Frozen Kona: Home away from home

Aloha ohana!!!

We had a large post last time talking all about our Big Island trip. This post we want to catch everyone up with our fall festivities the past few months! On September 19th we finally went to a Rainbow Warriors game (Hawaii's college team). It was especially fun because they actually won! High school private vs. public is where it's at here though with the stands being full! A few of Mark's work friends had gotten really good seats so half the game we sat in the student section pretty close to the field. The stadium is pretty nice and we are especially looking forward to attending the NFL Probowl there in a few months!

In late September, we attended an Octoberfest themed Eat the street. We wrote about it in the past when we attended, but it's a really great outdoor event featuring dozens of different food trucks. This setup was especially nice with more space to move around, great live music, a Biergarten, strings of lights that lit up the sky, and delicious German food that brought back memories of the real Oktoberfest we attended on 2013! We had a plate with a delicious brat, rice, and other goodies (it wouldn't be Hawaii without the rice). One of the trucks had a huge grill where dozens and dozens of brats were being grilled. The line for this particular truck would have taken us close to an hour to get through so we opted for their competition next to it- which was just as good ;). We even saw a few people in liederhosen- hehe! Only in Hawaii can you get great German food and the best organic shave ice in one spot. Oh yum!!

I wanted to add a few throwback pixs when we visited Germany for Octoctoberfest as well as for Paris with all the terrible things going on there. Paris will always be my favorite city in the world- That was almost our second honeymoon vacation. Sending lots of prayers and love to the city of lights.

This was the famous IBM building in Honolulu showing support for the Paris attacks. (As well as some recent random pixs)

The first week in Octover we visited home for the first time in a year and a half!!! We can't even explain how good it felt to be back home to visit! (Although I do not miss getting out of a hot shower and freezing my booty off lol). We left for Chicago right after work on Wednesday night on a red eye and after a layover arrived Thursday afternoon. We planned to sleep the entire night on the plane and that didn't go as planned... So we arrived very, very tired to say the least. Regardless we sucked it up and met some of our friends/ family at a local bar that evening to see everyone in one spot and to catch up! That's so a feeling we miss having- so many people we love in one spot. The trip overall was so fun but after so many months anticipating it- flew by! It was filled with football watching, shopping, grilling out, a trip (or two) to the casino, a meal at our favorite Milwaukee restaurant, attending mass at our church, a poker game/ night with our friends, and lots of catching up to say the least! One thing we took from our visit was to not take for granted how much we do love/ miss Wisconsin. To feel the cool fall air in the morning/ evening made us realize how much of babies we have become with the cold, haha.

This fall we really got into the holiday/ fall season. A few times I made a delicious apple/turkey stuffed acorn dinner which screamed fall. We also went to a local pumpkin farm on the leeward side to pick out a pumpkin and buy some sweet corn, etc. I can't believe this week is Thanksgiving already! We are cooking lots of goodies Hawaiian style this year! Yum!

A few weeks ago we were hanging at the North Shore and the surf was high enough that they started a surf competition hosted by hic (Hawaiian Island Creations) at Sunset beach- which is the Bonzai Pipeline. The contest wasn't going on when we were in the area but we still were able to see everything set up which we were so stoked on! Hopefully soon we'll be off when the contest is going on as they run on random days depending on the surf conditions. It's insane people have enough courage to go surf these waves- as they look so intimidating to be even from shore, lol.