Hawaii Day 3

Okay Day 4 was Saturday. We started out by waking up early and hiking Diamond Head. It was an awesome hike! We arrived right at 6am when it opens and there were already tons of people there. Luckily with our totally fit bodies :) we were able to charge ahead most of the crowds. The views from the top were great! We were able to make it up and back down in about 45 minutes.

After breakfast and checking out of our hotel, we drove out to Pearl Harbor.  We looked a little through the museums and took the tour boat out to the USS Arizona.  This is a great memorial to see, since you can look down and see the boat still underneath you.  We could even see black spots of oil coming up from the ship still.

That afternoon we finally boarded our cruise ship.  This is a first cruise for both Michael and I.  We were pretty excited and spent the afternoon exploring the ship.  We were in the hot tub during the sail away party and excitement was high.  Michael wanted to get out and dance with everyone but I was in my swim suit and chickened out.

hawaii video

Michael brought a gopro helmet camera with us to Hawaii and made a short video with clips from his camera.  Enjoy!

Hawaii Day 2

Our second day in Hawaii we woke up early ready to go, which was good because we needed to drive up to the North Shore to go to the temple. We got to do a session in the beautiful Laie temple.

The rest of our day was just open to do whatever.  Michael really wanted to do some surfing, I just wanted to explore and maybe play on the beach for a bit.  The problem was we drove past some beaches that looked like they had some surfing going on but we didn't see places to rent surf boards close by and we didn't have a way to carry one on our rental car.  Where we found surf boards to rent the water was pretty placid and not good for surfing.  I should have planned out a better opportunity for Michael to surf, but this a picture of sad Michael with no waves to try and catch.

We did get to go Matsumotos for shaved ice and it was a yummy as I had remembered it being.

That night back in Waikiki we ate a Viet place to enjoy some of our favorite Pho Tai.  There was certainly not a shortage of Asians or Asian places in Waikiki. 

We walked along the beach back to our hotel that night, I always love the beach at night!

Hawaii Day 1

Ah! I need to blog our trip before I forget all the details.  I've been sick and dizzy since we got home so staring at a computer screen has not been appealing.  Here is my attempt at starting the posts, yeah!



We had a great time on our vacation.  First, the day before we drove up to St. George to drop off the kids at Grandpa and Grandma's house.  Our vacation officially started on May 24th, our 9 year anniversary.  We woke up early and drove from St. George to Las Vegas for our flight.  The time difference was a gain of 4 hours so we arrived in Honolulu at 12pm.  We spent the afternoon getting our luggage, rental car and checking into our hotel.  Our hotel was in Waikiki where you can walk to tons of shopping and eating so that's what we did.  This is our only picture of the whole day, getting some much needed dinner.  After eating we went and jumped in the ocean, I had to coerce Michael a bit and convince him the water is warmer than in California as he was starting to bemoan the fact that he didn't bring his full body wet suit.  After a quick swim we decided to go back to the hotel and take a nap.  Our plan was to get up after a few hours and get in a little night life but we woke at 8pm and both decided just to keep sleeping. Don't judge it was our vacation and we were adjusting to the time zone : )

Mischief

Our Avery sure is sweet, but she is constantly getting into something. Some days I feel like she is already a 2 year old instead of just 14 months. At this age Ethan was just learning to walk, let alone climbing, opening cabinets, or making large messes.

This is what happens when I go out to get the rest of the groceries and Avery finds strawberries in a bag I already brought in.  She opened it and ate almost half of the carton within 2 minutes. 

She loves the trashcan or any other closed object she's not supposed to open.

She also loves to color with all crayons and pens she finds, this is her with a screwdriver she thinks must be a pen. 

Family Pics

We had family pictures taken this past month, since the ones on my wall are about 4 years old. Overall they turned out well, there are some really good ones of my kids which I was happy about. The ones of me all look like I'm pregnant but I know next time I need to wear a more flattering shirt and suck it in. I can't wait to get them printed and up on my wall.

Wednesday Outfit

Wednesdays are Ethan's favorite day of the week because he has PE and after school gym games. He has a special outfit that he wants to wear every Wednesday because it is athletic and "makes him run faster." I try to remember to get it washed every week by Wednesday but sadly today it was still in the dirty clothes pile and he had to wear something else to school.

Here he is in his outfit last Wednesday. 

 

A couple of days out of the week I make no nintendo days, which  breaks my boys' hearts because they love their nintendo games.  Last week Ethan was very upset and said he had nothing to do.  So I sent him into our activity cupboard to find something.  He found a big book of construction paper, and one thing Ethan loves almost as much as nintendo is a "project" as he calls it.  So he called me downstairs to show me what he was calling "paper mania!"  Sigh, I hope these kids never grow up.