Jas and Suz have this thing they do with the kids, where they drum roll on the table at dinner and scream "best thing!" and then they go around the table and each person has to say what the best part of their day was. The couple times I've been a part of this, Caris has really impressed me with her witty answer, and JJ has pretty much just copied exactly what Caris said...it's real cute. Anyways, I was thinking about what I would say my "best thing" was from my first official Hawaii vacation day....you would think that would be a hard one, considering that yesterday was just a travel day, but "IT WAS THE BEST DAY!" Jess and I keep saying this....I'll explain:

First you should know, that I'm sitting in a little diner called Leann's, in a booth with cow print, eating the best pancakes-in San Francisco -yep that's right...I'm not even in Hawaii yet...We were about to board our plane to Honolulu, and the United Rep ask if anyone would mind being bumped to a later flight....the perks: a round trip plane ticket to anywhere in the US (no blackouts), 15 dollar food voucher, a free hotel stay, and flying first class to HNL the next day...needless to say we took it (props to our traveling companions for being so gracious when we told them we'd be ditching them for the evening) Oh, and we also met this really cool San Franciscan girl named Ida...who encouraged us to take the deal, and even gave us her number incase we had questions....we'll be seeing her this evening in First Class.

So last night we got to our hotel...nothing that great, but Free, so that's cool. We went on a walk...there's a little path right across the street that goes along the water ( I think it's the San Fran Bay) The planes come in over the water, and it actually looks like they're landing on the water. The temp was great, and it felt pretty neat to be able to say that I was in California.

Today, the plan is to go into town on a trolly, explore, walk 3 miles to "IN-N-OUT" Burger (this place Jess is raving about from her past LA experience), and then catch a shuttle to the airport, and fly to Hawaii. I figure it's a whole lot of eating, but with how expensive food is in HI, we should probably fill up now, and save the popcorn for later :).


Other Positives: Sat next to cool guy on flight to Chicago whose wife went to Malone, is a paster, had really good conversation (he compared church to airport - I'll have to tell you more about this later Jas, it was a great analogy), didn't run out of gas on the way to the airport (mom later told us how close we had really come), watched the movie New in Town on the flight to San Fran which was surprisingly good, saw Rachel before we left and got gift bag- thanks rach!, great service, and everyone was so friendly on the plane (shout out to UNITED), flew over the mountains- beautiful!

Negatives-hmmmmm? oh, no clothes, no pj's, wearing same outfit, and sleeping in.....well, you get the idea :)

Ok, this is way long....not sure if anyone read to the end, but I just want to remember everything! So thanks for listening to all the rambling.

More to come later- can't wait to meet up with Jay, Wen, and Leisyl, and to fly first class- that's a first :) We'll get to Hawaii at 7:30ish HI time.

Oh, and just so you know Elizabeth....my friend Ryan battles middle names everyone "Diane"- it's endearing- and just sort of funny.