Thursday January 12, 2012

I got one of the best surprises today. I opened up my facebook private messages and there sat a message from my friend Tiffany Price which said “Hey my gorgeous sis! I’m going to be in Maui on a work trip! I get in at 930p.m Friday night (tomorrow) my layover is 26hrs. It would be awesome to see you! Maybe a few drinks on Friday night or lunch the next day?? Hope you are free! Let me know xoxo”

(Background): Tiffany Price is one of my best friends of almost 10 years. I met her when I was newly 18 years old when I was a host at Chili’s in Waikiki. She was one of the senior servers and she always got scheduled section 7 (which in old Chili’s world that section was the shit) 6 tables, 3 two tops and 3 four tops. It was a turn and burn money making section and Tiffany loved to keep it full. Being a host (a young 18 year old host at that) I was naturally a little intimated by the servers since they could be very nasty. If you didn’t seat them in the right rotation, sat them the wrong kind of people, didn’t seat them enough, sat them too much and the list goes on. Tiffany however was always so nice, she would come up to me at the beginning of my host shift with her long blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail and say “slam me.” As she would walk back up to her section her long ponytail would sway back and forth and it would always remind me of a beautiful unicorn. She would never complain about anything. I eventually looked forward to working with Tiffany and she quickly took me under her wing. She made sure the other servers weren’t mean to me and if they were she would stick up for me. She was one of my first friends on island and at Chili’s; we worked together for 4 years and during that time we became very close. So close that guests often thought we were sisters which of course we loved!

Eventually after I graduated from HPU I moved off island and Tiffany also moved shortly after to take on a new opportunity as an airline attendant. We kept in touch and saw each other at one of our best friend Shauna’s wedding (which is probably some of the funniest memories I have of us). After Shauna’s wedding we kept in touch via facebook, text and through other friends but never got the opportunity to see each other. Needless to say when I got that inbox message and did the math I couldn’t believe that 4 years had passed since we were last together.

(Fast Forward): Tiffany in the past 4 years has been traveling the world (literally). She has been blessed with so many opportunities and trips as a flight attendant and it just so happened that on January 11^th she got a call to make the trip to OGG, hence the unexpected above message. I couldn’t believe it and that night when I got home I excitedly reminded Colt all about Tiffany. I couldn’t wait for them to meet!

Friday was a busy day for all of us, Colt worked, Tiffany worked/flew for 12 hours and I worked 12 hours since I had an event. Finally after what seemed like forever Tiffany arrived to meet Colt, Eric and I in Lahaina at Moose’s at 11:15 p.m. Of course the second we saw each other it was as if we just got off a work shift at Chili’s 8 years ago. Time wasn’t an issue and we talked, laughed, drank and danced the night away.

The next day Tiffany and I spent our morning catching up. We talked about her career, my career, life, friends and my wedding. Since she had spent the night with us in Kihei we decided it would be a good idea to go take advantage of some pool time at the Hyatt where she actually had a room. We picked up Colt from a job he was on with his Dad and drove down to Lahaina. Since it was a Sunday and later in the afternoon we grabbed some chairs at the outside pool bar while we watched the Pats smack the Broncos (love that!) We were getting sad since our 26 hours were coming to an end so we decided to talk about our next adventure which was our wedding. Tiffany would be flying in and we could not wait for her to come back! As we talked she explained that it would be easy and as long as she got the time off she could fly in for free and stay a couple nights. We were so happy that we already had another planned visit. As we continued to talk Tiffany wanted to know more details about our wedding and honeymoon. We told her all about the Grand and how excited we were. We told her our dreams and plans of a honeymoon in Bora Bora or anywhere overseas since Colt got comp nights at any four seasons in the world. We also told her that at this rate with us getting married at the Grand we would probably have to go somewhere closer to Maui since we were slightly over budget on our wedding and tickets to Bora Bora or anywhere out of Hawaii were close to $2,000 a piece. Without even as much as a blink of an eye Tiffany calmly says “Oh, I will give you buddy passes to anywhere in the world, where do you want to go?”

Wait, What…Wake Up!

I thought I might have had a little mini dream or maybe a temporary moment of insanity. Colt and I just looked at each other, looked at Tiffany and started laughing. Once I came back to reality I asked her if she was serious and with no hesitation she said she would be happy to do it and research it for us to make it happen. All she needed was a destination. I seriously felt the tears coming how could we even begin to thank her.

Colt and I talked all the way home, where would we go, what would we do and how could we ever thank her enough. We had just recently learned of a Four Seasons in Thailand that only has 15 luxury tented camps and Four Seasons employees can only request them if they are on their honeymoon. To make matters even better you get to tame and ride your own elephant while you are there. I couldn’t think of a better once and a life time opportunity especially on our honeymoon! We haven’t made a final decision yet but we are just out of our minds that we were even given such an amazing gift and opportunity. We truly have some of the best friends this world has to offer and Tiffany is living proof of that. We love you Unicorn ~