I am on the right track, and plan to stay on that track, even after the 8 weeks end.

If I could somehow get rid of this food obsession I would really be in good shape!

Baby Shower

My sister-in-law Fawn is a master cake decorator. She actually sells the cakes that she makes and decorates. (Check out her new cake blog http://buttercream.wordpress.com/) When we lived in the same ward, she taught a series of cake decorating classes as enrichment activities. We learned how to split and fill a layered cake, how to make royal icing flowers, and (my favorite) how to use fondant. I really caught the bug when I got to go over to her house to "help her" with a cake project. Mostly, I got to watch her work and learn from the master. (Thanks Fawn!) Let me just tell you that it is harder than it looks to make it look like the pictures in the books, but it is a lot of fun trying.

Last Saturday Monica, Maren and I combined forces and threw a baby shower for someone in the ward who is expecting her first baby (a girl) in April. We decided to make it a "Little Princess" party, and I got to work looking for the perfect cake for the occasion. I looked through my books, and searched the Internet and decided to make a tufted pillow cake with a princess tierra or crown on top of it.

There was a pattern for a crown in one of my books, but it looked way too complicated and intricate. Plus, they wanted me to make it out of royal icing, which I think, is hard to work with.



I went on line found a couple great tierras that I could use as patterns. Here is the one I chose.


I enlarged the picture, printed it out, traced it onto parchment paper, taped the parchment onto an upside down 4 cup Pyrex measuring cup, and piped over the pattern in melted white chocolate. I worried that it wouldn't be strong enough to hold, but once the chocolate dried, it was solid and strong. And as Henry put it when he saw it, "Wow, That's beautiful!"




I made the cake from a Cake Mix Doctor book. It was an almond, cream cheese pound cake and filled it with a strawberry cream. I made and colored the marshmallow fondant ahead of time, and Michal helped me make the butter cream icing. Maren came over and we worked together, rolling out the fondant, putting it on the cake, quilting, painting and tufting, buttoning... and admiring. Like I said, it is harder than it looks to make it look like the pictures in the books, but it is a lot of fun trying. Here are a few pictures of our finished product.







The cake was definitely impressive, but you should have tasted the food! I made a craisin/feta/candied almond green salad with Trader Joe's raspberry dressing. Monica out
did herself with chicken salad sandwiches on mini croissants, feta/pine nut/baby spinach/pesto bow tie salad, and cream cheese toffee and citrus marshmallow dip for the fruit platter.

Everyone went home with warm harts, full bellies,

and a gift from the crown jewels.

Greek Steak Pitas with Cucumber Dill Sauce

There is a seemingly never-ending supply of delicious recipes in a Cooking Light Annual Cookbook, and I have two of them. Why is it that I get stuck rotating the same 10-15 basic meals over and over again. This week I decided that it was time to get a little more variety in our diet. I pulled down the 2004 edition, and in no time, found more recipes that I wanted to try than I had nights in the week to cook. Here is one of the recipes that I tried out. It was absolutely fabulous. So flavorful, fresh and tasty!!! It was so good that I thought that I would share it with you too!

Steak Marinade

• 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
• 1 tsp. dried oregano
• 1/2 tsp. black pepper
• 2 cloves minced garlic
• 1 lb. flank steak (or you can use the "carne asada" type thin sliced steak)

The lemon-juice marinade quickly penetrates the steak, so a 10-minute soak is enough to flavor the meat, but longer is OK too.

Sauce:

• 1/2 cup plain fat-free yogurt
• 2 tsp. chopped fresh dill (dry dill is OK, just use less of it)
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/4 tsp. black pepper
• 1 clove minced garlic
• 1/4 cup diced cucumber

Remaining Ingredients:

• pita
• lettuce
• tomato
• cucumber (I found some cute/tasty little Mediterranean cucumbers at Traders Joe's)
• crumbled feta cheese

Yum!!!!!!!!

No mater which kind of meat you decide to use, it will be delicious. Just be sure that you make plenty. I know I wished that I had had enough to go back for seconds!

Which Austen Heroine Are You?

Look what I found!

I guess I have more sense than sensibility,

or is it the other way around?

Take the Quiz here!