Tuesday Jan 13th 2010
The alarm went off at 3:45 a.m.! Do you know the last time my eyeballs saw 3:45? Yeah me neither. Who in the world booked a 6:00 a.m flight? Oh yeah Santa.
The flight seemed like it took days to get there. I guess I was to excited to get there. We had a stop in LA and it was so rainy and dark. I will never forget when our plane climbed up through the clouds in LA and popped out to the most beautiful bright sun. The clouds were all puffy and white. I wished my camera would have been within reach. With a big grin on my face I knew at that point this was going to be a great trip. And for the next 7 days the sun just kept on shining!
WELCOME TO HAWAII
Our first day was a little bit rough with the time difference and getting up at 3:45 in the morning didn't help. Everyone was so excited to be there but exhausted at the same time so we just spent some time walking around and getting to know Waikiki.
While we were there we did a lot of fun things.
We visited the Dole Pineapple Plantation were we took a short train ride around the plantation. Did you know pineapples grow on bushes? And then we did the World’s largest Maze. We only got lost a few times ;).
The Polynesian Cultural Center was really fun. We even got to see a guy climb the palm tree (that was on my kids list). The Luau was fun and the show at night was really good.
I fell in love with the North Shore. Next time I would like to stay over there. It was just so beautiful, the ocean waves were huge and everything just seemed so green. One of my favorite parts was the temple. We have so many temples here in Utah I hadn’t expected it to have such an impact on me but when we turned the corner and saw the glowing white temple and the beautiful grounds my heart melted. We went into the visitor’s center and watched a fun movie on the history of the area.
Pearl Harbor was really neat. I am glad we went. To be honest we (Ok maybe “we” being the kids and I ) were not sure we wanted to take half a day and go but we are all glad we did. It was a neat experience. As you can see from the picture we had a veteran on our tour with us. When we went into the part of the memorial that has all the names listed on the wall he stood up and saluted while tears ran down his checks.
We spent tons of time at the beach. We would go hang out until late afternoon and then walk across the street to our hotel, grab some lunch on the way and relax and swim in the pool. What a life. ;)The weather was great the whole trip.
My favorite time at the beach is sunset there is nothing quit like it.
These were some of the animals we saw at the Hilton (they are real small behind us). Check out the flamingos! I loved them and penguins in Hawaii? Do they like warm weather??
Our hotel was decorated in a fun beachy theme
Shower at the pool
I am not usually one to take scenic pictures. I always say who wants to look through a bunch of pictures of stuff that means nothing to them so I usually always try and stick someone in the picture. But with landscape like this I couldn't resist.
I have got to tell you my husband rocks! I am so thankful to be married to someone who supports my crazy dreams of traveling. I just came across a quote that said "True happiness is when your reality far exceedes your dreams" This trip was amazing and Mike has made another one of my dreams come true.
We truely had a great time. The kids were great and everyone got along so well. Ya know I have great kids. They were very well behaved and seem to really appreciate the fact that we were there. I hope it will be memories the will remember forever.
I told you I took tons of pictures. Oh don't worry I have a lot more where these came from. Our sunset "photo shoot" will have to make another post on another day ;)>
