After the wedding, we drove to Chicago to catch our 8 am flight the next morning to Hawaii!!!  The flight was uneventful.. I slept most the way, Chris wasn't quite so fortunate.  Since we were in first class, it was very cozy, and the food wasn't too bad for airplane food!

We arrived in Hawaii in the afternoon to O'ahu, Hawaii, but it felt late for us, since we had just been on a jet for 8 1/2 hours!  We got our rental car and headed in the direction we thought our hotel should be in.  And we were right!  We stayed at the J.W. Marriot, which was beautiful!

These are the ponds surrounding and going through the hotel.  Everything was open air, beautiful!

The view out our window... amazing!

the green in front of the hotel

The lobby in the hotel

The swimming pond and beach at the hotel, roped off so no marine life could get in...

And a hommock to be lazy in!

And a self portrait!

After we were all checked in to the hotel, we drove around the southern shore, found a little beach to walk on and then got some dinner... it felt like it should have been past midnight, but it was barely six pm yet!  We were exahausted!

Our second day there...

we toured the USS Bowfin while we waited for our turn to visit the memorial for the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor

We rode this "duck" around town, to Pearl Harbor, which was great!  It was a hot day, so the open air was a nice relief!

But then it started to rain... suddenly, it wasn't as much of a joy ride as before, but hey, we were in paradise!  A little rain wasn't going to ruin anything!

Us on top of the USS Bowfin submarine

here we are at the USS Arizona memorial, a lot of people were throwing flowers into the water as a way to show their respect of those who died at Pearl Harbor.

This is a wall of names of those who died on the USS Arizona.

Chris and I had a fabulous honeymoon on the island of Oahu, Hawaii.  As you may know by now, on the day we were suppose to fly out of Hawaii, there was an earthquake on the big Island (what a way to end the honeymoon, huh?)  It registered at 6.7 on richter scale, which translates as BIG.  It happened at 7:06 am, and we felt it on our Island at 7:10 am.  We were alrerady awake when the earthquake struck, and we both just looked at each other like, "did that just happen?"  The earthquake was definatly big, but the only damage it did to our island was to knock the power out.  It didn't seem like a big deal to us at the time, until we realized that Hawiians don't know what to do when the power is out, so everything was more caotic than it needed to be!  We ate a big breakfast at our hotel (luckily they cook with gas stoves, so it didn't hinder the resturant... we had breakfast by candle light!)  And then we checked out of our hotel at the normal time and returned our rental car to head to the airport.  We got to the airport around 1:30 pm, and that is when everything got really crazy.  There were tons of people everywhere, lined up outside of the airport all the way to the ticket counters.  The airport had closed down since there was no power.  There is really nothing that anybody could do.  WE were jsut waiting on the city to get the power back on for the Island.  Some people were so mad though, becasue they missed their flights, and thought the airliner should put them up in a hotel.  The only thing  is, it wasn't he airliners fault that the earth quake knocked the power out!  So, all of the flights were cancelled.  There also happen to be a couple of cruises that had just arrived, so the hotels were booked to the brim, and we wern't going anywhere.  We hung around the  airport, as we had no where else to go, and later found out the airliner had rebook our entire flightto leave the next mornign at 8:30 am.  So, we decided we would jsut stay the night at the airport until we flew out.  wE were counting on getting out boarding passes so we could get back to the terminal to have some dinner.  Unfortunatly, the airport closed for the night at 10:00 pm, so we had to stay in the ticketing area or in the baggage claim area, and there were no food venders there.  Chris hopped on a local bus to go into town to see if any resturants were open while I stayed with our baggage at the airport.  He returned 3 hours later say that everything was closed down since there was no power on the Island yet.  So, we sat, and prayed and wondered what we were going ot do about something to eat.  WE hadn't eaten anything since 10:00 am that morning, and it was now 8:00 pm.  Not long after we were sitting there, a church group came around handing out tuna fish sandwiches and bottles of water.  I have never seen so many greatful people!  and those sandwiches tasted great!  God sure does answer prayer!    So, after our dinner of a tuna sandwich and bottle of water, we tried to get comfortable for the night, but ther was only so many chairs, and so many people.  We ended up finding a couple that were playing cards so joined them and played for a couple of hours to try and make time go by!  Then we tried again to get comfortable for the night, but everything was getting pretty discusting in there!  The toilets were all backed upsince thery weren't flushing without power, and there were peopele strewed every where.  Chris ended up sleeping on the floor, and I slept or tried to, in a chair.  We slept for maybe 2 hours, and then we heard other people getting upand moving around, so we were awake.  We checked into our flught at soon as we could.  thank goodness we were first class!  The security lines and ticket counters were packed but we had shorter lines since we were first class.  So, we made our flight and finally got back to Chicago around 10:30ish....  There is more to tell and lots of pictures, but I have to go now.  I will post more later!  Love Laura RYSSO