Hawaii!

Ah...where to begin? We loved our trip to Maui. My parents took us to Maui for a week and it was wonderful. I had been to Maui once before when I was 13 and Joe had never been. We were both looking forward to some time together after surviving the first semester of law school. It just so happened that we celebrated our 5th anniversary while we were there, too.

We flew out of Boise the day after Christmas. We had only a short layover in Seattle and so we were worried when we realized our first flight was delayed. We had to literally run across the airport to our next flight and we made it just in time. Our bag wasn't as fortunate... :(. We had to admit, though, that being in Hawaii without our stuff was still much better than not being in Hawaii. We landed Friday night and ended up getting our luggage midday Sunday, so it wasn't too bad. We were kind of a scrappy looking couple in church, though. :)

We got to do a lot of fun stuff while we were there. Joe golfed twice with my dad and I laid out by the pool and swam in the ocean with my Mom. Joe and I got to go to a luau one night and see a world champion fire-dancer guy.

Here's a boat-load of pictures of all of our adventures:

Here's right after we got our clothes on Sunday. Joe laughed at me because I was complaining about not having any good clothes right after we got our bag. Such a girl thing to do...

All of the pictures with my parents are on my dad's camera so I might post more if I get copies of those. These are just a whole bunch of us.

Joe and I decided to drive up the road to Hana on Monday and had a great time. I would definitely recommend it to anyone going to Maui, although it did take most of the day and we didn't even travel the whole road.

We hiked up this path
(Note: Some of these pictures are poor quality since they were taken with a cheapie waterproof camera. I even ruined some of them when I couldn't remember how to correctly wind the film back by hand.)

Stopping to pose
We loved these Rainbow Eucalyptus trees.
A view of the road

We stopped at this stand so Joe could get a coconut and some avocados. The woman there chopped the coconut with this huge machete. Joe learned that eating almost all of a large coconut + driving a long, winding road = carsickness. Luckily he wasn't too sick.

Another view

We stopped to see a little mountain pool and decided to take a dip. It was freezing but so worth it.

We stopped at the Waianapanapa Black Sand Beach and swam in the ocean there. It was beautiful.

We saw this stand and got a little homesick for our kids back in Twin Falls.

Tuesday was an awesome day. We got to go on a helicopter ride with my parents. Unfortunately, we didn't have the best of weather so we didn't get to see as much. Still, it was amazing and pretty surreal to be riding in an actual helicopter. The views were beautiful. The maneuvering of the helicopter was frightening but fun.

Our helicopter

These are some of the highest sea-cliffs in the world (on Moloka'i island)

They say this island looks like a sleeping elephant.
I definitely see it.

These next pictures are from Thursday, when we got to snuba. It's a cross between scuba and snorkeling where the oxygen tanks float on rafts and you are connected by a long tube. So, you can go like 20 ft under and you don't need any certification. It was really fun and I would highly recommend it. Joe especially loved it was talking about even getting certified to scuba dive in the future.

Us with my dad
Most of the pictures of the fish aren't very good. I guess nothing compares to being there underwater.

We didn't see any turtles but we did get to interact with this octopus.
We also saw a ton of whales and some dolphins while we were on the boat.

After eating dinner with my parents, we went out on our anniversary to go see the movie Austrailia. We had time to kill beforehand so we played around at a little arcade by the theater. We played a bunch of skee-ball, air hockey, and had mini-basketball competitions. Of course I have to mention that I won at skee-ball and basketball and we tied 1-1 in air hockey :). We both really liked the movie, too. As simple as it seems, that night was actually one of the highlights of the trip for me. I just love how much fun I have when I'm with Joe. I can't believe it's been 5 years now. I know to some of you that probably seems like nothing but it's a big deal to me. It has been a wonderful 5 years.

I definitely don't think we're going to top this anniversary for quite awhile... :)

One of Joe's favorite things was to look at the tide pools so I'm putting these pictures in for his benefit:

An eel he saw
A hermit crab in a shell
Sea urchins

I like tide pools but I can't spend as much time looking at them as Joe can. Maybe it's because of the field trips to tide pools in elementary school.

This is what I was doing while Joe explored:

I love swimming in the ocean. I think it's one of my absolute favorite things to do. I love to swim out as far as I can before I get scared. I love to float. I love to body-surf in the waves and feel like a little kid again. I love that scared/excited feeling when a big wave is coming at you. I even love getting rocked by a big wave. Sometime I'd like to try surfing. It was wonderful swimming in ocean water that wasn't freezing cold.

And of course, it wouldn't be a Hawaiian trip recap without pictures of beautiful sunsets.

We had such a great time and we can't say thank you enough, Mom and Dad, for letting us come with you. We had so much fun hanging out with both of you. It was amazing being surrounded by so much beauty. It was sure nice to wear shorts and flip-flops, too, after being in a snow storm in Idaho :). We love you!

We also can't thank Marsha enough for taking care of our girls while we were gone. How can we ever repay you? It was so nice to just be together and to know the girls were in good hands. Thank you again! By the end of the week, we were really missing them and were excited to come home. We had three flight legs on the way home and some long layovers so it took awhile but we finally made it. They were so excited to see us and gave us big hugs. I cried, of course. Natalie was being so sweet and just kept looking at me and smiling. Elizabeth gives the tightest hugs ever. It was nice to feel loved. Trips like these are great for realizing how much I take my time with my girls for granted. I'm so thankful for such sweet, precious daughters.

After we got back from Hawaii, we spent a day longer in Idaho with Joe's mom and brothers and their families, who were all in town for a little reunion. Then, we drove down to Logan to his dad's for a night. Elizabeth started throwing up that night but was luckily fine in the morning. Then, it was down to Salt Lake (which took 3 hours because of snow!) where we spent one night at Jon and Jaime's so Joe could quickly visit a friend in Provo. Unfortunately, Natalie got sick that night and threw up all night. We had been planning on leaving in the morning and just decided to go, even though she threw up as we were getting ready to go. Blessing of all blessings...she actually did pretty well. She threw up once while we were stopped for lunch so it wasn't too bad and we could clean her up right there. Then, she didn't throw up again until we were about 10 minutes from home. Somehow, we made it.

Needless to say, after a red-eye flight and sick kids, we were both pretty exhausted and were so happy to be home.

Well, I doubt anyone made it to the bottom of this post and that's OK. What a great trip!