For those of you who don't know, I went to Hawaii with one of my favorite families at the end of April to help out, sort of as a somewhat nanny. Mike had a dental convention to attend, so they made a family trip out of it. So, now that it has been over a month since going to Hawaii, I figured I might share some pictures :) Just a tidbit: I didn't bring a camera (I know, I know, dumb girl), so I had to steal all the pictures from the Lemmes.
Here's the fab fam. We all got lei'd at the airport :)
We got there, stopped at Costco to get some goods for the week, settled at our temp home, then headed to the beach! My mom's favorite, actually.
Bellows Beach
It was a little bit later in the afternoon, but still gorgeous!
I absolutely love the girls in this picture!
Everywhere you go, there's a picture perfect moment full of natural beauty! Almost like Whidbey Island ;)
Sunday, we attended church. We got the times wrong, so we weren't able to attend Sacrament meeting, but we got to catch Relief Society, Priesthood, Primary, and Nursery. Everyone needs to visit a Hawaiian ward. Everyone was so incredibly welcoming and warm! It was wonderful. President and I got lei's and kisses on the cheek. It was awesome.
Then, we headed to the USS Arizona Memorial.
Here's the oil coming from the 67.5 year sunken ship.
Mike took this awesome picture of the Memorial.
After that, we went on an amazing scenic drive. It was a super long road up this awesome hill/mountain thing. Asher asked if we were in a jungle. We stopped a few times to get some incredible shots of the view.
Oh, and keep in mind I had to deal with this...
... and this the whole time! Sick, huh?
Mike attended classes at the convention from monday until thursday, from about 7:30 til 4. So, we hit the beaches! This picture is basically the epitome of our beach time. Halle hoppin' the waves with me or President, Haven on her hands and knees pretending to be a dog or playing with her whale or doing who-knows-what (she was content for hours upon hours doing this), and Asher would get semi-close to the water then go play in the sand, back and forth between the sand and water. We spent 5 and a half hours at the beach our first day. And the kids did not get sunburned! (President and I did awesome *toot-toot*). We didn't do so well on keeping ourselves all sun-blocked up though :(
Everyone was pretty tired the whole time, but the kids were all sorts of sleepy.
We hit up the market at the stadium on... Wednesday, I think. Halle was a kick-butt shopper.
This is the house we stayed at for the first six days/five nights in Hawaii Kai. It was huge and awesome. We don't have a picture of the second house, but it was just as awesome in a different way. It was a lot more ethnic (you walked in and knew you were in an authentic Hawaiian home). We were on the North Shore, about a block's walk to the beach.
This...
... and this was our view from the first house.
Thursday:
We hit up Blow Hole. I'm kind of anti-wave-pictures. My dad scarred me from visiting there a few years ago, and he took about a trillion pictures of the same-looking waves :)
It was super windy (not good when you're wearing a skirt, just FYI).
Then, we picked up Mike from his last class and headed to the second house. We made a pit stop at the Dole Plantation, ate some wicked pineapple ice cream, and checked out the tons of pineapples.
Then, we headed to the beach right next to the house. The waves were INSANE! They were huge and super close to the shore. Needless to say we didn't go wave-hopping.
Eventually, they eased their way in though. I love this picture of Halle. Her face looks so happy and laughy.
Friday, we headed to BYU Hawaii and...
... the PCC (Polynesian Cultural Center). My favorite (and I'm sure, everyone else's favorite) guy was there making fire, busting open coconuts, making milk, and cracking people up.
After touring some of the "islands" we went to the luau, where the kids got invited to do some dancin. How funny are Asher and that other little boy?
Girl picture!
After the luau and a dash of shopping, we went to the big show. Which was awesome!! Asher was exhausted. Don't ask me how he fell asleep with all the drums, foot pounding, yells, singing, flame throwing, music, and dancing.
Mike and President were going to attend the temple, but it was boarded up for cleaning or something! So we decided that they would be blessed because they had full intentions of going.
Saturday we went to yet another beach (we had to have gone to at least 4 different ones). After attempting some snorkeling, Halle, Asher, and Mike were hard at work at their awesome sand castle/village/kingdom.
After the beach, we had to try the famous shave ice (I'm still uber confused as to why it isn't shaveD ice) of Hawaii.
We headed for home early Sunday morning. And it's been everyday, normal life ever since. Thanks Lemme fam!! It was wonderful and marvelous and fan-flipping-tastic :)
Title explanation: check out the P.S.S of
this post :)
Be thankful:
I cut the picture count down from 248, then to 45, then to 28, and left out a lot of commentary... and I may have just forgotten a few things about our trip...
