Our Wedding: Wedding Eve

I'm back with the next wedding recap post! On the day before the wedding, my mom hosted a ladies lunch for my sisters and close girlfriends. It was so great to get some extra time with the special women in my life. They have seen me through so many peaks and valleys so it was important for me to carve out some time during our wedding weekend for these ladies! We had a private room in a local Mexican restaurant that I love. We started off the lunch by introducing ourselves, saying how everyone knew me and sharing our favorite taco!

After lunch, some of us walked across the street for manicures and pedicures. My pedicure was at the same time as my mom and friend Courtney. It was so fun to chat with them while get some pampering and reveling in the excitement of my wedding weekend!

After our spa services, Amber was kind enough to drive me around because I had indulged in a couple of glasses of wine at lunch and some champagne at the spa. Having Amber as my driver was a Godsend because the hours between the spa and the rehearsal dinner were crazy chaotic. I will spare you the lengthy play-by-play but suffice it to say that we had to go back to my house FOUR TIMES to get things I had forgotten, from my rehearsal dress to our marriage license (!!!). One time we got almost downtown (which was 20+ minutes away) before I realized I had forgotten the marriage license. Amber was cool as a cucumber. I felt bad that I was taking up time that she could have spent with the other bloggers but she repeatedly reminded me that the primary reason she was there was for my wedding. Her and Kyria were such a huge help as they also went to get our flowers on the wedding day and brought my sisters to the church for photos. I don't know what I would have done without them and it was really nice that they said to give them things to do because they wanted to help! That way I did not feel bad or guilty delegating things.

By the time we got back to the hotel after returning to our house four times, I didn't even have time to bring my stuff up to my hotel room (I spent the night before the wedding in our wedding-night suite) so I checked in and Amber and Kyria took care of getting my dress and suitcase in the room! After checking in, I rode with my parents in horrible stress-inducing traffic. It took us 30 minutes to go one freaking mile! But luckily, I made it to the rehearsal on time (without a minute to spare) and once I got there, I told myself to let go of the stressful hours leading up to the rehearsal and just soak in the evening.

Unfortunately, I have no pictures from the rehearsal.  I was too busy talking with people and 'being in the moment' to think to take a single picture!  Whoops.  It was a wonderful evening, though. The rehearsal at the church went super smoothly and the rehearsal dinner was wonderful. We had the rehearsal dinner at a local Eastern European Deli. It was super casual but the perfect way to kick off our wedding weekend. We had a buffet of sausages, cabbage rolls, pierogies, sauerkraut and a cucumber salad. Both Phil and I are of German descent so it made sense to have some German foods at our rehearsal dinner. This is one of our favorite 'whole in the wall' kind of restaurants. It's been open for 50+ years. It was fun to introduce our out-of-town guests to a local institutions with delicious food. We had 40+ guests there as we invited aunts and uncles that had traveled far for the event. Plus my family alone is 19 people with all my nieces and nephews so it was bound to be a big gathering!

I ducked out of the dinner around 8pm, I think, and swung by the hotel restaurant to see my blogger girls.

They gifted me a cool, personalized recipe box full of recipes. Talk about a personal and fun gift!

And then it was time to head to bed for some beauty rest. Several people asked me who was going to stay with me the night before the wedding - I chose to spend the night alone in our wedding-night suite. I know a lot of people spend the night with a sister or friend, but I appreciated having the room to myself. Plus I knew I was going to be tossing and turning so it made sense to not ruin someone else's sleep!

If you are married, did you spend the night before your wedding with someone else? If you aren't married, would you want to stay with someone or sleep by yourself?  After many many years of living alone, it just felt right to stay by myself that night! Plus it would have been weird to have another person stay in the bed I was going to be sharing with Phil on our wedding night.  Ha.

Our Wedding: Wedding Week

Now that we have all our wedding photos back, I'm ready to start to my series of wedding recap posts! I thought I'd start off with the lead up to the big day!

Fortunately, I have a very generous vacation package so I was able to take off most of the week of our wedding. Phil gets less vacation time so he worked up until the day before the wedding. I worked on Monday and was off for the rest of the week! My first day off was fairly low key.  I had some errands to run and details to finalize but I didn't have a ton to do (well, besides obsessively checking the weather). Our wedding week was extremely rainy and the forecast flipped back and forth between saying it would or wouldn't rain. While our wedding wasn't outdoors, I wanted all of our pictures to be taken outdoors since we were getting married in such a pretty area of Minneapolis.

It rained every day that week, except our wedding day. I was feeling pretty stir crazy, though, so I didn't let the rain prevent me from getting a run in on Tuesday morning. I did end up getting poured on during this run but I didn't mind and it was my fastest run this spring, and I have yet to run that kind of pace (8:40ish) since that day!

One good thing about ALL the rain is that everything looked so lush and green!

I got through my to-do's pretty quickly so had enough time to make roasted chicken and veggies!  On Tuesday I remember thinking that wedding week was going to be a cinch!  I was so naive - little did I know that Wednesday and Thursday were going to be a little stressful/jam-packed!

That 'I've got this' vibe dissipated pretty quickly on Wednesday, which was a totally over-scheduled day. The day started off great with breakfast with my friend Courtney and her 18 month old, followed by my final dress appointment where Courtney learned the complicated bustle process. After that, I headed downtown to drop off all the hotel bags and get my brows waxed.

There was one snafu that I tried to deal with that day. I had put my garden in the previous Saturday and despite the fact that I wore sunscreen, I got tan lines from the tank top I wore.  Womp womp. I thought they were fine and would fade but my alterations lady said I really should get them taken care of by getting a spray tan.  So I made an appointment for the late afternoon but when I got there, the woman decided it was best to not get a spray tan because I got a very slight sunburn along the edges of the tank top and if you have burned your skin at all, there's a risk that you will peel after the spray tan, which will look even worse.  So I decided to just deal with having tan lines. Luckily I had a veil so it wasn't very noticeable during the ceremony which was the only part of the day when people were really focusing on my back!!

After that debacle, Phil and I headed to pick up Amber at the airport and then we took her to one of our favorite restaurants for dinner. Phil and Amber hadn't met but had heard a lot about each other so it was great that they had a chance to get to know each other! After dinner we headed to pick up Kyria at the airport!

Reunited and it feels so good! And yes, I'm the only one in pajamas in this photo. Ha.

I am so glad that I got some extra time with these two ladies and they got a chance to see where we live! Phil had met Kyria before as she was our host/tour guide when we went to San Francisco last April. They are clearly 'old friends' in Phil's mind because when we walked in the door, Phil asked Kyria if she wanted a beer and when she said yes, he told her to grab him one from the fridge, too.  Ha.  Luckily, Kyria gets Phil's sense of humor and wasn't put off by his, um, lack of hospitality!

This is getting lengthy so I'll stop there! My next post will cover Thursday, the day before the wedding which included a ladies lunch and mani's/pedi's and our rehearsal dinner. It was also the day when I became a complete scatterbrain.

If you've been married, were you calm during the week of your wedding? Luckily, my 'stressed' phase was fairly contained and by my wedding day I was referred to as "Bridechilla" by the hair and make-up people.  :) 

TGIF!

Whew - summer is definitely here in the midwest, and I am loving it! I know there are varying opinions about hot weather but I personally love it!  And my garden is loving it, too!  Here's how my week shaped up!

The high of my week was being able to go for a run in Chicago. This is the first business trip where I've been able to go for a run - on past trips my hip just wasn't healthy enough for a run. It felt great to log some miles along the shores of Lake Michigan. I did get caught in a downpour but it was still a great run despite that!

The low of my week was dealing with the frustrating process of changing my name at work. I've changed my name on my social security card, drivers license, and at one bank and it was very easy. Changing it at work has been a disaster. From day to day and from morning to afternoon, emails switch from coming from my maiden name and my married name. And one day emails were coming from Lisa Stegner (my last name is SEGNER). It's been so frustrating! We were acquired by a company 2 years ago and this year we switched over to their HR center and it's been a disaster - about half of my paychecks have had errors due to expense reimbursement (not paying me in full, double paying, not paying me at all). So the debacle of the name change process is sort of the last straw for me!

A book I am reading is Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett. This is a novel that deals with mental health - specifically, depression. I've heard really good things about it so hopefully it lives up to my expectations.

For my workouts I ran and had a personal training session. I've had more rest days than usual this week as I struggle to get workouts in on days when I am traveling. I'm heading to the lake today and will go for a run with my sister tomorrow which I'm excited for!  I'll get back on track with workouts next week. Some weeks just have to be light weeks, especially a week when I will have spent 4 nights away!

The best money I spent was on a new auto insurance policy. Talk about 'adulting'. Phil added my car to his policy and we got a multi-car discount so my premium dropped and his dropped even further! Plus I was able to drop my renters policy at his house (I technically wasn't renting from him but I couldn't be added to his home owner policy until we were married). Yea for saving money! 

My plans this weekend include spending the weekend at the lake with my family. Phil is staying back so he can spend Father's Day with his mom as that day is a sad day for them (understandably so). I'm glad I'll get to celebrate Father's Day with my dear dad! Here are a couple of pictures of us from our wedding (hoping to start the wedding posts next week!)

What are you reading right now?  What was the high of your week?

Honeymoon Recap Part III: Favorite Things We Did in Maui

Hello from Chicago! I'm back with a post about favorite things we did in Maui!

One reason we were drawn to Hawaii as a honeymoon destination is that it's a beautiful, beach location but it also has hiking and other outdoorsy things to do. Since we were there for 9 days, we alternated days of relaxing/reading/snorkeling at the beach by our condo with days of exploration. This was the perfect approach for us as we came back from our honeymoon feeling relaxed and refreshed (well, except from dealing with the exhaustion of an overnight flight on the way back). We usually take shorter 3-5 day trips as Phil has limited vacation time and prefers shorter trips, but when we take shorter trips, we don't have the luxury of really relaxing since we always want to do and see as much as possible. I'm so glad this trip was longer and allowed for more down time because if there was ever a time that we needed to relax, it was after our wedding!!

This post will cover some of the adventures and day trips we did. I would also add that one of our favorite things we did in Maui was snorkeling right out in front of our condo! But this is a summary of our favorite excursions, outside of spending time on the beach! I debated breaking this up into 2 posts because it's going to be a bit really long, but in the end, I decided to just keep it as one post as it's going to be mostly pictures! So settle in for LOTS of Hawaii photos!

#1 - Waihe'e Ridge Trail - Phil and I LOVE to hike. We tend to pick vacation destinations with hiking options because it's one of our favorite things to do together. So it's no surprise that our first 'adventure' in Hawaii was a hike. This hike is located on the north shore of Hawaii, not far from the airport. It's a moderately challenging 4-5 mile (we saw conflicting info and I didn't wear my garmin that day) hike.

At the start of the hike

At the mid-way point! How gorgeous is that view of the ocean?

The beautiful, lush mountains of Hawaii

At the top of the hike, feeling like I'm on top of the world - literally and metaphorically!

If you do this hike, make sure you bring lots of water. I wore my camel back and we drank about 2 of the 2.5 liters it holds (I probably drank 2/3 of the water because Phil is like a camel and does not need to drink as much as I do!). This was probably my favorite thing we did in Hawaii. The views were so beautiful and it was awesome to be surrounded by gorgeous, lush mountains. We both said this is exactly what we picture when we think of Hawaii.

#2 - Kapalua Coastal Trail - Napili Bay is adjacent to Kapalua Bay, which has a beautiful point-to-point trail for walking/running. The trails starts at Kapalua Bay and ends at DT Fleming Beach. There is a parking lot at Kapalua Bay but it fills up early in the day so we opted to run to the trail head since it was so close to our condo. As the name of the trail implies, it runs along the ocean. The views are absolutely gorgeous!

We only did this run once which I kind of regret. In hindsight, I should have ran this trail on some of the mornings that Phil was sleeping in...  but it was also nice to relax in the mornings and read on the lanai so I can't say I regret it ALL that much. But hopefully we'll be back some day and can run it again!

# 3 - Snorkeling Excursion to Molikini - Snorkeling is one of our favorite things to do in tropical locations, so we knew we wanted to do a snorkeling excursion while we were in Maui. The snorkeling in front of our condo was amazing, so we debated whether we needed to spend the money to do a trip, but we are glad that we did because it was fun to see a different area. There are so many different tour companies to choose from and many of them come highly recommended, but we decided to go with Triology as they had the best ratings on yelp. We had a wonderful experience with them. Unfortunately I do not have any photos as we decided to leave our phones behind that day as we didn't want to risk having them get wet. Trilogy usually does 2 stops - one at Molokini, which is a crater island with great snorkeling, and another along the coast where you tend to see sea turtles. The visibility was 150-200 feet! The highlight of this trip was seeing a reef shark!  People have asked if that scared me, but it didn't not scare me at all - it was just like seeing another fish. Plus it wasn't huge and it's my understanding that they are not aggressive. On the way back they serve adult beverages, including mai thais which sure were refreshing after being in the sun so much!

#4 - Road to Hana - This is a very popular thing to do in Hawaii. Before our trip, I read my friend Kelly's post about The Road to Hana. We debated whether to do this because it's a long day and a difficult drive with all the winding roads and single-lane bridges. But we ultimately decided to do it. I'm glad we did it (Phil might feel differently because he did 100% of the driving - I did offer to drive on the way back, though!) but we wouldn't do it again on future trips to Maui and I wouldn't say it something you HAVE to do.

If you do this drive, buy the GyPSy ap for the drive. It runs off your GPS so you don't need cell service for it to work (which is good because there is little to no cell reception for much of the drive). The guide tells you about the different stops and what is worth stopping for. On the way back, he gives you the history of Hawaii, which is fascinating and heart-breaking.

One thing we never would have noticed or known about if it wasn't for the ap was the rainbow eucalyptus trees, with the ap points out as we drove past. The ap also told us to stop at a free Botanical garden to see them up close.

Not the best picture, but how cool are these colorful trunks?

Some of the stops were short, like this stop on the Keanae Peninsular. We stopped and got fresh, warm banana bread here, which I wasn't able to eat due to my gluten intolerance (doh!) but Phil thoroughly enjoyed it.

This little guy hitched a ride for us for awhile after we left the peninsular!

One of our favorite stops was Wainapanapa State Park, which has a black sand beach. We stopped here for quite awhile as there is a lot to see.

Selfies in one of the coves

The black sand beach

We also saw several waterfalls along the road, like this one!

Our final stop was Haleakala National Park for the Pipiwai Trail. This was a fairly easy hike, but the views along the trail were gorgeous as you hiked through a bamboo forest. I took so many pictures

The beautiful Banyan tree we saw before getting into the bamboo forest

Hiking through the bamboo forest was just amazing. The bamboo were swaying in the slight breeze, which resulted in a chorus of bamboo clinks. It was so peaceful and beautiful.

At the end of the hike, there is a cool 400 foot waterfal!

At the start of the trail there are some pools that you used to be able to swim in, but they have closed them for safety reasons. We thought this hike still made the stop worthwhile.  It is about 45 minutes beyond Hana, though. At this point we turned around and headed back. The road does go beyond this stop but it's not paved for part of it and rental cars prohibit driving on it.  After the rental car damage debacle in Bend, we decided not to take the risk of damaging another car and we turned back.

It was about a 10-11 hour day, so if you aren't in Maui for a week or more, I would probably skip this excursion as it's a very long day!  And Phil would tell you that the drive was pretty awful because of the countless single-lane bridges. We would also advise renting a smaller car if you are going to do this drive because the roads are quite narrow. We met so many jeeps on this road and were glad we didn't rent a jeep as there would barely be enough room for 2 jeeps to meet at certain parts of the road! Also, if you get car sick - don't do this drive!  We saw one person throwing up in a tour van, and another on the side of the road. There are 600+ turns on this road so it's not a drive for those who get motion sickness in cars!

#5 - Sliding Sands Trail at the summit area of Haleakala National Park - We opted not do sunrise at Haleakala National Park as I couldn't convince Phil to get up at 3 am to drive 2 hours to see the sunrise. You need admission tickets to do this (in the past you just showed up), and we weren't able to secure tickets in advance. I could have tried to get a ticket as they release more 48 hours before each sunrise, but we decided to visit it another time besides sunrise. Please note that this is in a completely different area than the Pipiwai trail that we did on the Road to Hana. It was cool to see a volcano and I'm glad we checked it out as I don't know when we'll be up close and personal with a (dormant) volcanic region again!

If you made it this far - CONGRATULATIONS. This was one super long post. But hopefully if someone stumbles upon it, they'll have a nice summary of the best things we did in Hawaii!

That wraps up my honeymoon posts!  Any extra questions or things you wish I would have covered? I highly, highly recommend going to Maui if you have the opportunity/budget to do so. It is a pricey destination but I would say we did not spend all that much money on this trip as we used airline miles for our flights and saved a lot of money staying in a condo versus a resort. It was the trip of a lifetime. Now I'm trying to convince Phil that we should try to buy an investment property here so we can go back for future vacations and rent it out when we aren't there. He's not *quite* on board with that yet because we are planning to move (within the same neighborhood) next year.

Weekend Recap + a Shouldless Sunday

Happy Monday, everyone!  Did you have a great weekend?  Mine was excellent!  I kept it pretty unplanned because this week is really busy (work trip to Chicago Tuesday-Thursday, heading to the lake for Father's Day Friday-Sunday). I'm also still reveling in the joy of not planning a wedding. Don't get me wrong, getting married was amazing and the day was a dream come true, but it's SO MUCH WORK to plan a wedding. So I am fully enjoying just being married. I'm also enjoying not bleeding money (Frugal Phil is enjoying this aspect, too).

Here's how we filled our weekend!

On Friday I had a mandatory work from home day, which was required by our business continuity/disaster recovery group. Basically they want to make sure that everyone can work from home in the event that something happened in our office. My job is not super conducive to working from home because I work in a collaborative team environment and some of my excel work is really complex and requires two screens. So it wasn't my most *productive* day. But Oscar seemed to love having me around!

My office mate for the day

It was a beautiful summer day so on Friday night I enjoyed a glass of wine on the patio before dinner while Phil cooled down with water after his run. By the way, if you are a white wine drinker, do yourself a favor and buy these glasses from amazon! My mom gave them to me for my birthday and we registered for 2 more for our wedding. You keep them in the freezer. They keep your wine nice and chilled!

I've been on a mission to use up some of the meat from our farm share that's been accumulating in our freezer over the last several months. So on Friday night we had grilled pork chops and asparagus with baked sweet potatoes. The pork chop looks huge but it's a bone-in pork chop so it was a reasonable serving for one person!

Grilled meals are my favorite!

After dinner, we watched the movie Lion which was so sad and heart-breaking, especially since it's based on a true story.

On Saturday morning I was up at 6 am because my body doesn't seem to know how to sleep in! Oscar was waiting patiently for her treats when I came down to make coffee.

Don't forget to give me my treats!

She enjoyed a drink from the sink before heading back upstairs to cuddle with Phil.

I know some people are probably outraged that we let our cat drink from the sink, but you do you! We wipe our counters down frequently. Phil established this routine with her when she was a kitten so there's no way we could ever break this habit.

After breakfast, I headed out to meet 2 friends at a Bounce barre class at Balanced Barre. This is an exercise class on trampolines that I did in March. I loved it so much that I bought a 10 class package. It's a long drive from our house as it's in the west metro in Wayzata, but I love the class so much that I'm willing to drive 25-30 minutes. That's saying a lot coming from a girl that hates to drive! After class I grabbed coffee with my girlfriends. I love combining exercise and girl time!

When I got home, Phil made brunch for us. And then I received an email from our photographer saying our wedding galley was ready to view a week earlier than expected - so I got sucked into that for over an hour. I absolutely LOVE our photos. I'm going to start putting together wedding recap posts later this month when I have some downtime!

It was over 90F that day so I had to pull myself away from the wedding galley to water and weed my garden as it needs water every other day right now since it's been so hot. I am absolutely amazed at how fast my garden has been growing. These 2 pictures were taken 8 days apart!

June 2

June10

It was so warm, humid and windy on Saturday so by the end of the afternoon, I looked like Ms. Frizzle from the Magic School Bus books.

There's no taming this hair on warm, humid, windy days!

On Saturday night we went to mass at the church where we got married. It was neat to be back in the church where we said I do! After church, we went to our favorite Mexican taqueria, Maya Cuisine, for taco platters. We love this place. The food is so good and inexpensive (our 2 taco platters were $20), and they make their corn tortillas in house. I was too hungry/excited for my food to take a picture.

After dinner we got together with friends that live close to us for a game night. We frequently have game nights with this couple as they live about 10 minutes away and also love playing games. Plus they have an 18 month old so tend to be home in the evening most weekends. We played Catan which is a strategy game that Phil and his college friends love playing. It has a major learning curve, especially when you are playing with people who are experts at it, but I won for the first time ever!

Woo hoo! I won! (I'm usually dead last)

We woke up to strong storms (heavy rain, wind, and hail!) on Sunday morning and the weather seemed unlikely to clear up, so on a whim I decided to make it a shouldless day. Our honeymoon was a long stretch of shouldless days, but it's nice to have one of those days at home!

Since it was raining, instead of running I decided to do a 21 day fix workout mid-morning. I did the total body cardio workout, which is my favorite one as it's so hard and leaves me sore for 2 days afterwards!

Ms. Frizzle, the post-workout edition

After the workout, I had a simple lunch of cottage cheese, leftover grilled chicken apple sausage, and chips and pickles. Mmm, I love pickles.

The rest of the day was pretty lazy. I made some ham and northern bean soup as I had ham from our meat share that I wanted to use up. Besides that, I laid on the couch and read.

I had some company!

I wish I looked this cute when I sleep!

She did eventually make her way over to my chest. Her purrs lulled me to sleep! I woke up from my nap, video chatted with Amber, and ate soup for dinner (an odd summer meal choice, I know, but I eat soup year-round).

Phil got home from his mom's around 8 on Sunday evening. We caught up on our days and before we knew it, it was bed time!

What was the best part of your weekend? My favorite part was playing (and winning) Catan with our friends!

Honeymoon Recap Part II: What/Where We Ate

I'm back with a 2nd post in my Maui recap series - what/where we ate!  Every couple has their own approach to dining out. I will say that our approach is a little bit different for two reason. One - I have a gluten intolerance which is the #1 driving force behind where/what we eat.  So I always start by looking for places with gluten free options and I read the gluten free reviews for the restaurant on yelp. Two - Phil and I are not big spenders when it comes to eating out. We all value different things, and expensive meals isn't one of them for us. We appreciate good food, but don't feel like we get enough utility out of expensive meals to make it worthwhile for us.  We do go out for nicer meals occasionally, but it's usually a 1-2 times of year kind of thing.

For example, several people recommended that we go to Mama's Fish House when we were in Maui. Except it was in Paia, which was on the opposite side of the island from where we were staying, so a 1+ hour drive for us. We were in that area several times when doing site seeing/hiking, but it's a fine dining restaurant so we couldn't exactly show up unshowered and in hiking clothes.  :) Plus, the entrees were all in the $60-75 range. I am sure the food is incredible there, but we just couldn't justify spending THAT MUCH on a meal out, especially when you factored in the long drive to and from the restaurant.

We did consider going out for one nicer meal at the end of our trip but ended up skipping it because at the end of the day, we were pretty tired from being out and about and in the sun, so opted to go somewhere casual so we didn't have to deal with waiting for a table or getting dressed up. Some people build their vacation days around where they want to eat; we are the opposite as we build our days around what we want to do and then we find a place to eat that is convenient, reasonably priced, has gluten free options and positive reviews on Yelp. I'm sure our approach to eating out doesn't jive with what others like to do on vacation but like I said before, but my mantra for life is - YOU DO YOU!

That said, we found some awesome casual and fairly inexpensive places to eat while we were on vacation. Our favorite place, which we went to 3 times (!!!) was The Fish Market Maui. It's halfway between Kaanapali and Napili Bay and was only 3 miles from our condo. It's a casual/take-out kind of place so there's no ambiance but the food was so good and inexpensive. I each 2 tacos every time alternating between pork, grilled fish or shrimp for the filling and we would split a basket of french fries. They also had a fresh fish counter where you could buy fillets to cook at home. We saw locals eating here which was a good indication that it was a good place to eat!

grilled fish and shrimp tacos = YUM!  This is the combo I got 2 out of 3 times.

And since we were in Hawaii, I had to get shaved ice for dessert a couple of times.  I loved snocones as a kid - in fact I loved them way more than ice cream!  And shaved ice is even better. My favorite place was Ululani's in Lahaina as I think they had the best flavors.

Another place we loved was Paia Fish Market. Paia is the name of a town, but they have restaurants in other towns, such as Lahaina. We liked the food so much that we ended up eating in both their Lahaina and Paia locations. The first time we split an appetizer (ahi tuna) and the fish dinner (pictured below). The second time we just split the fish lunch because it was so much food! I'm always reminded that Phil and I are not huge eaters when eating out because we often split things but will see others eat what we ordered on their own (we saw lots of people eating the fish plate below on their own). Phil and are about the same size/weight and tend to graze throughout the day so that's why it works for us to share things.

Another popular dish in Hawaii is Poke! Every supermarket we went into had a poke section in their deli, but we went to Foodland Farms in Lahaina as that store has so many positive reviews on yelp. We tried 2 different kinds of Poke over rice and it only cost $9.99!  We weren't super hungry the evening we got this, so it was plenty to fill us both up.

Not the best picture but this poke was delicious - this is a small fraction of what we got from the deli!

And of course, lots of our meals were prepared in our condo and enjoyed on our lanai.  Like this fresh fruit bowl. The pineapple, mango, and papaya were grown in Hawaii, but the banana came from Ecuador (random, huh?  We thought bananas were grown in Hawaii!).

And most mornings Phil would make hashbrowns, eggs, and chicken sausage for breakfast.

Nothing could beat that view.  Phil and I both get sick of eating out pretty quickly so having a kitchen is a must for any vacation that is longer than a couple of days!

We definitely ate well while we were in Maui and pretty much exclusively ate fish when we ate out!  Things are definitely pricey in Maui, but if you look around, you can find reasonable places to eat. But if you don't do some research, you might end up at an over-priced place. Like the night we arrived in Maui and ate at a Mexican restaurant in Lahaina where a taco plate with rice and beans cost $20+ (which I feel is an unjustified price tag for a basic Mexican meal)!

What is your eating out style when you vacation? Do you like to splurge on meals out or do you tend to consider the cost when eating out? I don't want it to sound like Phil and I don't appreciate good food, because we do.  We just don't value eating at pricier restaurants when there are reasonably priced options with wonderful food.