Hawaii Revisited

I've tried to think of the best way to make this post, but no matter what I came up with, it was bound to be one thing: LONG. So because this blog is somewhat like a journal to us, we decided to just post it all in one post. If you want, you could either sit down and read it all the way through, or you can leave halfway through reading it-grab some hot choco, and come back and read some more, or skip this post completely. Whatever you readers decide to do, here it is:

FRIDAY: We had an itinerary. So we did a lot. We left on Friday morning and flew out of SLC on a direct flight to Honolulu. The airline food which consisted of a chicken sandwich and Pringles was expensive, but good. As soon as we got to our hotel, we hit the beach that was about 50 feet away. It was warm and the sun was setting, we were in Hawaii or maybe it was Heaven, I couldn't tell. That night we watched a firework show on the beach and the fireworks echoed off the hotels and made us feel like we were in Pearl Harbor. It was kinda creepy, I'm not gonna lie. But the fireworks were awesome!

SATURDAY: We woke up at 4 in the morning (remember the time change), and we ran on a 3 mile run to Leonard's Bakery (one of the local donut shops you never hear about till after you've gone, luckily we knew about it beforehand). Seems kind of ironic right, running to a donut shop? Yeah it was, but the "malazadas" aka Brazilian donuts were so good (Leonard's was a favorite on the trip, and we must have ate there 10 times)! Later that day after a quick swim in the ocean, we met up with Dave and Tara who flew in. With Emmie too! I could write a whole post on beautiful Emiline but we will have to save that for another time. That afternoon we hit the Aloha Swap Meet and Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor was great, I learned so much about it that when I left I had an even greater appreciation for the men that serve our country. Because the harbor is so shallow, many of the boats are still in the harbor. We saw the USS Arizona (about 1,000 bodies are still trapped inside, making it somewhat of burial ground to many).

SUNDAY: We went to church and got kicked out of the singles ward and over to the family ward. The church building was beautiful. I can't even begin to describe it, luckily Bill (Marcus' dad) took lots of pictures. After church we went to the Iolani Palace, where the Queen of Hawaii lived and was imprisoned in her house. Not a bad place to be held, right? She was also believed to be a member of the church, a book of Mormon was on her nightstand. Then we saw the King's place, a really old cemetary, where he was buried, and some mission homes. Then we headed up to the National Memorial Cemetery. It. Was. Sweet. Gorgeous views, very spiritual and all of the names of the MIA soldiers. Then we drove to the Pali lookout where you could see the other half of the island, it was gorgeous to be that far up in the mountains looking down onto Oahu.

MONDAY: We got our Snorkel equipment from Snorkel Bob and headed south to Hanauma Bay. We snorkeled for hours and saw sea turtles, beautiful fish, oh, and a shark. No way, right? But we did, it was about 6 feet. Luckily it was a vegan shark, like on Finding Nemo, but it did scare us at first! Especially, Jen. I think she could rival Olympian Michael Phelps if you told her a shark was behind her. Hanauma Bay was by far one of my favorite places, when you think of Hawaii, this is the place you think of, it was beautiful. After leaving Hanauma, we went to the Valley of the Temples. It was a Japanese garden/cemetery just like one's in Japan, with a Buddha and everything. It was pretty neat but it had way to many mosquitoes. If you consider 19 bites too many! I must have sweet blood, I bet Edward would like it :) That night we went to dinner at Bennihana's (Thanks ash for the recommendation). It's a teppanyaki grill where they cook everything right there in front of you and our chef did fancy tricks and built us a onion volcano. Check out the pics below! Oh, and the food was good too!

TUESDAY: We woke up and hiked to Manoa Falls, the falls were okay, but the hike up to it was beautiful, very lush and green. Perfect for pictures. Then we packed up our snorkel gear and headed up to the North Shore. The North Shore has some of the biggest waves in the world and professional surfers come during the winter to surf pipeline. These waves were cool to see but, Haleiwa, the infamous beach town, has also the greatest burger and shaved ice place ever! The burger joint was called Kua'Aina, and the pineapple burger was about the size of my face. No really, it was. But the best part: Aoki's shaved ice. I love shaved ice, it's probably my favorite food if you can call it that. It was unbelievable. YUM! Then we went to Shark's cove to snorkel. We swam in schools of fish, and saw tons of tropical fish that you could pretty much reach out and touch. The water is so clear in Hawaii that you can see everything. This time though, no sharks, seems kinda ironic though since we were in shark's cove. That night we went to the Cirque De Soleil show, Saltimbanco. I can't explain how amazing these shows are: acrobats, contortionists, and circus to the extreme. The show was fantastic and we even met up with Ashton and Becca at the show. Yes, they were in Hawaii too at the same time! And no we didn't plan it.

WEDNESDAY: We went to the Laie LDS Temple and did a session. It is a beautiful temple and after the session we had lunch on the beach. After lunch we went around BYU-Hawaii and considered transferring there on the spot, trust me, you would have too! After that we went to the Polynesian Cultural Center. We went to all of the "villages" and saw natives from the islands of Tonga, Samoa, and Aotearoa put out fire with their feet, climb palm trees, bang on drums, and do the haka (if you watch the BYU football team, you might recognize this!). That night we went to a Luau, ate roasted pig, watched some entertainment, and had as much POG (passion orange guava-deliciousness) as we could handle. Then was the Horizon Night Show. I find this really interesting, everyone at the cultural center goes to BYU-Hawaii and in the afternoon students work at the cultural center to help pay for tuition. At night they put on a show of dancing and flame throwing. Unbelievable. These students had SO much talent.

Check out these girls and guys shake it from the PCC-Tahiti, it's unreal.

THURSDAY: As our trip started coming to an end, we went back to the North Shore. More Aoki's and more snorkeling. Although the waves were too big that day so we couldn't snorkel, so instead we rented boogie boards. We saw some sea turtles at Waimea Bay and about a half hour later got called out of the water for a shark spotted in the bay. They said it was about 7 to 8 feet and this was no vegan shark! So for the next hour we watched the crazy surfers and big waves roll in. These waves were unbelievable! After awhile we were adventurous enough to go back in. After we practiced our boogie boarding skills on the smaller waves, Marcus, Cory, Jen and I took our chances on the big waves. We almost died. No really, we were really luckily, we were also really stupid. Crazy. That's what we were. After awhile we went back to our kiddie waves. In the afternoon, we went back to the PCC to see some more of the villages and then that night we went to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner, it was delicious, as always!

FRIDAY: Came too quickly. At sunrise we went to Diamond Head and watched the sunrise, and then during the morning we played on the beach. That afternoon we hit up the Premium Outlets, found TONS of great stuff, and then went back to our hotel to watch the fireworks again on the beach. Our flight was a red eye and didn't leave till 10:30 PM! So we had an uncomfortable sleepless night on the airplane, went to Seattle and had an uncomfortable sleep on the airport floor, and then jumped on the plane to SLC.

I can now say that we've officially recovered from our trip. I'm sorry this was so long, but it IS for memory purposes. We loved every minute of our time spent with family members and want to give a BIG thanks to Bill and Carolyn for everything they did for us. Also, thanks to Marcus for my the early Christmas present (SLR camera!) so that I can finally document our trips like I remember them. As for now, we are still suffering from Hawaii withdrawals and in the market for a Snowie machine.