Hawaii!!

We just spent a wonderful week in paradise celebrating our 5th anniversary and visiting Brandon's brother, Josh, and his family on the island of Oahu. They greeted us at the airport with some beautiful leis, a Hawaiin tradition.

We did lots of fun activities: snorkeling (we saw sea turtles!!) surfing, and sea kayaking to name a few. We took Isabella and David with us sea kayaking out to small island off the shore of the city of Kailua. Just before we were going to head back a big rain/windstorm came through. Fortunately we decided to wait it out instead of trying to make it back and the rain went away.

We had a few rainy days so we took advantage of doing some other activities that didn't involve the beach. One stop was the Dole plantation. I had visited here with my good friends Melissa and Morgan Ethington 13 yrs ago so it brought back some fun memories.

Brandon had fun chasing the beach babes (Anabelle). She says, "uh .... no!"

And even though we were hanging out in paradise, Brandon didn't want to miss the Super Bowl. Go Seahawks! Instead of watching the game, I enjoyed sitting on the lanai with Bella and coloring. Wish I had gotten a photo of the fantastic picture she was coloring. There are a lot more photos I have of the trip but they are on my camera, not my phone. 

One fun event was watching a surf competition on the North Shore. This time of year there are pretty big waves out there-20 ft on the day of the competition. You can see  a surfer just about to start riding the wave.

We also went to the Polynesian Cultural center in Laie.  Our tour guide was from Tonga and attending BYU-Hawaii. He works about 20 hours weekly and is able to get his schooling paid for. The church has set up a really amazing program that helps students from all over the Polynesian islands to share their culture with tourists and get an education that otherwise may not be available to them. We learned about Tonga, Fiji, and Samoa before it was time to head to a Lua for dinner. We also saw their evening show which showcased all the island cultures.

 It has been a hard adjustment coming back to Washington with cold and snowy weather. We definitely appreciate Josh and Jenn being such great hosts and leaving us with big smiles!

We are scheming of ways we can move to Hawaii ourselves someday. Maybe we will just have to keep visiting!