Hawaii

 When it was my birthday I was laying in bed and I got thinking about how fast time is going. I started to cry about the thought of Addi leaving home in about 4 years. That tugged my heart string really bad. We have been wanting to take the kids to Hawaii and so we decided to make it happen. We decided to take them to the Big Island and stay in Kona. We flew out of Las Vegas because it was much cheaper to fly all 6 of us that way. 

We woke up at 3 am to start the journey to Las Vegas. We got there with plenty of time to catch our flight. Sadly, the airplane didn't have monitors and some of the kids got pretty board. Thankfully it was a direct flight and so when we got there, we were there! 

I have never been to the Big Island, but Ty had for a quick minute right before we got married. He had not done any exploring of the island though. It was a new adventure for all of us! 

This was us at Two Step beach. Had some fantastic snorkeling! 

I now like to go to bookstores wherever I am! This one was adorable. 

We found that we liked adventuring in the morning and then coming back to the condo in the afternoons to just let the kids swim in the pool. 

We drove to the Hilo side of the island which is where it was more green. Rainbow Falls was a beautiful waterfall that was super easy to walk to. It was really just off the side of the road. 

There was also this really neat tree that the kids could climb up in. While we were there, we noticed a man selling fresh fruit on the side of the road. We tried papaya, coconut, pineapple, baby bananas, and lychee. It was fun to see the kids try new things. The baby bananas were everyone's top thing. 

We stopped at Black Sand Beach. It was so neat to see the entire beach be black. It was a different texture of sand as well. While we were there we saw turtles that had come up onto the beach. 

in this picture on the left if you look really close in the middle of the picture you can see a crab. The crabs change colors to whatever rocks they live on. We saw black crabs as well. 

On the way home from Hilo we stopped at Valcano National Park. The volcano had been dormant since June, but you could see the smoke rising. Lyndin almost didn't come with us on this trip because she was afraid of the volcano. In this picture you can't really tell that we were at the volcano because the volcano had sunk. 

While at the national park we went to the lava tubes and that was super neat! They had the tube lit up with lights, but it was cool to see what lava had created. 

We went boogy boarding at Magic Sand beach. It is a smaller beach, but had some great waves for the kids to play in. 

We found another book store! Ty even finished a book while we were there. 

We spent lots of time on our patio. The evenings were so wonderful and quiet. We were next to a golf course and so we had no traffic. 

Lazy mornings! 

This little trail of petroglyphs was right by our condo. 

We also tried some Dragonfruit. 

Parker unfortunately got sunburned really really bad. He had taken off his swim shirt a couple times at the beaches, but didn't put on sunscreen. He was hurting and we had one day where we just stayed around the condo and let him rest inside. His shoulders did start to blister. Poor boy! 

We liked to give our crumbs and left overs to the little birds that would come up to our porch. We had all different types of birds coming up to our patio. 

Pololu Valley was one of the most beautiful places we went to I think. We got there in the morning before a lot of tourists got there. We were able to spend time alone on the black sand beach for about 30 minutes for more people started coming. The peace and beauty that was there was absolutely stunning. This was also the longest hike we did, which was about a mile total. 

These pictures were just outside our condo. 

We also have to find ice cream wherever we are. 

These pictures were right outside our patio. This was our last night full night on the island. 

On our last day we weren't leaving until 10:30 that night. We did some shopping and browsing around. We stopped at the temple and spent some time on the temple grounds. We also decided to go to the movie before we went to the airport. 

Everyone fell asleep pretty fast once we got on the plane. We had a really tight layover in Phoenix. We had about 25 minutes until our next flight left for Vegas. Thankfully we made it in time to catch our flight. 

I got a little teary eyed when we were leaving Hawaii. It was such a relaxing vacation that I need all of us needed. We were able to spend time as a family with no distractions of work, sports, school, friends and were able to spend quality time as a family. These moments are really special to me.