We Bought a Mac!

Yes, our household did get another computer, and that’s just one of the many things that have been going on since the last time either one of us posted 2 months ago. I’d like to say I was writing this blog post on our new Mac, but Cindy’s using it. :)

Although the weather hasn’t been summerlike for most of this year, we’ve almost been too busy to really notice. I won’t even begin to mention everything that’s happened lately, but I’ve been working a second job that has really started to pay off now.  In what little free time we’ve had outside of that, we had to leave town twice for a family emergency, had one closer to home, went downtown to see the fireworks at Grant Park, and went to the 2nd annual Chicago Blackhawks convention at the Hyatt. I wasn’t kidding, busy, busy, busy.

On top of all of that, I managed to find time to launch a new website, Maui by Photo. If you know how much we love Maui, you’ll certainly want to check it out.

Upcoming Stuff
We have sort of a little break right now, but we’re hoping things will pick up again shortly.  Cindy’s birthday is in 2 weeks, so we figuring out what we wanna do for that (I’ll let her fill you in).  After that, we’re targeting a trip to Maui in September for the Maui Photo Festival and Workshops. It’s a 4-day event, but the super low rate on the rooms at the Hyatt are available up to 3 days before and 3 days after, so we’re going to try and stretch it out into a longer trip.  It will be great if we can meet up with some of the folks we met last time, and if airfare dropped a little bit more, we’d be all set.

We’re hoping to have that booked in about 2 weeks, so be sure to see a post here with us kicking our heels in excitement (at least figuratively).

The good news with that trip is that we’ll be spending another anniversary (our 6th) on Maui.  The first anniversary we celebrated there was in ‘07, and there isn’t a better place we’d want to be for it.

More Stuff
After our September trip to Maui, we want to go back to Door County for at least 4 days (more if possible) sometime in October when the leaves are changing their colors in full force. On the getaway front, we’re also trying to save for a trip back to the Door in December as well.  As we learned last winter, there really isn’t much to do when it’s that cold outside and half of the peninsula is the closed, but also as we learned, that’s the point.

I’m also on a new kick to get back to selling my photos again. That’s part of the reason we’re trying to go to the photo festival in September and why I’ve been starting to look into some of the local arts shows in the area. I’ll need to carve out more time to make all that happen, but from what I’ve seen so far, it won’t make me rich but it is definitely doable.

New Blog, Someday
Back to the new website, Maui by Photo, for a second. That was my first blog/website created with WordPress, which is totally awesome.  This blog, and my other existing blogs, are all managed with Blogger, which has it’s pros and cons.  At some point (soon I hope) I’m hoping to migrate over my Maui blog over to WP because it’s getting too big for Blogger, and I want to move this blog over so that I can … well, make it look much better using one of the awesome templates out there.  All I need now is time.

That’s about it for now, since I have other work to do.  Sorry for a lot of text without any photos, but one of us will get back into the habit of blogging here and sharing photos, too.

Thanks,
- Kris

A Quick Update

Just wanted to post a quick mid-week update. Cindy and I were invited to the Wolves game last Sunday by her aunt and uncle, who won a suite at the Allstate Arena for a game. It was against the Rockford Ice Hogs, which is the AHL affiliate for the Blackhawks, so we were torn. Actually, we weren't because we were routing for Rockford (sorry guys). They ended up winning in an 8-round shootout, which was the first shootout we have seen like. That was cool.

I tried my best to take photos with my new camera, but we almost directly behind the goal, so I had the protective netting above the class to content with. I managed to sneak over to one of the adjacent sections for the 2nd period and tried to get some good photos. I'll be posting them over on Flickr and blogging at photonelly.com sometime this week.

Travel plans are coming along, and we're hoping to have good news on our next Maui trip in the coming weeks. Sooner than that, we're heading out to South Bend, IN to visit one of Cindy's friends and looking to spend another weekend in Door County, WI the first week of December. More details as things get closer.

Aside from that, just working through the week and trying to play catch-up with a lot of little things in my spare time (like blogging).

That's all for now.

Mahalo.

Hockey's Back, More Door County, and Closer to Maui

Aloha,

It's only been a few weeks since we came back from Door County and my last post here, but it seems like forever. It has been a very crazy and stressful last few weeks for me, but it looks like it's starting to calm down again, even if only for a little bit.

Hockey's Back
Cindy and I are so excited that it's hockey season once again, and routing for the Blackhawks this season is getting rather popular. Cindy and mom are still bummed about the Savard thing, though. It seems like it was a difficult choice to say the least, but if it truly is what's best for the team, we'll be happy when they're winning.

We all went to our first Hawks game this season, and it was a blast. It was a Buy One Get One offer, so the seats were up in the 300s at the United Center, yet surprisingly they were great seats. Too high up for my camera, but from a fans perspective, you could see everything. They ended up getting their first win of the season, beating Phoenix 4-1 in a exciting and physical battle. We have Wolves tickets with Cindy's aunt and uncle for the 26th, and then it's back to looking for Hawks tickets.

More Door County

I mentioned it's only been a few weeks since Door County, but with all the stress and chaos going on in our lives right now, we're ready to get away again.  Right now, we're thinking the first week of December for a Thursday-Sunday trip, and looking to stay in either Fish Creek or Ephriam this time.  We'll probably start looking next week, and maybe take a peak at what the weather is historically like in early December (read "how much snow").  It will be fun to get away again, and hopefully I won't have to spend my mornings working this time. It will also be easier to find something now that we have a good idea of where everything is now.

Closer to Maui

We'll, it's just about 4 months until we leave for our next planned Maui trip, and we're getting pretty anxious to be back on the warm sands of Ka'anapali.  We had a good talk with my aunt earlier in the week (at the hockey game of all places) about using their timeshare in West Maui for our trip.  At first, we brushed off the idea of not staying at the Sheraton again this year, but after some discussion and the fact that it would save us tons of money, we reconsidered.  We hoping to find out today more details about the timeshare and what the availability looks like for the two weeks we want to be in Maui.

That said, we could have our lodging booked this weekend!!!  I've been watching airfare with Kayak and it seems to be fluxating just a little, but if that ends up being the most expensive part of our booking, than I'll be pretty darn happy.

Well, that's the short and sweet of it right now, without all the crazy stuff going on.  As mentioned, I'm hoping to have good news on the Maui trip, so if you hear me screaming for joy, you know why. :)

Mahalo,

Kris

One week left

This time next week, we'll be soaring high in the sky, somewhere between the west coast and the Hawaiian islands. Needless to say, we're excited.

Getting the last finishing touches and shopping in so we can start packing. As you'd expect, after a long, cold winter here in Chicago and a wet and damp start to spring, its finally starting to warm up just as we're about to leave. I'm actually sitting outside on our balcony on my laptop, and to my joy, the Dell XPS laptop I bought two months ago have a brighten screen to be used outside in bright sunlight. Sweet!

Part of me thinks this upcoming week is going to drag on, but I do think it's going to fly by and the days are just going to fly off the calendar until that long, exhausting (although well worth it) direct flight to Kahului. We should know by about Wednesday what our budget is going to look like for our trip, which will be a good indication of how many additional things we'll be able to do outside of what we've booked and paid for already. I don't see us spending too much extra as we've done in the past, but you never know.

Most of my energy (from a blogging perspective) will be focused on our Ka'anapali Dreamin' blog, as I keep track of our day-to-day activities like I did last year. In fact, I'll probably go back through last year's posts just to get a feel for what I'd like to keep the same or do differently. Either way, its going to be a blast.

Snow and Holiday Shopping

That's what pretty much filled up our weekend. We had the first official snowfall here in the Chicagoland area, and what other to celebrate (I guess) that going out holiday shopping? Kidding aside, we did get quite a bit of our shopping done this weekend, and I'm trying hard not to pay attention to what we've been spending. It's all worth it though, in the end.

Still feeling a little overwhelmed with having too many things I'm trying to do not getting done. Some recent accomplishments do include, however, us receiving delivery of Cindy's new curio cabinet for all her crystal pieces (still in the process of taking pictures). We were also finally able to get all of our Maui '07 photos printed out that we wanted for our photo album and scrapbooks, and I even blew up one of the star photos for my office at home.

We're also days away from putting a deposit down on our next trip to Maui, which might actually happen sooner when we had hoped, so that's totally sweet. As more details are finalized, I'll post more info over at Ka'anapali Dreamin'.

That's the quick update for now. Will post a few more soon.

New Wheels, Finally

Finally, after being about six months overdue, I finally have a new set of wheels. I bought a '07 Pontiac G6, 4-door GT this past weekend. Although it's not black, it's blue (Electric Blue Metallic to be exact) and has 17" chrome wheels, panoramic 4 panel sunroof, 6 disc CD player, remote start, the works. The weather hasn't been too great this weekend, so I haven't had a chance to take a few photos to post online. Sometime this week, for sure.

Also, on the Swarovski front, Cindy was able to pick up the two member annual edition pieces that she wanted, so she was happy about that. We have no more room for everything in her collection, so we went out and found a very nice curio cabinet on Friday and will be picking it up this week. We have to shuffle a few things around in our living room to fit it in, but as we're getting that ready, the plan is to take photos and catalog everything in her collection so we can put them online here at the sight. That will likely take awhile, especially on top of my growing list of todos already.

That's pretty much it for now. I'll trying to run off thumbnail preview pages for all 2,700 photos from our Maui trip so we can go through those and figure out which ones to print at Walgreens, only about 2 months after our trip. We also need to pick out and order which photos we want to use for wall photos from both our '06 and '07 trips, as well as transfer the '07 photos to our digital picture frame. The problem with all of this is that is makes us miss Maui even more, but it's still fun to relive those memories.

That's all for now. I'll post the photos of the new car once I have them.

Warm October Weekend in Chicago

Growing up in the Chicagoland area all my life, you typically don't see the nice weather we had this past weekend in the middle of October, but we'll take it.

Cindy and I made our effort of being outside to make the most of it. We headed out to Old Orchard Mall on Saturday, and we definitely weren't alone. It was pretty crowded but with the weather, you couldn't really blame folks for being out there. We ended up just browsing and not leaving with anything, but Cindy made up for that on Sunday.

Sunday, we headed out to Woodfield and Cindy did her "damage" there, albeit it rather a mild amount of spending. She stopped in at Swarovski as usual to pick up another piece for her Lovlots collection, which she is close to completing. All told, she probably has over 20 Swarovski pieces in her curio cabinet, to the point where we'll be looking for a bigger one soon. We have been meaning to take pictures and keep tabs on the pieces she has and post them in a section on our website, but I haven't had too much time to get to it. Soon, though.

Speaking of Swarovski, they are having a member event for their Swarovski Crystal Society (SCS), of which Cindy's a member. It's going to be at Woodfield on November 2nd I believe, and it will be the second one we're attending. Our first was a designer signing earlier in the year. Cindy has her eye on a few Sea Turtle pieces that we recently discovered and have fallen in love with as a result of our last trip to Maui. They'll be in our living room by the end of the year, that's for sure.

On the Maui front, I did start making a few updates to our website to make room for the latest details and photos from our Maui '07 trip, and that should be ready in a few weeks. I have a few other things I'm working on, but those should be wrapped up shortly.

Really, where does all the time go?

It's been awhile now...

I know it's been awhile since there's been activity here, but that doesn't mean we haven't been busy.

Since the last post here, I've completed a web development certificate program at the Illinois Institute of Art in Schaumburg, we've completed our second trip to Maui, and I even put up an entire site called Ka'anapali Dreamin'.

So it's been a little busy. The high school isn't going to be having a team this year, so I sort of get the winter off. That will give me some extra time to add more to this website, specifically for the new Maui trip we just completed. Also, with the Ka'anapali Dreamin' site, I was able to publish the blog as part of the main site and share the same look and feel, so that will be in the works for this site, and well as maybe a minor redesign.

That's about it for now.

Going Back to Maui

It's official, Cindy and I have booked our next Maui trip for later this year. We will be staying at the Sheraton Maui Resort again, and this time we booked our trip through Foster Travel Service based out of Park Ridge. This trip is going to be for two full weeks, so we're pretty excited.

Since we did quite a bit the last time we were in Maui, this trip is going to be more about relaxation and enjoying the scenario. We going to do another dinner cruise aboard the Maui Princess and one with the Pacific Whale Foundation. I received a gift membership from Nancy and Don for my birthday, so it's definitely going to be something worth checking out.

Other than that, we're thinking of doing maybe two luaus this time, and probably a few driving tours to parts of the island we didn't see last time. We're not sure if we're going back to Hana or not, and another helicopter tour might be something we save for a future trip.

I'm hoping to take twice as many photos as I did last time (which was a lot), and I'm thinking about either buying a new video camera to bring with us, or taking along the one we have now (which by technology standards is a pretty old).

The best part about this trip is that we'll be in Maui for our anniversary, so we'll being doing something special for that, too.

I'll post another update as we get closer to leaving and get a few events planned.

Until then...

Kris