December Snippets

I have a feeling this post might be a little disconnected. You know how when you have so many things to talk about but dont really know where to start?.... thats how I feel right now. First off, clearly we started off our December advent with a bang, but as December progressed we fell victim to the holiday/family/finals crazies. We did do a few more activities that I'll post later, lets just say one involves a glimpse into Mckays possible alternative career if Chemical Engineering doesnt work out... intrigued? so stay tuned for that. And CHRISTMAS. oh. my. word. I feel overwhelmed just thinking about it. I am one spoiled little girl and me sneaky hubby really pulled a fast one on me. I'll have to do a whole post dedicated to my surprise-filled Christmas, because I am in love love love. But here's a little hint... the following photo has to do with my new toy. no its not the dog...maybe next year :)



I'm throwing in this family picture just for fun. It's a little funny....which Jacobs is photoshopped in?? can you tell?

Every December my family goes to stay in Salt Lake for the weekend. We usually go to the Choir's Christmas Concert, shop, eat and lounge around. This year we were missing Adam and Marty :( but we still had a fun time. We had Christmas brunch where we ate our weight in food and met the big man.

We also celebrated Nick's birthday at Benihana's. I cant believe my little brother is 15! and apparently those Benihana's chefs can seriously cook but they cant hold a camera still.... oh well :)

December was a crazy/hectic/fun filled month and its not over yet! We are having such a wonderful holiday season. We feel so blessed. We hope everyone is enjoying the break and having a wonderful holiday season as well!

dec. 7

because of school this week we had to throw in some quick and easy Christmas time fun. Mckay has been spending a lot of time doing homework, and i mean A LOT of time, as in if he's not at school he's doing homework. basically i feel like a widow, and the chemical engineering department has taken my husband :( So we havent had time to do much this week, in fact we're a little behind on our fun-tivities, we might need to start doubling up. but we made a much needed cup of hot chocolate, (ps why does it have to be sooo cold lately?) Mckays cup of choice: Chocolate mint truffle. Mine: pumpkin spice. No one makes a better hot chocolate than Stevens and I'm telling you if you havent tried the pumpkin spice, do, its life changing.

dec. 6

Mckay was so great and donated blood at the blood drive for Chris' eagle project. I couldn't donate but I did get my finger pricked, which I hear hurts more than the actual needle, so that must count for something right?

Dec. 5

This is probably our favorite Christmas tradition. Every year Mckay's mom plays the harp for the Salt Lake Children's Choir Christmas concert at the Cathedral Madeleine in Salt Lake. Those kids are so amazing and we loved that Cami and Taylor came with us. We even stopped at The Bakery for a late treat. such a fun night :)

Dec. 4

We made snowflakes, the kind you make in 1st grade where you fold a square of paper and just cut away. This was so fun, I loved how different they all turned out.

Dec. 3

We bought our tree the day after Thanksgiving, we just couldnt wait any longer. I love love love our tree this year, it's my favorite one we've had so far. It makes our house feel so festive and cozy, I turn the lights on first thing when I get home. If i had my way it would stay up till April. We have a few special ornaments that family members have brought back from trips. This little lovely came home with us from Kauaii and now lives happily on our tree branch. :)

Dec. 2

Day 2 - "Go to the Utah Valley Symphony Christmas Concert"
This was also a cheat, we found out the concert was on Wednesday so we did some switching and this was day 2 of our Christmas fun :) we are so lucky that papa Rytting conducts the symphony (major perks ;)) and they put on a wonderful concert

Advent Calendar day 1: Dec 1

So we filled our advent boxes with fun activities to do every day to celebrate the Christmas season. Like the rest of the world we are so so busy with school, work, and church callings that we hardly have time for anything else. This is a fun way to take a small break every day and spend some time together. Day 1 was "make a gingerbread house" we kind of cheated and put that one in for Dec. 1 cuz we knew we would be making gingerbread houses with some friends that night. This is what we came up with:




This was so much fun! and I'll be honest those sweet tarts did not last long at our house.

The Ryttings take on a craft

This craft/activity came about rather spontaneously. I was looking around for advent calenders and hadn't really liked what I saw. I saw this idea for a homemade one on the buzzings of a queen bee's blog. I loved this idea and told Mckay about it, he's usually enthusiastic about my craft ideas but he really jumped on board with this one. We had it nearly finished by the end of Thanksgiving break. It was so much fun especially with Husband helping me :) He did the more manly things like cutting the wood for a frame and spray painting the boxes. I realize spray painting isnt really a manly job but I was a little scared to use it and mess up everything, hence, its a manly job.

The idea for this is pretty simple. We bought paper mache boxes at Roberts, I had no idea what these were or if thats what they were really called but I found them at Roberts pretty quick. The boxes came in different sizes and shapes so we got twenty five boxes in different shapes, one for each day. These boxes can then be decorated however you want, which is the fun part. You attach the magnet to the back of the box, paint a piece of sheet metal with magnetic paint and fit the sheet onto a frame.

This picture should be at the bottom of the post cuz its one of the last things we did but oh well. Once we had finished with all the boxes for the calender we figured it would be hard to find a frame to fit the exact dimensions of the sheet metal, so we went to Home Depot, bought a piece of moulding and Mckay cut it into a frame.


The boxes we chose to use were the middle-ish size, there were some smaller which would have worked too but they didnt have the variety of shapes I wanted. We spray painted the bottoms of the boxes a cranberry red.

Then we layed out the boxes and arranged them how we wanted and covered the lids with Christmas scrapbook paper.

We bought a piece of sheet metal from Home Depot and cut it to size, we painted the frame and thats it! I love it, and I love even more that Mckay helped me with it :)

Turkey Trot etc.

This Thanksgiving we started a new tradition. My cousin Jamie helped put together a turkey trot on Thanksgiving morning. When she first asked us we kinda said no, waking up at 9 during the break did not sound like our kind of fun. Then she told us they were doing it to support cancer research and that all the runners would pay a fee to run the race and that money would go to the Huntsman Cancer Foundation. We both said yes. With Mckay's dad currently fighting cancer and my mom being a breast cancer survivor (and conqueror! :) this was something we thought was so important, and a way to show our love and support to our wonderful parents. It was a perfect morning to jog/walk and the site of the run couldnt have been better. If you run around the Timpanogos Temple grounds 4 times its 5K. We had such a good time. The experience was so meaningful to us, we will definitly be doing this next year.

Our family who joined in the fun, my wonderful parents, Aunt Shellie, Cousin Jeremy, Cousin Jamie.

This year was a Rytting year for Thanksgiving. We had such a fun time gathering with the Rytting clan! It's always fun when we get together, the food was great (I ve discovered I kinda like going to other peoples houses for Thanksgiving, it means no leftovers, which I love....a little too much, so I'm happy to say we really didnt over indulge....except on pie but that doesnt count) then we got to go to my parents house and play with our family for the rest of the night. Our family is feeling kinda small right now with Adam and Marty both out on missions. Thank you family for a wonderful Thanksgiving. Now... Its Christmas time! :)

This is a MANS breakfast...

I have this goal to become a domestic goddess/master chef :) I love cooking for my honey and for others, it's been so much fun finding and trying new recipes and learning new things. But I have this nasty little habit, I'm a food blog junkie. I have a substantial list of food blogs I check daily, and if i see a recipe I want to try, I print it off, which has led me to a 6 inch high stack of untried recipes. Its like a disease, I know, and Mckay thinks Im nuts. But sometimes I hit the jackpot and find some really yummy things. So I'm in the process of weeding through all these recipes, and depending on Mckays reaction they either get tossed or go in the black binder. To get put in the black binder means yep that recipe's a keeper and has a place in our Rytting Family Favorites :)

Im rereading this post and realizing that I sound pretty lame, but whatever. I made this recipe Saturday morning. It was cold, and Mckay had been helping some family move all morning, so this recipe came together, inspired by one of those many food blogs and it made us both happy campers. I didnt really measure anything so these are just estimates, but this recipe is pretty basic and hard to mess up

Breakfast Skillets
-inspired by fortheloveofcooking-recipes.blogspot.com

5 red potatoes cut into bite size pieces
1/2 C. Sausage cooked and crumbled- this is a guess
1/4 C green peppers diced
1/8-1/4 C. diced onion
eggs
garlic powder, salt, pepper, paprika, - sprinkle to taste

Boil the potatoes for about 10 minutes, till they're somewhat tender. Cook sausage in a skillet and drain on a paper plate. In the same skillet cook the potatoes on about medium heat, adding a little butter or olive oil. Season the potatoes with desired seasonings. After about 10 minutes the potatoes will start to get crispy, add the peppers and onions. Cook for another 10 minutes, reducing the heat if things start to burn. In a small skillet crack however many eggs you want. we had sunny side up by cracking the egg into the skillet, melting an icecube for a second and then pulling it out and putting the lid over. This steams the top of the egg and cooks it so you dont have to flip it. Srinkle egg with salt and pepper. Spoon some of the potatoes into a bowl, and slide the egg on top.

-- the thing I love about this recipe is you can add or take away whatever you want. You could add in any vegetables you want or have it with scrambled eggs instead, meat or not meat. This was so good and kept us full forever!

Sorry for those who might think these recipes are boring....but this is what happens when there's not much else to blog about :)

MTC and some Pumpkin Bread

Wednesday we dropped Marty off at the MTC, which means I now have as many brothers out in the mission field as I do at home. and I am one proud big sister :) and after the sending the third brother out on a mission it hasn't gotten any easier, although this MTC experience was a lot less drama. Rather than having the whole family watch that orientation type program and video and then have to watch all the sad mamas cry this time we just pulled up to the curb, dropped him off, hugged good bye, and that was it, sort of like a bandaid, a short painful goodbye rather than a long drawn out one. Marty will be serving in the Perth Australia mission, the land of NEMO! and boy are we excited for him. It's a little bittersweet because he'll miss Adam's homecoming by 5 short months. We are so proud of our missionaries and so grateful for the missionary program in the church!

This recipe for Pumpkin Bread is a Rytting staple during the fall. Lysa would send it to Mckay in the MTC and it would still be warm when he opened it. This is easy and really really good. It also makes two loaves so its a fun treat to share :) or not...

Pumpkin Bread

Lysa Rytting

3 cups sugar

1 cup vegetable oil

4 eggs

1 16 oz can pumpkin

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp cloves

3/4 tsp ginger

1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

31/2 cups flour

2 tsp baking soda

2 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

2/3 cup water

1 1/2 cups chocolate chips-optional :)

Blend sugar, oil, eggs, and pumpkin. Add spices. Mix together flour, soda, salt, and baking powder. Add to the moistened ingredients. Add water. Optional: add 3/4 cup chocolate chips per loaf. Bake at 350, 60-65 minutes. Makes two loaves. After it has baked, dust top with powdered sugar if you like. yay :)

Recent Wanderings and some Mexican Love...

Rock Climbing Adventure:

I meant to post these pictures awhile ago but never got around to it. Back in September we went rock climbing with Tara and Janson up big Cottonwood Canyon. It was so much fun! Me and Tara both doubted we would get to the top, but guess what... we did! and as a reward we got Pei Wei :) I hadn't really been climbing since high school so I was a little worried, actually a lot worried. Me and Mckay and never been real rock climbing, like outside, where if you fall you don't land on a springy padded floor. I am proud to say all four of us made it to the top, some more quickly than others...but thats okay. I also got to belay?? Mckay when he climbed, it was soo funny, they had to anchor me to a tree and he started coming down so fast that I actually lifted off the ground! But he did make it safely to the ground. We had so much fun and we cant wait to do it again sometime. Although, next time I probably wont wear running shorts, they didn't work so well with the harness...yikes.

HaLLoWeeN WeeKenD:

Halloween weekend we got to play here...

the famous Rytting cabin. I have heard about this cabin for 5 years and we finally got to go Halloween weekend. I originally thought it would be fun to go up for Halloween weekend because what could be spookier than watching scary movies in a cabin thats surrounded by trees and sort of in the middle of nowhere? So I was bummed when the scary movie we brought happened to be the funniest scary movie ever...we laughed more than anything. It's alright though, we had such a fun and relaxing weekend.

This is the river right outside the cabin. so beautiful

And now.. I couldnt end this post without a recipe and this one's a doosy. We've had this four different times in the last 5 days, once for breakfast even. okay that was just me. so I guess you could say this recipe was a success. I found it on one of the many food blogs I love reading, Im such a total food blog nerd but this just sounded so good and since we had almost all the ingredients at home already it was a definite weeknight dinner.

Chicken Fajitas from fortheloveofcooking.blogspot.com

3 Tbsp olive oil

1 Tbsp vinegar- (i think they meant white, we only had red wine and that worked great.)

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1/2 tsp chili powder, paprika, oregano, cumin, black pepper

1 tsp salt

1 lime, juiced

2 chicken breasts, sliced into think bite size pieces

1/2 sweet yellow onion, sliced thinly

1/4 yellow pepper and 1/4 red pepper thinly sliced (we used red and green)

combine all marinade incredients in a bag and mix thoroughly. Add chicken, onion and peppers. Marinate for 5-6 hours. Heat a skillet over medium high heat coated with cooking spray. Once the pan is HOT, add chicken, onions and peppers. Saute for about 7-8 minutes until the chicken is cooked through.

Cilantro and Lime Cole Slaw Salad: (this made the fajitas!)

2 cups of green cabbage shredded

2 tsp olive oil

1/2-1 lime juiced

1 Tbsp fresh cilantro, chopped

salt and pepper to taste and a dash of garlic powder

Make this salad right before you serve the tacos so it stays crunchy. Combine all ingredients until mixed thoroughly.

other ingredients ( i wish this would single space)

corn or flour tortillas ( we like flour but we had some small white corn tortillas left over from making dinner for the Ryttings and we thought this was extra good with the corn tortillas

cotija cheese-this is a must

sour cream, guacamole, Salsa

this seems kind of long, but really this recipe was sooo easy, Mckay even made them one night! and they were yumm.

mac and cheese

I've noticed a trend emerging in my posting, food.

Gramma Claire's Macaroni and Cheese
from Ruth's Diner in Salt Lake City

Ingredients:
3 cups uncooked macaroni noodles
1 cup diced onion
1/4 cup melted butter
1/4 cup flour
3 cups milk
2 bay leaves
1 tablespoon paprika
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
2 1/2 cups grated Cheddar
2 1/2 cups grated Monterey Jack
1 cup cottage cheese

topping:
1/4 cup melted butter
1/4 cup bread crumbs

Cook macaroni, drain do not rinse.

In a large saute pan, saute the onions in butter. Add the flour to make a roux and cook for 1 minute. Add the milk, bay leaves, paprika, salt and pepper. Bring to a simmer, stirring often. Mix the 2 cheeses together in a small bowl. Once the mixture is at a simmer, add 3 cups of cheese mixture and the cottage cheese. Stir well, remove from heat, and remove bay leaves from mixture. Add macaroni noodles to milk mixture, mix well.

Pour 1/2 of macaroni mixture into an 8 x 8 baking dish, cover with 1/2 of the remaining grated cheese, add remaining macaroni mixture and cover with the remaining grated cheese mixture.

In a small bowl mix together the topping ingredients and top the macaroni. Place into the oven and bake until golden brown, about 45 minutes.

*** Rytting's version- for the bread crumbs I used Panko and I ended up using closer to 1/2 cup. and I added some grated parmesan cheese in to the topping, cuz a little extra cheese is a good thing. The recipe says to cook it for 45 minutes. We like our pasta saucy so we cooked it for about 30 minutes to keep it from drying up and then turned the oven to broil to toast the crumb topping.
This is yum.

a little bit homesick...

.... that describes how I'm feeling, a little homesick and missing my sweet Paris. My little heart aches just thinking about it because some times I just miss it so, especially in the Fall. Sometimes certain sights and especially smells remind me of it. This is my favorite place in the entire world, and I had the best time there :) It's been 4 years since I live there, and sometimes it feels like I dreamed it. I cannot wait to go back there someday with my honey. But until then.... if anyone is going in the near future, just let me know, I 'll find a way to snuggle into your suitcase and you wont even know I'm there :) a little weird? i dont think so, just opportunistic.

The Best Cookies You Will Ever Have....

I would like to claim this recipe as my own, it's just too good to be true, and too good not to be shared :) I was going to do a little post tribute to my sweet Paris but that has been put on hold. These cookies are highly addictive, I can proudly say I ate 5 yesterday, lets just say these did not last long in our house. So here's the recipe in all its glory, if you try them let me know what you think ;)

AWARD WINNING CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES
~courtesy of allrecipes.com

INGREDIENTS
2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1 (3.4 ounce) package instant vanilla pudding mix
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
1-1/3 cups and 2 tablespoons chopped walnuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Sift together the flour and baking soda, set aside.
In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, and white sugar. Beat in the instant pudding mix until blended. Stir in the eggs and vanilla. Blend in the flour mixture. Finally, stir in the chocolate chips and nuts. Drop cookies by rounded spoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.
Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven. Edges should be golden brown.

**The Rytting version of this recipe called for a little less chocolate chips, and No nuts. We didn't have quite 2 cups of chocolate chips so we substituted for a little mini reeses goodness all chopped up and squished into the center before baking. This recipe makes 36 cookies, we will be doubling it next time :)

My New Love

 

 

 

Here are some snapshots of my new bike! This was my Christmas/Birthday present from my parents, Emily's parents, and Emily. This is basically the bike that I have been wanting for a few months. I've wanted a Felt for a few reasons. I didn't want a bike that a ton of other people had. I didn't really want a European bike because I feel more comfortable maintaining components that I am more familiar with. Basically, I wanted Shimano or SRAM, which are on American bikes. I wanted as much carbon fiber as possible, but I didn't want to pay a ton for it.

I'd been looking for a bike more seriously for the last two weeks or so and had seen some on ebay and in the classifieds that I liked, but never one that I could afford. I finally saw this bike on KSL just this last saturday. It was $200 over my budget, so I emailed the seller and asked if he would take what I could give. He said he could if I could throw in something to sweeten the deal. I knew he had an iPhone because it said so on his email, so I offered to jailbreak his iPhone and modify it to make it sweet. I also offered to do any leather work he wanted like rebinding scriptures or books or anything else he needed. Last, I offered to give him a tennis racket that I don't ever use but is still in really excellent shape. I got an email from him a few hours later saying that he would take my offer with the tennis racket!

I was so excited! Monday night, Emily and I made the trek up to North Ogden to try out the bike and possibly buy it. When he opened his garage, the first thing that I saw was a Cannondale Scalpel. The Scalpel is Cannondale's full-suspension cross-country racing mountain bike. His looked like a Scalpel 3, which is a $4000 bike. It was in perfect condition. It looked like it had been not just cared for meticulously, but maybe even obsessed over. This increased my confidence in buying a bike from him. The next thing I noticed was a LOTOJA sticker on his Jeep. The LOTOJA is a 206-mile bike ride that goes from Logan, UT to Jackson, WY. LOgan TO JAckson, hence, LOTOJA. I knew he was a serious rider, and I felt even more confident in the bike. Looking around his garage, everything was in order. Everything was clean. You could tell he took very good care of his things.

By this time I had seen the bike and it also looked like it was in excellent shape. It was clear that he took very good care of it. There were very few scratches and the whole bike was immaculately clean. I took it out for a ride around the cul-de-sac. It was perfect. Everything was so smooth. The brakes, the shifters, the crank, everything was super-responsive and smooth. I knew that this was the bike for me. We bought it and as we drove away I just stared at it in the rear-view mirror and couldn't believe I had gotten such a great bike! For those of you in the know, this is the setup I have:

Felt F55

Aluminum frame with carbon seatstays and fork

Shimano Dura-Ace shifters

Shimano Dura-Ace derailleurs

Shimano Dura-Ace brakes

FSA ISIS Drive Bottom Bracket

FSA Carbon Pro two-ring crank (175 mm)

Shimano Dura-Ace 10-speed cassette and chain

Velomax Vista SL wheels

Vittoria Rubino Slick tires

Felt carbon fiber seatpost and seat, Al stem and bar

Aheadset integrated headset

Wellgo M3 pedals (clipless-SPD. Bought for the mountain bike but am using them on both bikes for now)

The bike weighs 16.5 pounds

He also left the wireless computer attached to the bike and I am trying to figure out how to use it right now. I'm going to try to figure out how to upload rides I take from my phone to the blog, and I'll keep you posted on that! Until then, I hope you can all help Emily cope with losing me to a new love.

lately we've been eating LOTS and LOTS of......

SaLsA! I have made three batches of this salsa in the last two weeks. big batches, and we can't seem to get enough. Mckay is pretty picky about his salsa, so I've never really dared make it but I finally took advantage of my coworkers vegetable bounty and made some homemade salsa, and we haven't been able to stop eating it. The wonderful thing about this salsa is you can totally customize it to they way you like it. I thought I would post about this since we've been gourging ourselves on this yumminess all week long and we thought we would share :)

8 medium tomatoes, or about 12 roma tomatoes
1 salsa pepper, or jalepeno pepper, (you can do more or less depending on how spicy you want it, we use 1 whole pepper but I take out about half the seeds so it's about medium hotness)
1/2-1 med-large white onion (we use 1/2 or so)
1/2-1 green bell pepper
handful of cilantro
salt, pepper to taste
few drops of tabasco-completely optional
1 clove garlic - (I ve used 1 to 1 1/2)
juice of one lime

so thats it, pretty simple, its up here for anyone to enjoy :) every time I make it its a little different, this is basically impossible to mess up. And depending on how chunky you want it just chop the veggies till the size that you like, Mckay likes his saucy so we throw everything chopped into the blender and hit puree! but you could leave it chunky and it would probably be just as delicious!

UnMoTiVaTeD.

Have you ever been so unmotivated to finish something that you actually seek out distractions for yourself. This is the predicament I am currently in. school. poop. I'm over it. With four classes left, four I really don't care to do, I'm starting to stuggle with self motivation. So I whine to Mckay, A LOT. I dream of other things I would so much rather be doing than homework. and I've just come up with the brilliant and stubborn idea of not doing homework, just sitting back and enjoying the lecture, or not enjoying the lecture, and just seeing how it will turn out. So distractions...often come in the form of food. Within the last hour I have made a cucumber salad, unsatisfied I scoured our pathetic looking fridge and pantry, only one chicken ramen left, that just will not do. I settled on tuna with crackers, and was left even more unsatisfied since we had no sweet pickle relish, a must with tuna and crackers. I'm destined to be unhappy until tonights trip to the gym promises a sconecutter's reeses shake, somewhat unproductive I know, I would get the same results just sitting at home. but have you had a sconecutters reeses shake?!? If not you should, there's a delightful surprise of reeses goodness at the bottom. So here I am, sending my grumpy thoughts into the empty void that is the world wide web. Instead of my paper on the role of creation in Maya theology, but come on, who really cares?!? and Harry Potter 5 is sitting inches away, open and tempting me. oh what to do.....

Kauai

This post is loaded with pictures, I had such a hard time choosing, I am just so fully obsessed with this trip. In August we felt utterly spoiled when after only a short week home from our California and Texas adventures we were off again on another family vacation, this time with the Rytting fam. Neither of us had been to Hawaii, it always seemed like this far away land of delight, way too out of reach for us students. We felt so grateful and incredibly blessed to be able to go on this vacation with our Rytting family. I'll try not to fill this post with too much text, I could go on and on but I will never be able to do it justice.

This was taken along a 4 mile hike we took along the coast of the island. The views....were incredible.

This little lovely was what we got to enjoy at the end of the hike, a secluded beach that was completely divine.

We ate lunch at the beach....uncrustables. They were better then I could have hoped. :)

Fish Hut: a delicious lunch of Mahi Mahi and Ono, even better shave ice. They call it shave ice in Kauai.

One day we all went to the farmers market. We drank from a coconut, and bought sugarcane and local fruits, our favorites: apple bananas, and white pineapple. Quite DeLiCIouS!

Ahh... PuKa DoGs. What a wonderful discovery. What is a puka dog? A hoagie bun, jammed on a metal spear looking thing that makes a delightfully toasty tunnel, into which they squirt a sauce of garlic and lemon, a relish of your choice: coconut, pineapple, papaya, mango, etc., and lilikoi mustard if your heart desires, and a hot dog. Heaven in a bun.

We took a trip to the other side of the island to Weimea Canyon. This is a few we found at the top. We couldn't tell where the water ended and the clouds started. It was simply amazing.

Our last meal in Kauai. We went to a Saimin house. Saimin is basically ramen, but with extra goodies in it like green onions and ham and things. and fish cake, don't ask me what that is but it's florescent pink and a little scary. We loved the Saimin, and totally stood out as the only white folks in the place. Pretty authentic.

We Loved this island and cannot wait to go back. It was truly heaven. :)