# 5 - CHECK

The fifth thing on my list of 101 things to do in 1001 days was to buy a jeep. Justin owned a jeep when he turned 16 (he actually had it when he was 14) and had it all the way through his senior year in high school before he replaced it with a truck. When Justin and I dated in high school, he owned his 1997 Jeep Wrangler and he loved it VERY MUCH. It was red with a black soft top with huge tires and a huge lift. Some of me and Justin's favorite memories of us in high school revolved around that jeep. Every time I saw a jeep in college or after college when I lived in Nashville, I automatically thought of Justin. It was just how I identified him for so long. He use to come pick me up at my house in Trace Crossings during the summer just to go riding around Hoover or go through the Wendy's drive thru (which is where he spent most of his time in high school).

Anyway, Justin has been dying to get another jeep for so long and we have been talking about it for a while. When we went to Hawaii and rented a red four door Rubicon, that was Justin's sign from above. Since we got back from Hawaii, he has been relentlessly researching all red four door jeep Rubicon's within 1,000 miles from Birmingham. He found five of them, but only two of them were stick shifts (for some reason he HAD to have a stick shift). The closest one was about an hour outside of Orlando. So, Justin and I hopped on a plane to fly to Orlando this past weekend. And we came home with this....








We love the new car so much!!! We drove the long 9 hour drive from Orlando back to Birmingham Saturday afternoon. There's nothing like riding with the top down on a cloudless day blaring some Kings of Leon (along with some various country music too). We decided to go to one of the parks while we were in Orlando. We were originally going to go to Magic Kingdom, but changed our minds at the last minute to go to Universal's Island of Adventure. We wanted to ride some roller coasters and they had some amazing ones there (according to the website) so we chose that one.

Such a good choice! We rode tons of roller coasters but our absolute FAVORITE was one called "Dueling Dragons". This ride had two coasters that went down two different tracks. One was a red dragon and referred to as "fire" and one was a blue dragon and was referred to as "ice". Although these coasters had two different tracks, their paths crossed twice in a scary moment where you think "oh my God, are we about to die". The first time was when the ice coaster does a corkscrew not even five feet beneath the fire coaster. All you see is your feet almost touch those of the people on the opposite coaster. The second, and most famous, meeting between the two is when they both go on loops right next to each other, again, almost touching feet.

I didn't make this video, it was just one I found on youtube. To see the coasters almost touch, look at :46 - 1:00. If you want to see it in slow motion (cause it looks really cool that way) go to 1:14. Justin and I rode each of these coasters twice (4 times total). We went on an awesome day. I'm guessing that since school started back, no one really comes to the parks, but whatever the reason, the park was incredibly uncrowded! We never waited for any ride more than 5 minutes. That's why we were able to leave the park at 1pm (since we had already done everything at that point) and drive all the way back to Birmingham. We had originally planned to stay a night in Tallahassee and then drive the rest of the way on Sunday. We had a blast and we love our jeep :)

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention something funny about flying to Orlando. Justin and I flew seperately. I flew on Southwest and he flew on Delta. I'm about 3 flights away from getting my free round trip flight from Southwest and I have to have those credits before April 2010, which for me, means I have to have them before Christmas since after that is my busy season and I won't be flying anywhere! I'm trying to get this free roundtrip flight so that I can use it to fly to Seattle to see my friend Lauren. She's lived there for 3 years now and I still haven't been able to make it out there ONCE! So that is what I'm using my free credit for when I get it. Anyway, on to the funny part...

So Justin flew Delta and I kind of felt bad for him because he had to fly through Atlanta and there were some major storms in Atlanta and all flights going into and out of the city were delayed. I however, flew directly from Birmingham to Orlando and my flight was even early getting into Orlando. I felt so bad for him....until I got a text when he landed in Orlando saying that he was on a plane that had the SAME EXACT first class seats that we had on our way to Hawaii. For those of you who don't know, Justin travels A LOT for work and he is platinum on Delta, which means he sits first class pretty much every flight he takes. My husband whines like a baby if he doesn't get first class. Naturally, he gets ZERO sympathy from me :) To see some pretty awesome pictures of those seats click here. I was SOOOO jealous!

Honeymoon - Day 9 and 10

So this is the LAST honeymoon post!!! I feel like I've been doing these posts FOREVER so I'm really happy to be making this my last one. It's covering two days just like the last post I did, so there's a lot of pictures on here. The last two days in Hawaii may have been our busiest days, however, they were definitely the most fun! On day 9 we woke up SUPER early (2am Hawaii time which is 9pm Birmingham time) and went to the Haleakala Bike Company to get a bike and helmet.

We rode a van with a bunch of people to the top of Haleakala Crater (a volcanic crater which is also Maui's highest point at 10,000 feet). We got to the top of the crater around 5am to watch the sunrise. It was unbelievably breathtaking. There were so many people up there doing the exact same thing we were doing. Tons and tons of bike companies had brought people to watch the sunrise and bike down the 10,000 foot mountain.







Not gonna lie, it was FREEZING up there and we didn't exactly come completely prepared. I wore a long sleeve shirt with another shirt underneath, but luckily the bike company rented out gloves, which I absolutely took advantage of!



Now we're mounting our bikes to take the AWESOME ride down the mountain. Ok so this particular activity was my absolute FAVORITE (ok well actually it's my favorite next to the Molokini dive). This was the coolest ride and it had the most spectacular views!!





Unfortunately we had to wear the helmets, but like I've told other people who commented on the helmets, you wouldn't take it off either if you saw what is on the other side of that guardrail!



The crater is in the middle of one of the US National Parks, Haleakala National Park. Anyone that knows us knows that we are both very intrigued by the national parks. So far I think we share the same favorite park and that was Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. See my previous post for those pictures.





After getting done riding down the crater, we headed over to Mendes Ranch to saddle up and go horseback riding in the mountains and on the coast. This was also incredibly cool. Justin and I have both been horseback riding before, but neither of us had been in SO long! For some reason, the guides put us on the "advanced horses". There were 14 people in our group and four horses were runners so they chose four people to be the "advanced riders". We got two of those spots!

My horse's name was Kiko (pronounced Kee-ko) and Justin's horse's name was Smokey. The first time they let the horses run they were only running half speed. The second time, however, they were GALLOPING! Which apparently in horse terms means, running like friggin Seabiscuit!!! I was holding on for dear life, not kidding! But it was so much fun and we saw some awesome views. The picture above is where Jurassic Park was filmed (the beginning scene).





A few photo opps with Justin, Marcie, Kiko and Smokey. I miss Kiko :(

At the end of this crazy but fun packed day we went back to the resort and showered and went out to dinner for our LAST dinner in Hawaii. We had been waiting for this night because we made reservations for dinner at the very famous restaurant in our resort. Just so everyone knows, there is only 12 letters in the Hawaiian alphabet. So naturally, we were intrigued by a restaurant with 21 LETTERS in the name....



Supposedly the name is that of the Hawaiian state fish. Crazy name, but has an AMAZING filet!! We went back to the room and packed up all of our stuff to take with us the next day on our zip line and helicopter tour.



We met the next morning at Ka'aanapali Adventure Center to drive up the mountains to hit up some of the most amazing zip lines in Maui!











I was even able to take a short video of one of the lines. This line was the longest line of the four that we did. It was 2,300 feet. I had to turn off the camera almost halfway through, however, because we had to do the "starfish" (see picture above) to start slowing down. This line got us up to 50mph!! It was so cool!

After we were done zip lining, it was off to the helicopter ride! We chose Blue Hawaiian as our guide and we absolutely loved them. This was Justin's favorite activity next to the diving.









AND THAT WAS OUR HONEYMOON!!! I'm so glad I'm done with these posts now :) Justin and I had so much fun in Hawaii and some amazing and unforgettable memories were made there. We suggest that everyone go there if its possible for you to. If you're adventurous like us, do all the things we did. People kept telling us to have more "relax" time, but that's just not us. We tried it for a day while we were in Hawaii, and we both got bored. Hawaii is too awesome and amazing to sit by a pool or beach the whole trip. There's so much to see on land, in the water, and in the air. If you ever visit Hawaii, please take advantage of all three.

Aloha!

P.S. This day also knocked off #89 and #60 on my 101 things to do in 1001 days list. While writing this I realized that I put horseback riding on there twice. Oops!! I'll have to replace the second one with something else.

Honeymoon - Day 7 and Day 8

Ok I'm trying to wrap up the honeymoon posts quickly so I'm doing two days in one post. So basically, prepare for a little bit longer of a post :)



On Day 7 of our honeymoon we did another dive! This time we went to Molokini Crater. If you read my blog frequently, you may remember me making a previous post about Molokini. It has crystal blue waters and is a heaven for divers and snorkelers. We went to meet our dive master at Ma'aalea Harbor to board a boat with about 10 other people. Justin and I got our own personal dive guide, so we didn't dive with the other people, just with our dive guide.



This is a view of the crater from the boat as we were coming in. I cannot possibly explain how blue that water is!



Pictures can be deceiving. This guy is probably half my size and the dive guide said they can get up to 80lbs.



I don't know why, but I really LOVE this picture. Justin and I only have our open water certification, which means we're not suppose to go past 60 feet. The blue water makes depth a little deceiving and we didn't even realize that we were at 80 FEET until we looked at our dive computers.



At a safety stop before our final ascent from the bottom of the ocean.



Justin checking his pressure. Because we were at 80 feet we burned through our air a lot quicker than if we were at 40 or 50 feet. We were constantly checking our air to make sure we had enough to make a 3-4 minute stop and get back to the top safely.



Me swimming away...LOVING that I'm 80 feet down :)



This picture was actually not taken at Molokini Crater. After our dive there, we took the boat to a place called Turtle Valley (close to Turtle Town, but a lot less crowded). Our dive guide managed to get a picture of us with the turtle. I think this is Justin's favorite picture of the whole trip. He is so obsessed with it.





Justin got to hold a rather large octopus! I got a pretty good video of that too....

After the dives, Justin and I had no plans, so we just drove around the entire island of Maui. I'm totally not kidding! We drove from Ma'aalea Harbor through West Maui and into Kaanapali in North Maui all the way around to our hotel back on the South Shore.

Day 8 of the honeymoon was spent driving to Hana. This road is one of the most popular roads in all of Maui and we figured out why pretty quickly! It's absolutely beautiful!!! This drive is what I think of the most when I hear the song that is playing on my blog "Somewhere Over the Rainbow". I'm not going to put commentary on these pictures, so just enjoy the greenery!























P.S. The banana bread was AMAZING!!

And that was the Road to Hana!!! Next up is the LAST honeymoon post (thank God) and it is when we went to the top of the Haleakala Crater to watch the sunrise and then we biked down the 10,000 foot mountain. Afterwards we went horseback riding in the mountains and on the coast. I will also put our last day in Hawaii in that post (so that I can make it the last honeymoon post). Our last day was spent zip lining and taking a helicopter ride. Awesome pictures from all of the above to come :)

Wedding Dance Video

My amazingly wonderful brother-in-law, Jeff Smith, was so kind enough to take a video of the girls doing the "girlfriend dance" at me and Justin's wedding reception. He loaded it onto their youtube account so I've copied it and put it in our blog. The end of the video is just of Anderson dancing on the stage and it is HILARIOUS!! He even gets to a point, after several attempts at what could only be thought of as a heel stretch, where he rolls around on the floor. He's so funny. Anyway, here it is.