One Year Anniversary

A little late butttt, our first year of marriage was amazing- lets do a little recap shall we? We started off getting sealed together in the Washington D.C. temple & having the most amazing reception courtesy of the best parents ever! They wouldn’t settle for anything less than perfect. There was a moment where I was like we can just have our reception in the cultural hall dad (crazy I know) and my dad said absolutely not. 
ummm lets talk about how hot my husband looks here…
  
yes, I still have yet to publish my actual wedding day post
We then went on a dream honeymoon to the dominican- a week & a half of sun&sand. The Dominican was my first time out of the country & I had a serious culture shock! It was so sad to see such poverty there. And everyone rode these little motorcycles. They would squeeze 3 people on some of those tiny bikes, it was insane. We stayed at an all inclusive resort and having Lyle speak fluent Spanish was the best thing ever. It was SO unbelievably useful…because even those at the resort spoke very broken English. We rode horses on the beach, kayaked, snorkeled, played tennis, went to Limon waterfall, played with parrots, ate tons & fell in love with the beautiful country.
These little boys stole our hearts! We stuffed a bunch of our drinks and random things we had and gave them to all the boys. They were so grateful and it melted my heart. This will forever be one of my favorite pictures and I can’t wait to volunteer abroad & help out more children.
Then we came back and moved into our lovely little home we bought in Utah. It took a while to decorate and put things together. I started school up again in January and then Lyle had earned us a free trip to Cancun so off we went! 
Then we came back and lucky me we had Spring break and got to enjoy the sun and beautiful Oahu, Hawaii! But shortly thereafter Lyle left early to set up the office in Texas so he was gone a couple weeks while I finished school until I met him down there and we spent 5 months living outside of Houston while Lyle worked. It was an incredibly hard time for us. We spend every waking second together when we can- when Lyle isnt gone on sales trips for weekends or weeks at a time and his long hours during the summer were an adjustment but we still had so much fun. We had the cutest apt, with the sweetest pool that I took advantage of everyday. I baked, I cooked, we had Vivint people over for dinner, we went to the beach and ate amazing food. Lyle and I will forever miss the cookies&cream pazookie from BJ’s, Taste of Texas, Seabrooke Waffle Co & the pulled pork sandwiches/breakfast burritos from Buckeys. Ohhh man. The food in Texas is the best. The memories made there will forever be some of our favorites- good and bad times, we made it through and came out even stronger.
Lyle surprised me with cute surprises and date nights
and I made him peach cobbler, waffles and my very own pazookie- including the best chocolate chip cookies ever. 
 
then after a trip back to Utah we headed back to Texas and drove all the way to Maryland where my family is from! It was a fun and long drive but we stopped at some cool places along the way…and Murphy rode shotgun…we got to hit our one year in Memphis. It was perfect and lowkey and amazing. To celebrate our one year Lyle took me on my trip of a lifetime, 6 weeks in Europe! I feel so blessed to have a guy like Lyle. He is a saint to put up with me. He is kind, funny, loving, the hardest working man I know, thoughtful, honest and a worthy priesthood holder. This year absolutely flew by. I’m still in shock….out of our one year you spent like 5 months in our home and me 6! Its been an adventurous whirlwind and I couldn’t do it with anyone but you. I can’t wait to travel more with you, reach our goals and see what the future holds. Guys, marriage is the best. Its not always easy but the blessings are neverending.
Love, Cait

Aloha Oahu

Where to start…I am absolutely in love with Hawaii
We decided to go to Hawaii because 
a. it was Spring Break
b. lyle killed it in Texas & we could
c. we were pale & wanted a third honeymoon
d. all of the above

This blog is lotsa pictures & my random Hawaii observations
Waikiki/Honolulu is the WORST. if you go to Oahu do not stay there. The North Shore was absolutely perfect and not crowded at all. We LOVED where we stayed. Honolulu and Waikiki are fun to explore but the hotels are overpriced and you will probably have to pay for parking on top.
 Lolani Palace
 my stud husband
Homeless guys in Hawaii are less scarier than homeless guys anywhere else. They wanted me to take a picture of them
Dukes Statue. Other tourists aren’t that good at taking centered pictures
 Some cool/weird tree in Kapiolani Park
And of course we went to the beach. below is Waimea Beach
Waimea Falls. This was supposed to be with a self timer but lyle didnt get to me in time…
One of the beautiful lookout points. We couldn’t live in Hawaii because my hair was just the worst thing ever. As seen in the following pictures… 
Nuanna Pali Lookout. We were sad because it was foggy! The weather in Hawaii reminds me a lot of Florida- it will rain while its sunny and it will be gross one second and fine the next so we just waited until it went away (it did!)
A tripod is THE BEST thing we have ever bought. Especially if you love to travel. Get one.
Hahaha Lyles pose…
 We wanted to live like locals so we a teeny place that was a couple feet from the beach and went to the grocery store and guys everything in Hawaii is EXPENSIVE. Cereal is like $6.00 and they don’t have a huge huge selection and all the food is way pricey. However they do have unique fruits and candies that are AMAZING. Hence we didn’t feel the need to buy razors (we only did carry ons) which equals super sexy for Lyle (see below) and not so sexy for me…. 
 Lyle was very persuasive in Hawaii. Hence my participation in these photos….Lyle obviously posed me too because I have no clue what I’m doing in the first photo.

 We were never lacking in PDA. Sorry to the other tourists, but vacation is fun for that kind of stuff. We were asked if we were on our honeymoon a couple times…sure, our third honeymoon. 

More from Waimea Falls!
 I LOVE this!
Hawaii is not lacking in chickens or cats… the cats were more in the Waikiki area while the chickens were on the North Shore. Everyone owns them
 Lyle found this an appropriate time to ask why the chicken crossed the road…
 But it was so cute because they all had BABIES!
We explored many different beaches! Lanikai, a Waikiki Beach, Bonzai pipeline, Waimea, Sunset, Hukilau, etc. Below are pictures from Lanikai one of Lyles favorites. The sand was soft and white and it was so beautiful!
Then one day we went to the Latter Day Saint Laie temple! It is STUNNING. Lyle and i have now through 5 different temples together! Our goal is to hit go through everyone of them as we travel to many different places
The views are amazing!
We also went to the Polynesian Cultural Center- PCC. They had tons of different shows about different cultures along with lots of hands on things such as lei making, throwing spears etc. We then went to the luau there and saw the HA Breath of Life Show which had guys throwing fire and it was so cool
We just bought this hut in case anyone wants to visit us!
One day we went to China Mans hat! So then obviously we took a photo shoot. IT IS THAT STUNNING- i only edited two of these pictures and that was to make them lighter, the rest are what it really looks like!
All my swimsuits are from Amazon by the way for like $15! They are great when you eat Hawaiian french toast and feel fat haha
One day we went to Valley of the temples! It is stunning! I did not touch a single photo. I felt like I was in China sometimes…also because seriously everyone was Asian
 This whole pond behind us was filled with these huge Koi fish
freaking babe.
My top 5 favorite parts of the trip: (in no order)
1. Hawaiian Sweet bread french toast from Papa Ole’s
2. the helicopter ride over Oahu
3. Our snorkeling excursion where wild dolphins swam all around us
4. laying out & getting sun
5. the amazing beauty everywhere we went
 this waterfall was amazing! our helicopter had no doors and he basically would flip the helicopter to the side so we could get different views and it was so scary! Its actually illegal to hike to this waterfall so it was cool we got to see it since its not visible
Lookin rough on my part- I lost a whole lotta hair in this event haha
Our pilot flew over this whale that was breaching! SO COOL
The snorkeling adventure was so sick besides the fact that we got up at 4:30 am…
we got on this boat and rode out and saw some bottle nose dolphins which is surprising because usually its just the spinner dolphins and he started speeding and the dolphins started swimming alongside and jumping in the waves. it was amazing. then we went snorkeling in an area where we saw 4 huge konas! (turtles) and a bunch of fish. The next snorkeling area i saw a reef shark RIGHT UNDER ME and I started swimming to the boat and freaking out. Lyle decided to get a picture of it (we haven’t gotten our underwater camera developed yet!) The guy in charge said reef sharks wont bug you but hmm funny, on yahoo yesterday i saw an article where a man was attacked by a reef shark…it wasn’t exactly tiny. The boat then got a call about a bunch of spinner dolphins spotted so he slowly dropped us in the water and told us not to move. Then all the sudden 55+ spinner dolphins started to swim under us. They all had little babies and it was phenomenal. They were completely surrounding us. They just swam around us several times. I have never had a cooler experience in my life. Then they fed us an amazing lunch! Ko Olina Ocean adventures was amazing! We had the best time!
I loved Haleiwa! It was the perfect little beach town with a cute bakery, little shops and amazing homemade icecream!
 We watched a Sunset on Sunset beach
We got to hike Manoa Falls and the Kokohead Crater Hike
please ignore the terrible shoes below…
More Pictures!
Halona Blowhole
 Get a picture of the sign! Thanks lyle…haha
 An amazing steak house where we ate with a beautiful view of the beach!
the reason I probably gained 20 lbs haha and for some reason lyle adores this picture…
RIP white wedge shoe. 
We had an amazing time to say the least. We ate lots of amazing food. Hawaii seems to be big on breakfast food and so am I. If we lived there I would be so obese. We ate from the food trucks and had shaved ice and at night we would fall asleep to movies that take place in Hawaii such as 50 first dates or Just Go With It.  We crossed things off bucket lists. We stopped at local little fruit stands and had the best time. We have already decided we have to go back next spring break for a couple days to finish up the rest of the things we wanna do then explore the big island!! The amount of photos i took is ridiculous, i have zillions more but these are some of the favorites! aloha
xoxo Cait xoxo