Hawaii Day 10 aka departure day

So we stayed on Laie point and only made it out the last morning for the sunrise. Hey- I was finally able to sleep in until 6 two whole days!! Of course, we picked a partly cloudy day. Oh well...

Kiley waiting...

Looking back at the island-it was cool to see the sunrise up on the clouds first.

It's above the horizon now but the clouds are still blocking it...
Close enough!
The moon on our walk back
And there it is full force! We'd already walked part way back...

We stayed in an awesome studio! It had an ocean view and access and was a perfect second place to stay.
The Gazeboo- our hosts were nice enough to share it...this is the most we used it but checkout that view!

The bedroom/couch

The kitchen looking toward the Murphy bed

View out the kitchen window

The patio outside the bedroom door with our friendly cats :) The room had a sliding glass door so we listened to the waves ALL night!

After watching the sunrise we packed up our bags and then went and met our friends at the temple for some pictures. We just so happened to be on the island together. Did I already mention that?

All of us :)

Kiley and me

After grabbing our bags we headed toward the airport. We did stop to pick up one more thing for my parents here. Did I mention my Mom watched my children 9 (almost 10) days- 6 of them solo. I don't even know if I've watched my kids that long without Kiley around.

Our flight back was uneventful. We did get to see several other islands as we flew out. I loved that! I was nervous the whole way back something would happen to keep me from my kids but it didn't!

We had a wonderful time making memories together to last a lifetime. Thanks so much to my parents for watching the kids!!

Hawaii Day 7

Wednesday we got up and headed down to Kailua for some sea kayaking. We had debated getting a single or double. We ended up with singles because of a groupon deal but I think in the end I wish we'd done a double. I'm just not as strong as Kiley and there were a couple times I was pretty dead tired and it would have been nice to let Kiley do all the work :) Regardless, this was a great- physical day. Also the day we both got burned- mostly on the front lower part of our legs- and bad. We both ended up peeling and it was pretty painful the first couple nights after. Note to self- when sea kayaking- sunscreen on the legs is a MUST :) We kayaked to two different islands. Both are bird sanctuaries. The first was easy and tiny (Flat Island). The second was about a mile out, right where the waves were breaking and exciting to get to (Moku-Iua Islands- you can only land on one). Then we went to Lanikai Beach and snorkeled (and I slept some too). Finally we returned to Kailua Beach.

Island #1- facing the green mountains

Island #1 facing the brown mountains

Island #2- nice beach but no shade

Lava rock on island #2

Strong Kiley dragging the Kayaks back to the trucks

buff man :)

When we left we picked up some dinner (Panda Express- yes we're that exciting) and then decided we'd eat it at a beach along the drive back up. It was beautiful to drive along the beach by Kane'ohe. We thought we'd found a great spot...here's what we found:

A park full of cats

and chickens

This park was surrounded by a fence- and as soon as you drive in- I noticed the sign...and then the wildlife. I just laughed.

Can you read that sign? Hmmmm...not sure what's going on but these 50+ cats and chickens didn't get the memo.

Needless to say- we decided not to eat here. We watched Soul Surfer that night. Kiley thought it was bad timing but I really enjoyed it! Maybe it made me a little more nervous the next day when he went boogie boarding but it seemed like the perfect place to watch it!

Hawaii Day 6

Tuesday morning we went and did a session at the Laie Temple. We were in a moving session which I love! What a neat temple. We didn't take our camera so I have pictures of us there on a later day. One of the coolest things- the grounds go all the way to the ocean- long and skinny for much of it but beautiful!

After the temple we saw a movie about families in the visitor's center and some of it was filmed in Vegas (Red Rock to be exact)- pretty cool! Then we went to Ted's Bakery and Kiley tried some of their garlic shrimp which he loved. I enjoyed their pie and a big roll- talk about healthy :)

Finally we went to the Polynesian Cultural Center. Such a cool place! My favorite show was Tonga because I laughed so much. Very entertaining. Aotearoa (New Zealand) was Kiley's favorite- and I enjoyed it too! New Zealand, Hawaii, and Tahiti were very informative and I liked seeing the dances knowing more about them. We missed Fiji because I misread the schedule. Instead we went on the canoe ride which turned out to be very anti-climatic.

outside Aotearoa (New Zealand)

Samoa- this guy climbed the tree so fast!

Canoe Pageant with Hawaii boat in the background

Tonga

Tahiti- this guy we teaching the men how to dance!

And here's Kiley trying it out! The women danced too but luckily Kiley didn't take a picture!
anti-climatic canoe ride

After 4 hours of shows we got to go enjoy the Luau. We sat by a nice engaged couple from CO- they both work at Swedish Hospital! Kiley and I got up and danced with the honeymooners/anniversary celebrators and our new friends tried to take some pictures but we forgot to show them how to zoom. oops.

Hawaiian royalty

The pig out of the ground

The food- yum!

This girl (Jenna) was in Kiley's freshman ward. We saw them several times throughout the day and then they were at the table just below us for dinner.
Honeymoon/Anniversary Dance

Time to play where's Waldo!!

There we are!!

After the dinner we headed over to the show "Ha- the breath of life" where we got to see all the villages perform! Such a neat well done show- I highly recommend it! The fire dancers at the end were very impressive!

Hawaii Day 5 part 2

After our wonderful flight we headed up the road to the YMCA- check it out :)

Kiley was pretty proud of himself for recognizing this from Lost :)

We watched a few sky divers coming in. Crazy people.

We then headed into Haleiwa- did a little drive thru of the town and picked to eat at Cholo's Mexican restaurant. It was decent. Then we checked out a few shops before heading off to Turtle Beach where we and 50 other people stood on the beach hoping a turtle would come up. If you were a turtle- would you come up on the beach with 50 people waiting? No? Yeah, that's what they thought too!

That's about as close as they got

But it was a pretty beach

We had decided to hike to Waimea Falls until we found out you had to pay $15 each to get into the Botanical Gardens. Hmmm...I think we'll spend our $30 elsewhere!

We then headed past Waimea Bay to Sharks Cove/Lagoon. We finished out the day with some snorkeling and book reading. We pretty much snorkeled in the Lagoon because the cove had too big of waves.

Dinner was left over pizza and we had a nice moonlight stroll on the beach

Hawaii Day 5 part 1

Monday morning we got up and headed out to Dillingham Airfield to go on some electric hang gliders aka. trikes with Paradise Air. This was by far the most unique and fun thing we did!! It was beautiful. When we first got up in the air it was raining so we were afraid we'd have to land. One of the pilots (there's two trikes) was going out of town so they wouldn't have been able to reschedule. So- we pushed through the rain cloud and in true Hawaii style were soon in the sun chasing circle rainbows!! The pictures say it all... click on them to see them bigger! Oh and if you get bored- sorry :)

The red spot in the sky is the people before us landing

And the other trike coming in

suited up- very helpful at 4800 ft! brrrr.

Kiley and I with my trike

Denise (my pilot) and I taking off.

One of the cool things about these flights is they teach you how to fly the trikes and then you get to spend as much of the flight flying as you want. Kiley pretty much flew the whole time. I flew some of it but enjoyed it more when I wasn't the pilot- made it so I could look around more rather than focusing on not crashing (ha, ha- truth be told these would be pretty hard to crash).

Just after take-off- flying out over the water

Pure ocean

The tip of the island- with me acting as pilot :)

flying back toward Dillingham- see the rain?

Dillingham below

the valley- beautiful! She pointed out lots of different farms to me.

circle rainbow time!

Circle rainbow with waimea bay in the middle

This was Kiley's circle rainbow pick. We took a billion, they took 1. Ha-one difference between men and women. Tom was Kiley's pilot-or should we say copilot because besides take-off and landing Kiley flew this baby and loved it! We could always find each other- I had to look up and Kiley had to look down :) He got about 1 mile high!

Circle rainbow over the ocean (this is actually a double rainbow- there was one on the clouds too but our trike is blocking it.)

Me in control again. By the way, notice all the sunshine? Yeah, that's Hawaii :)

Heading in...