Critters

For some reason, it seemed like the animal kingdom was doing it's best to stop the wedding (or at least ruin the photo's). After my encounter with Zooey, my sister-in-laws possessed cat, upon landing in Maui I was set upon by mosquitoes. At first I was bit in the hand, then on the side of my forehead. By day three the little b*s had caused me ear to swell double its size (visible on some of the Luau photo's).

Here's a comparison ear-to-ear:

 

As if my ego  wasn't bruised enough, Donna made me wear some sort of plastic face mask the night before the big day which made me look like an android from the movie A.I.:

 Jude Wes

Must Do Checklist: The Luau

It's one of those extremely expensive tourist things that has to be done, so here we are queuing on the beach, near twilight waiting to get our hands on those free complimentary Mai Tai's.

To be fair, it was a free bar and all you can eat, what else could you ask for?

Here's the pig going into the ground. For those that don't know, a Luau is where they cook a whole pig in the ground before serving it up.

View photo's of the Luau

Basil Tomatoes

So we finally settled in and on the first night we decided to all go out together and sample some of the local cuisine. Mike recommended Basil Tomatoes just down the road from Ka'anapali. I have a video of the event but I haven't got round to editing yet.

Some of the highlights include being served by the militant waitress we nicknamed 'butch' (wait till you see the video) and being served purified 'clear' milk (also in the video).

Mike had already finished his drink at this point. I guess no one has mentioned to him that you toast first and then drink.

Since we paid for the meal on my card, we ended up with a fistful of dollars. I didn't get to play with it long, as Donna was already comfortably getting ready to be in wife-mode.

View the photo's

Maui

After arriving overnight, driving in the dark along the coast to find the Ka'anapali Villas where we would be staying we finally got to glimpse the beauty of the island of Maui. Far left is Donna overlooking a place where whales can be spotted. Unfortunately we were too early in the season to see them.

Left is a lava rock beach close to Makena Cove, south of the island where we were 3 days from sealing the deal.

Below, some trees behind Makena Beach where I was ambushed by a Mosquito and Donna standing on Makena Beach.

See these photo's on Facebook

Coffee Anyone?

How do you like the new blog? I decided to disenfranchise the blog from AAF website and we originally experimented with Wordpress.

Although Wordpress has great customizable features, it's a bit restricted so we've gone for the old Blogspot domain.

We’ll continue to post images from the Maui trip and the Wedding of course, but this is going to allow us to move beyond and merge it with our current activities at a later stage.

We're Moving!

No, not physically, but our 'Maui Wedding' blog discontinues at this address from here on!

Some people have voiced concern that they are unable to access at this server, so to make it more easy (especially for those a little more technically challenged) we have moved to a new domain and created a new blog:

Saturday Morning Coffee

All the posts here have been transferred over to SMC and the photo journey will continue whilst we bring the blog screaming into the present.

This Maui Wedding blog will remain here for the meantime. But update your shortcuts lest one day you find this blog disappears!

Flying Cattle

We finally set out from Vancouver airport on 24th October, Gina is pictured above, at the check-in. I guess we were all so excited about going that we didn't think that the taxi ride to the airport would get us there so punctually. As you can see in the picture the place looked a bit empty. At first we thought it was going to be a quiet flight....until we realised that we were about an hour too early. We were there before the check-in desks were even open. Now that's excited.

Anyway once we were finally on the flight we realised that this holiday chartering business was not as comfy as one would like. The 5 hours on the flight with WestJet felt longer than the 8 hours from Heathrow to Calgary with Air Canada. WestJet were cheap, so cheap that they even felt they could charge us extra for in-flight video entertainment. The only problem is if you didn't want to pay you still had to face the video screen that had been installed on the back of every chair, blinking away an advertisement that bragged the advantages of buying the rights to view more then the advertisement itself. In the end the dumb video was out of order anyway and no one would get a chance to sample the fine array of movies they would've had to offer. Gina found a better use for the back of the chair in front of her and simply fell asleep. Nice one.

View the photo's

The Evil One

I am at soon to be sister-in-laws apartment in Vancouver (or Hongcouver as it's popularly known).

Why am I wearing rubber gloves whilst checking my email? That would be said sister-in-laws cat, Zooey, or, as I liked to call... Sauron.

Sauron is a man-hating cat. As soon as I entered the apartment he made his feelings heard with constant hissing. I didn't get any photos of Sauron, he skulked around the apartment and kept his distance.

Little did I realise he was plotting and biding his time before he pounced. The next day when, Gina left to go shopping, he saw his chance to strike, whilst I was lying on the couch I suddenly felt a claw scratch the back of my head- and there he was- hiiiisssss.

Attempts to shoo the little critter, and grab the scruff of his neck resulted in the first of many injuries inflicted by critters during this holiday. Eventually I was left no choice but to arm myself with broom, rubber gloves and boots. I didn't manage to get him out on the balcony where I could hang him, so instead I got him into the bedroom.

He tried messing with me again only once, but it was short lived.

Till we meet again psycho devil cat.

Photo's on Facebook

Sasquatch!

First the grizzly and now this guy! Someone must have radioed ahead and told Snow White I was coming to Canada for the first time... because Snow White then got on the blower to the bluebirds, and the bluebirds spread the word to the rest of the forest to be on the lookout for me.

This one didn't talk much, but he was used to having his picture taken and offered to pose like he was just caught sneeking out to the liquor store.

Actually I think we actually had caught him sneeking out to the liquor store. Mrs Foot was not pleased.

Here's a nice view of some valley at sunset which is quite beautiful. This was just before we entered the (teehee) desert. Yes folks apparently Canada has a desert...

Photo's on Facebook

Uncle Bob and Aunt Dora

Here's a picture of Donna's Aunt and Uncle. Bob even managed to smile for the camera, which I'm glad about, because he truly is a funny guy to be around.

Bob has a dry humour which the Canadians tend to have difficulty with. The truth is there are probably a lot of Brits that would get offended by Bob, but all I could do was laugh.

Aunt Dora is a born again believer, but Bob isn't a Christian, he's kind of anti in a way. So please pray for him everyone.

I've given it a lot of prayer, I'm going to come back one day and bring a missionary team to Trail to stay with Bob and Dora and try to win Bob for Christ.

I know he'll appreciate it once we get him saved... Jesus loves you Bob!