Aloha

James and I just experienced one of the best weeks of our lives! We are celebrating 15 years together this year, so we left the kiddos home and flew to Hawaii for the week. It is one amazingly beautiful place!! And we found a new passion--snorkeling!

We spent the first few days in Oahu. We got to see Pearl Harbor, swim on the North Shore, watch the sunset on Waikiki Beach and our favorite was swim with the sea turtles. I wish I had some good pictures, because I just can't describe how incredibly awesome it was to snorkel next to these creatures. The water is so blue and so clear that while snorkeling out in the ocean you could see EVERYTHING below you. At one point we found 6 sea turtles. They weren't bothered by us at all. They would swim to the top of the water, and we were inches away from them. It was also fun to feed the fish and have hundreds of them swimming around us. We snorkeled at other beaches in Oahu, but this was our favorite. Oahu had incredible beaches, we escpecially loved the water hitting the rocks and watching water shoot out of the blow holes.

We then flew to The Big Island. There were a lot less people and even more beauty. We were able to witness an active volcano. We watched the flumes come out the top and then went down by the ocean and watched the lava flowing off the mountain. Lava had just come and covered the road a month ago. It was quite amazing.

Snorkeling on the Big Island was even better than Oahu. We found a guy off the side of the road one day renting a kayak, so we hopped in. We paddled out in the ocean and were surrounded by at least 35 wild spinner dolphins. They circled our boat, swam underneath us and did amazing acrobat tricks out of the water. We jumped in the ocean with them. Although we only got about 10 feet from them, they were still awesome to swim with. They would swim under us and we sat and watched them for quite a while. We also found a reef with such an abundance of fish. The fish were the neatest and brightest colors I have ever seen.

Another highlight of the trip was walking through the rain forests. There was so much GREEN. The plants were amazing and the waterfalls were amazing. Lets just say, it was totally amazing. We found some caves which were lava tubes in the midst of the rain forest. They were interesting caves because the roots of the trees and bushes above the ground were growing through the cave ceiling.

Yes, becuase of all the vines growing on the trees, we just couldn't help being Tarzan! And yes, it really works. We had the best time--even the food was great. We enjoyed stopping along the road side and buying local fruit (our favorites are lychee and apple bannanas). Malasadas are scrumptious and James thought the pig at the luau was pretty tasty. I spent a great week in a great place with a great guy!