Hawaii

January 18 - 25

Remember this present I got for Christmas?

Well, the day finally came! Colby even had babysitters figured out for the whole week. Which is the hardest part about going on vacation without the kids. It was truly the greatest, most needed gift ever!! 

We drove to Vegas after work on Friday night, and flew to Honolulu arriving around 10:00 p.m. their time. Doug, Colby's boss, was there with some friends, so they picked us up and drove us to his condo on the North Shore, which is where we stayed for the week. He honestly made this whole trip possible! By the time we actually climbed into bed it was 3:00 a.m. at home, making it 12 hours since we had started traveling. We were beat!
First thing in the morning, I got up and opened the door to this beautiful sight

Aahhhh! Heaven!

We got dressed and drove in to a little town to get some breakfast and hit the grocery store.

Umm...if you ever go to Laie, you have to eat at the Hukilau Cafe.

Kind of a little whole in the wall place, but it's seriously the best. We ate there twice!

Rather than do a minute by minute list of our daily activities, I'll just show the highlights of it ;)

And mostly these pictures were taken for our kids. Seriously nothing super exciting.

We had the most lazy, relaxing, best time ever!

Hour after hour, daily, sitting by the beach, or at the pool. And we didn't really care if we even left to eat anything.

At the first part of the week, the waves were up to 20 - 30 ft high. So a lot of the beaches were closed and actually taped off on the east side. We drove down to Haleiewa, just for something to do almost everyday, but the first day stopped to take some pictures of the turtles on the beach.

Almost every morning we would go for a little walk/hike on the beach or just around the resort. I say hike because it actually gave us a little workout. It felt so good. The first day that we went, we came across a sign that said there was a monk seal close by and to not go near it. I looked up, and it was right there. We didn't go off the path, but were still so close to it. It was kinda cool, but I knew my kids would love seeing these.

 This was at the end of the hike. Because of the waves being so high at the first of the week, we couldn't go out very far on the rocks. And actually the picture doesn't even look like there's much further to go, but it's deceiving. By the end of the week we went clear to the edge of the rocks. 

 On Sunday, I felt kinda bad about not going to church. Kinda ;)

But we did drive down to the Temple. I really wanted to go and do a session, but I forgot my recommend, and Colby didn't have any church clothes.

I think the Laie Temple is one of the most beautiful Temples!

Bad sunburn from the first day at the pool

Some of the beaches we spent hours and hours at ;)

That's all the pictures I have. One of the days we drove down to Waikiki, and did some shopping. Actually, some walking around. I don't think we bought one thing! 

We stopped at the Dole plantation to get one of their yummy Dole Whips. 

We also drove to the Disney Aulani Resort just to check it out. It was pretty sweet. 

When we got home everyone kept asking if we needed another vacation to recover from our vacation.

We both would tell them no because we actually relaxed this time.

It was the best vacation we've had in years!!

Don't get me wrong, we missed our kids, and everyday would talk about how much fun they would be having with us just playing in the ocean and on the beach. 

And someday we want to take them there.

But for now, I'll say it one more time, 

we loved our lazy, relaxing, lay by the pool or beach all day vacation.

And neither one of us would change one thing about it!