Hawaii - Part I

So where to begin... Between 5 cameras, I have a TON of pictures to choose from. I'll try to pick the best few to tell you about each day on Oahu.

First of all, you ask HOW WAS I ABLE TO GO TO HAWAII WITHOUT KIDS AND WITHOUT MY HUSBAND? Well, Jeff won the draw for March Madness in Tucson way back in the summer. I planned to go with him and hang out with my sister and sister-in-law in Arizona and go shopping. Then the morning I went to book our flights I got a call from my mom saying that they had a condo they wanted to book but their friends bailed on them so she invited my sisters and I to come and stay with them. Arizona....Hawaii....what would you choose? So I booked my flight to Hawaii instead of Arizona. (Which by the way cost only $100 more than my ticket to Arizona...so cheap for Hawaii!) So much for a trip this year for our 10-year anniversary. We took seperate vacations instead. But my husband is amazing and took a few holiday days he had to use up and took GREAT care of our kids (with the help of his mom on days he had to go to work). I couldn't have been gone for 10 days without Skype. It almost made me feel like they were there with me. It was so nice to see their faces and talk to them, and show them around our condo!

So we flew over on a Sunday. The first day there we explored around the condo complex and IT WAS BEAUTIFUL! Here's a picture on our balcony looking down at the lagoon pools. There were 4 bays or lagoons that had resorts built on, and there is a walking path that goes along them. So we walked around just taking in the beautiful scenery.

Here's one of the 4 bays. The two buildings on the right is the complex we stayed in. On the far left in the background (kind of a brown building) they are in the process of building a Disney Resort. It is HUGE and looks amazing.
We spent most of Monday afternoon shopping at our favorite store which was 5 minutes away. We picked up groceries for the rest of the trip.

Tuesday we got in the car and drove to Makaha Beach to go boogie boarding. It was SOOO fun!We also drove up to the North Shore to watch the surfers. We didn't see many people out (but I guess the locals would have been at work on a Tuesday afternoon). On the way back we stopped at another beach and saw a crowd of people standing around so we got out to see what everyone was looking at. There was this massive sea turtle sun bathing on the beach.
There is an organization that stays there during the day that is trying to raise awareness of sea turtles and keep them from the endangered species list. So this lady had a lot of information about sea turtles. She mentioned there were a bunch of turtles that swim in this little bay. So we got on our snorkel gear and went out. While we were out snorkeling, the rest of the crowd sat and watched the 4 of us so my dad snaped a picture. That is us in the water.



We saw sea turtles every time we went snorkeling. Even in the bay outside our condo. Here's some pictures of us swimming with them. I can't get over how friendly they are. Disney really did portray them well in Finding Nemo...so laid back, just floating around. In the picture below, Tammy and Sonya are playing with one sea turtle and I am playing with another one in the background. At one point there were 4 turtles in this one bay that were just swimming around our feet. It wasn't very deep.
This guy was missing his front arm/fin.


We continued on our way home and stopped by BYU Hawaii and the temple but I am really sad to say that none of us got the famous picture of us in front of the temple. It was dark by the time we got there so you wouldn't have been able to see us in front of the temple anyways.