The Terrific Brunson Team: Birthday trip to Hawaii

At the end of March, I turned 30! My long-awaited golden birthday. It was on a Saturday, and we had Stake Conference that weekend. Lance was in meetings most of the day, but I got a pedicure that morning and we squeezed in a quick celebration at lunchtime.

That evening, I had the opportunity to speak in the adult session. I was sooo nervous that I couldn't eat anything all day, including at the dinner beforehand. It ended up being the most amazing experience though. Sister Reeves (formerly of the Relief Society General Presidency) and her husband spoke right before because they are in our temple presidency, and I got to sit next to her and visit with her for a while, as well as Sister Dunn, which was really cool. After I spoke about making temple attendance a priority, Elder Dunn (the visiting General Authority) announced to the entire congregation that it was my birthday (thanks Lance for telling him), so everyone was really nice to me after.

We went home and chowed down on the Cheesecake Factory cheesecake that Lance bought me, and finished packing our bags, because the next day we were leaving straight after the last meetings for Kauai!!

We hurried home from Stake Conference, changed our clothes, grabbed our bags, and jumped in the car. We were ready for the trip of a lifetime! The flight there was long but not bad. We watched Star Wars and the new Fantastic Beasts movie.

Hawaii is 4 hours behind us, so when we got in at 9:30 it felt like 1:30. Good thing we are both night owls! We picked up our rental car and grabbed some food. After we checked into our hotel we crashed immediately and woke up on our own around 6 am- but it felt like sleeping in to us!

First thing on our agenda was zip lining. We did an 8 line course, with the longest one being 1/2 mile!

Our group:

We started off with a short little ride to make sure everyone was comfortable.

Then moved into flying Superman and Spiderman style (upside down) which was pretty cool.

Just chilling with wild mama and baby chickens (which we soon realized cover the entire island).

Zip lining was a blast but not quite as exhilarating as I thought it would be. The views were incredible, though, and we went over a reservoir, which was pretty sweet.

That afternoon, we hit up the beach at out hotel. That was basically the only time the weather didn't cooperate. It was rainy but not too chilly and we would up swimming for a while still.

That night we had booked tickets to a beachfront luau, but even the the weather cleared up long before, they still moved it inside. I was so disappointed that the only thing I took a picture of was this purple roll. The food was good but we actually left early because we wanted to catch the sunset on the walk home.

I'm so glad we did because it turns out that was the only one we saw! We were eating dinner at that time every other night.

We crashed early (this ended up being the theme of the week) and were up early the next morning for the highlight of the trip- waterfall rappelling!

A sign indicting just a few of the movies that were filmed here.

We had a dry run down a wall, and then we all went down this 30 foot waterfall.

The bamboo at the bottom was crazy tall. These pics don't capture how huge it was.

Lance was in the first half (we split so we could each take pictures).

Then me! This waterfall was pretty tame. Fun, but not too exciting.

Then it was time for the real deal!

I was the first person to go down and I was shocked by the amount of water pouring over me. So much more than I expected! It made it hard to focus.

It was SUCH an adrenaline rush.

I think it took around 3-4 minute each for us to get down.

Lance was one of the last to go.

He killed it, of course.

Best part of the trip for sure!

When we got back to our car we changed and went straight over the airport for a helicopter tour of the island.

I think I had a little bit of jet lag combined with an adrenaline crash and had a hard time focusing for part of it, but it was really cool to see this incredible island from the air.

The reservoir we zipped over.

I think these are the falls we hiked to the top of later, but I'm not positive. It's hard to keep track.

Napali Coast. SO stunning.

How is this even real??

So many waterfalls. They said there is twice as many right after a rain.

We loved this long tree tunnel over the road on the drive back to our hotel.

Later that afternoon we went on a shoreline cliff hike and caught some incredible views. It was so refreshing!

Little crab friends!

We had our fancy birthday dinner that night at Red Salt, the restaurant at our hotel. I'm sad that we didn't take a picture because we looked super fly.

The next morning we drove up the canyon to do some hiking. On the way, we stopped at Glass Beach, which has lots of sparkly worn down glass mixed in with the sand, and also caught some sea lions napping.

We also stopped to by some Hawaiian spice souvenirs and check out this swaying foot bridge.

Before we got to our hike we stopped at this lookout where you could see the falls we were going to hike to. Just spectacular views.

Checking out the view from the ridge on the hike- most of it was through forest/jungle.

At the end of the hike the path split and we checked out the little falls first. Lance decided to get a closer look.

Then we went over and stood at the top of the really big falls.

You could only see the very top from the path.

After a long hike, we needed some beach time to cool off! We decided to visit the western beaches, known for being hot and deserted, with high surf.

It was perfect! We had a long stretch all to ourselves.

We hurried back to clean up for dinner at Keoki's Paradise, a fun and delicious themed restaurant.

Thursday morning we drove all the way up north. We were planning on visiting some sights from South Pacific (one of my faves) but those were all inaccessible due to massive flooding a year ago.

We had to make due with this short hike to a beach past where the Frenchman's pavilion was located.

Luckily that beach was good for some snorkeling. We saw a good amount of tropical fish and it was my first real positive experience snorkeling!

That afternoon we stopped at a different beach for some boogie boarding!

The surf was a little rougher than we expected and we got hammered pretty hard. We had a lot of fun until we were both exhausted. I felt like I had sand in every part of me and swallowed half the ocean.

We changed clothes and took on a cool hike to another set of waterfalls, Hoopii Falls.

The first falls were pretty close and had a deep pool at the bottom that people were jumping into. It looked super fun and we were both tempted, but decided to stay dry since we had just changed out of our swim suits.

The second set of falls were a lot further through some pretty intense jungle terrain.

Worth it, though. They were beautiful!

We were a bit of a mess when we got to dinner that night, and starving.

Good thing! This mint choc chip hula pie was incredible.

Friday morning was our last day. We left the hotel early so we would have time to come back and shower before we had to check out. First stop was Spouting Horn blowhole and we also caught sight of some sea turtles there!

It went off quite a few times while we were there and there was a second blowhole that gave off this moaning sound at the same time, which was pretty neat.

A visit to a quiet little beach.

And one last dip in ours at the hotel.

The view from our hotel room. We loved our hotel sooo much!

Time to say goodbye!

We decided to finish the cliff hikes that we did earlier in the week by starting from the other side and going south. On the way to the starting point, we found this little bridge from Pirates of the Caribbean.

And this really cool cave/natural amphitheater.

We wound up hiking for longer than we anticipated. We hadn't put on much sunscreen and it was the only time we got really burned. So close!

Lance insisted that I wear his hat. What a guy!

To finish our visit we drove to a few different viewpoints in the area. These falls were huge but you can't see them well in the photo.

This is the view of Sleeping Giant Mountain.

His head is on the left (you can see the profile of his nose point out) and he is laying his back with his body going to the right.

These falls were our last stop and a great way to end. They were massive!

Then we grabbed dinner and headed over to the airport.

Weary travelers, ready to head home!

It was truly the trip of a lifetime but we were eager to get home to the kids. We missed them a lot! They were having a blast with Lance's parents but I think they were happy to see us (especially when we pulled out all the gifts we brought them). Blade didn't let me put him down for a week.

They did have lots of fun while we were going, even though it was rainy and they were stuck inside most of the week.