Hawaii

Lance and I went to Maui for a week for our anniversary. Just us. No kids. For an ENTIRE week. It was surreal. Lance's mom was an absolute angel and stayed with the kids at our house for the week, with lots of help from Meagan. They even changed Daryn's bag- a first! We had an absolute blast; words can even describe it, and neither can pictures, but I'm going to try with about 100 of them.

We left right after church on Sunday. Can you tell we're pretty excited?

 We got in very late Sunday night- to our hotel room at about midnight, which was 4 am our time. When we woke up in the morning, this was the first thing we saw through our giant glass window/wall. Our hotel was literally feet from the beach. Can't really get close than that. 

 It ended up being stormy, windy, and rainy the first couple days we were there. We hit the beach Monday morning, but when the weather turned we spent the rest of the day driving around the west side of the island. It got pretty windy, and the waves were HUGE crashing up on the rocks. We stopped at a bunch pf different places; this was called Dragon's Teeth:

 The views of the coastline were absolutely incredible.

This was a blowhole that we spent some time at and ended up hiking down near. It would shoot up pretty high occasionally. 

This place had the most ferocious waves. The entire cove would be filled with frothy white. Awe-inspiring!

We drove on the windy, sometimes one-lane coastal road until it was almost dinner time, so we stopped in a little village and bought some banana bread and coconut candy and turned around. We had a delicious dinner at a beachside restaurant near our hotel and crashed early.

The next morning, we woke very early (3 am) to drive to the top of the volcano to see the sunrise. We made it just in time for the darkness to start fading away. It was incredible to watch the sky brighten and the sun come up behind the crater below us.

It was very cold, but definitely worth it.

 

The view on the way down- the center of the island- where the airport is.

 I can't really remember what we did the rest of Tuesday. Chilling on the beach and on our porch reading, I think. Oh, and I'm pretty sure that's when we snorkeled. Saw some beautiful fish!

 And we drove the the nearby city of Lahaina for shopping and dinner. Lance's face in the first picture cracks me up. Does he hate Hawaii? :)

 The view from our restaurant for dinner. 

 Wednesday was our helicopter tour. We stopped at a couple whale watching points on the way, but didn't see any (it was close to the end of their season there).

 Our first time in a helicopter!

 This is the same coastline that we drove up the first day. Different perspective!

 The helicopter took us to the nearby island which is much more undeveloped, with huge cliffs and waterfalls. Gorgeous! Lance was looking up property there as soon as we got home :).

 

 Wednesday night, we went to a luau a couple miles down the beach, and decided to walk. We saw so many rainbows this trip, but this one right by where we were walking was the prettiest.

 It ended right there on the bridge!

 We look good in pink :)

 The food was sooo yummy (love that pork!) and there was a gorgeous sunset during dinner.

 And the entertainment was wonderful.

 This fire dancer was crazy!

 Of course, I got a pic with one of the dancers. It's funny how they can still look manly in such ridiculous clothes.

 Thursday was our long day- the road to Hana! A very long, beautiful drive around the island with tons of stops and beautiful places to see. Lance fueled up with a coconut as we got started. 

 Our first (and I think best) stop was at a 4 waterfall hike. We hiked a ways through a bamboo forest, waded across a very swollen creek, passed the first (smaller) waterfall...

And came to this: 

 I can't even describe how cool this hike was. Definitely my favorite part of the trip. We swam in this pool for a while (we were the only ones there) and sat on the rocks next to the falls. We had been planning on only doing the first two, because the second half was pretty sketchy, but eventually decided to go for it. 

 We climbed up a slippery rock bank with the help of a rope, went 15 up a flimsy rope ladder that someone had helpfully placed, hiked while longer, and got to the point where we couldn't go around so we hid our stuff and jumped in and swam about 100 yards up the river. We swam until we came to the 3rd falls. At this point, we had to climb and scale the rock wall next to the waterfall (about 10 feet high). It was a little tricky. At the top of these falls, we hiked for a while longer, until we reached the last waterfall, about 35 ft high into a beautiful pool. It was absolutely stunning, and of course I didn't have any pictures because I left my phone halfway. We hung out there for a little while and then started back. When we reached the 3rd one where we climbed up, we just had to jump off next to the waterfall into the pool and swim back down. Pretty fun stuff. After hiking all the way back after doing this crazy stuff, I felt like a total beast :).

 Back on the road, we passed many more beautiful sites and waterfalls, which are all starting to blur together now. 

 These pictures were taken at the exact same time, one side of the road then the other. It always seemed to be storming on the middle of the island. 

We stopped at the black sand beach, which was pretty awesome.

 And checked out the caves there.

 And we also stopped at the red sand beach, which had a pretty tricky hike to get there. At this point of the day, I had rolled my ankle about 3 times, so I was limping a little, but I wasn't going to let it stop me!

 Our last stop was the Seven Sacred Pools. It was beautiful, but unfortunately it was getting late and dark, and we had a pretty treacherous one-lane-road drive around the bottom of the island to make, and I rolled my ankle again and could barely walk. I put on a brave face for this photo but was really about to cry. Thank goodness we were driving for a while after that. 

There was also this crazy tree.

 The back of the volcano from the south, before it got dark.

 We made it home late the night, grabbed some pizza, and went straight to bed.

Friday was our 5th anniversary! We started the day off with a whale watching boat trip!

 We were afraid we wouldn't see any, but we did!

A whole family of 3! Tail on left, fin on right.

Mommy and baby blowing spouts together. So cool!

 Afterwords, we hung out in Lahaina more, and visited the Banyan Tree. This whole thing behind Lance is one big tree. 

 It just grows more trunks down from its branches. 

 We went back to our hotel to clean up, and then back to Lahaina for our anniversary date!

 We had dinner at a very food-to-table nice restaurant on the beach. It was so yummy and the weather and scenery was beautiful!

We finished dinner and took a stroll on the beach as the sun was setting.  

 Then we had our final stop of the evening: a 20-'s themed evening club and comedy/magic show. Appetizers and desserts and a piano that played itself and took requests!

 They put us right up front with a few other couples and we got to help with parts of the show. It was so funny and really impressive slight-of hand, too!

 Saturday was our last day. We spent the morning swimming, then cleaned up and checked out of our room and spent a few more hours reading on the chairs outside before we had to leave for the airport. 

 View from the right and left of our beach. 

 And our pool, which we swam in a little. 

 We finally saw a turtle swim by, which I had wanted to see our whole trip! So happy. 

We stopped and grabbed a Dole Whip- very last thing on our way out. 

 Our flight stopped in Honolulu on the way back, so I snapped one picture as we were coming in, and another just before we left.

Our flight home was very long, and we got basically no sleep, but we made it home just in time to take showers and make it to church. We were so happy to see our girls- we missed them so much! They had an absolute blast, but I think they miss us too. We are so grateful for this incredible experience that we had. We are very blessed!