Home Again!

We returned home from Hawaii one week ago today - a bittersweet departure. We had so much fun on our trip but I was too too excited to see my baby!!

So here's a run down of what we did:

Day #1 -We checked out our condo on the North Shore and then headed straight to the beach. This is me putting my feet in the ocean for the first time of the trip! (Do you see the joy on my face?!!)

We went swimming that evening and then watched the sunset from our beach (Sunset Beach) - then headed back to our condo for dinner (which happened to be soup, it was the cheapest thing at the local grocery store!). We had a little visitor for dinner too!

Day #2- We went for a bike ride up to the Turtle Bay Resort. We walked around the resort and headed to a pretty secluded beach and relaxed.

Later we bought some snorkeling gear and headed for Sharks Cove. That night we drove 45 miles to Waikiki and enjoyed a night in the city!

Day #3 - Went on a walk along the beach in the am - took a hike up to Waimae Falls and swam in the water hole, and then went to Waimae Bay to swim and snorkel. I decided I had to cliff jump at the popular spot before we left. It doesn't look that high but once your up there it seems a lot higher! :)

Day #4 - We went to church in Laie that morning (near BYU Hawaii). I really enjoyed the ward... there were 3 baby blessings that morning!! It was great to be apart of but it was the worst thing for me! It made me miss Jack SO much! Seeing all the families made me miss him as well. I became homesick at this point. - After church we went to the temple and walked around the grounds and went to the visitors center which was pretty cool.I don't know if you can tell from the pictures... but when we got there it was sunny and beautiful! While we were standing around taking pictures at the top of the temple, I noticed that down the street a ways it looked wet, like there were sprinklers on or something. All of a sudden a wall of water came toward us! The rain wasn't coming down from the sky... it was coming AT us. It was crazy! I've never seen anything like it before. We ran to cover and it took a mere 20 seconds but we were soaked! It was pretty fun!

The rest of the day we just drove around the leeward side of the island - it was SO beautiful!

Day #5 - We decided we had to visit the famous Hanauma Bay for some snorkeling. Unfortunately it was disappointing - there were lots of clouds and the water was pretty murky and so we could barely see 5 feet in front of us. But we had fun in spite of the conditions.

After leaving Hanauma Bay we had lunch at Costco (you can't beat lunch for $1.50) and then went for a hike up to Manua Falls. We thought this was WAY cooler than Waimae Falls and it didn't cost $10 a person to get in. The hike was so green and lush, it almost felt like a tropical forest!

After our hike we drove to this spot that looked out over Waikiki!

Day #6 - We went over to Kailua Bay and took a Kayak out and went over to some islands off the coast. When we got to we relaxed (it took almost an hour to get there...ahhh my arms were tired, thank goodness for Jared!) and then explored a little. We then kayaked back to the beach and swam around for awhile (this was a really nice beach) - you can see our islands in the background!

That night we went back to Sunset Beach (the beach we started our stay at) did some more swimming (which was probably the most fun we had swimming because the waves were getting a little bigger) and then watched the sunset again for the last time... it really was beautiful!

Day #7 - Going home... We started the morning with one last swim and then headed to the airport.

We were both sad to see our trip end, but also REALLY excited to see Jack! - We're so grateful to our good family who took such good care of him! We came home to a happy little guy who did really well while we were gone! Thank goodness!!

ALOHA!!