Hawaii 2010

May 2010 trip to The Big Island, Hawaii

This trip started with a 6am flight out of Salt Lake mid-May. We woke up at 3am to finish up packing and drive to the airport. Flights were pretty routine and nothing real exciting happened on them. Tre and Belle entertained themselves with their iPods, coloring and reading books and magazines.

We show up in Hawaii at 11am their time. Which is fantastic. Get our bags, rent a red convertible Mustang, find some lunch, go grocery shopping for the week at Costco and Walmart, then finally head to the condo. Which was fantastic.

The Condo:

The kids relaxing in the condo after a hard day at the beach

The view of the golf course, pond and Kings Shops from our lanai
The kids loved to run across the course to the water every morning to see birds, fish and frogs

Our lanai where we ate breakfast and dinner at almost every day

The kids room. Tre and Belle fell promptly asleep as soon as we walked into the condo on the first day while I was unpacking. They had their clothes on still and didn't even brush their teeth. But I woke them up and made them get ready for bed and into the covers.

The condo's infinity pool where our children loved to wash off the ocean water. I'm pretty sure they were wet more often than dry the entire trip.




The Beach:
Next on the agenda is beach, Beach, and more BEACH. Everyday we woke up, had breakfast and coffee on the lanai, got swimsuits and sunscreen on, packed up the cooler with lunch items and snacks then headed to a beach. We loved snorkeling, boogie boarding, swimming, jumping waves, playing water football, turning cartwheels, walking on our hands, napping, sunbathing walking along the beach, making sandcastles, looking out for crabs and reading.

Tre and Belle at Kai State Park. It was gorgeous here. Lots of local talent, deep, thick, fine soft sand, turtles, good snorkeling, fun rocks to climb...it had it all! Wow.

Mermaid off the port bow! Ariel! How ya doin kid?...Wow, what a swim!

Belle and I just chillin in the beach chairs :)

Belle climbing the trees at Beach 69

Tre, Belle and Jer looking for crabs at Mauna Kea

Tre, Belle and I walking along the beach at Mauna Kea

Tre boogie boarding at Kai State Park beach

Belle read this chapter book 5 times on our trip. Guess I should have brought more than one book for her to read. I almost gave her my book, The Hunger Games

Belle and I showing off our mad gymnastics skills

Tre and Belle playing nicely together on the boogie boards

Jeremy and Tre
Hang Loose! And, yes, the water really is this color

Sandcastle madness!

Happy girl! As long as she's wet, she's happy

Snorkeling pics...
Me


Belle is quite the snorkeler. Must be all the practice in the tub :) She seems to just float. In fact, we have to have a hand on her at all times or she'll just swim off to see whatever catches her eye and in 2 seconds she would be 20 feet away from us.


Tre is a good snorkeler too. He's not as brave as Belle and won't go off on his own. I love it because he holds my hand the whole time while we're exploring the ocean. He loves to dive down though.


Wonder where Tre learns diving from...


Sea Turtle! We saw at least one every time we went snorkeling...which was 9 days out of 10.





Other Adventures:
We had some other adventures that didn't include sand, sun and surf. A short hike to a waterfall and a very loong car trip to Volcanoes National Park was two of them. The drive was long, the weather was cold and rainy, but now at least the kids can say they've seen a real live volcano...and we never (ever) have to do it again!!

Tre at Akaka Falls
On this hike a sad, starved pit bull followed us the whole way but ended up following some other people about halfway through. He seemed nice, but I was nervous.

Jer, Tre and Belle at the end of Thurston Tube. This is a long cave-like structure that is formed by lava flow. You can walk right through it and come out the other side.

These were the biggest waves we saw on this trip. We are at the sea cliffs in Volcanoes where we took pictures, watched the ocean and ate lunch

Belle and Jeremy overlooking Kilauea Crater

Tre, Jeremy and Belle looking at the sea arch in Volcanoes

Eating lunch on the cliffs

The closest thing to an erupting volcano was this smoke rising out of the crater (might have been a little anti-climatic)

Belle doing what she does best...climbing

Me on the cliffs


The Beauty:
Hawaii is beautiful. Whether its the sunrise, sunset, ocean, sea life, landscape, animals, people, or sky, it's beautiful. I couldn't resist taking pics of some of the more beautiful sights I saw.

A sailboat in the background of a perfectly landscaped resort

Loving kids on the grounds of Mauna Kea

Sunset

Sunset



Family picture (minus Jeremy)




Stopping to smell the flowers





Birds everywhere. Belle and Tre were convinced that there were lots of birds in Hawaii because that is where they fly for the winter :)


Kai State Park

The grounds at the Hilton Waikoloa

The bay at the Hilton

Dolphins at the Hilton

The Last Day:
The last day is always a sad one. We're tired of not sleeping in our own beds, but we don't want this vacation to ever end. The good news is that we have another Hawaii trip planned (and paid for!) in December of this year so we don't have long to wait until we can go back. Our last day included a trip to the beach (of course!), then a walk down Ali'i Drive in Kona to shop, eat and chill until the plane departs that night.

Lu Lu's is my favorite place to eat in Hawaii. It is an open air restaurant with dollar bills stapled all over the walls. Not only is it good food, a fun atmosphere, but it shares my name. My nickname has been "Little Leisa Lu Lu" for as long as I can remember. In fact, my brother still calls me "Lu".

Fun photo op outside of Wayland Galleries (which is our favorite art gallery to visit in Hawaii)

The best (and BIGGEST!) Shave Ice in Kona. The servings were so big no one could finish what they ordered. Tre and Jer got a medium which was bigger than a watermelon and Belle ordered the Keiki (child) size which was as big as a large should be in my book. So YUMMY!

While in Kona I got a new tattoo of a dolphin with the zodiac signs of my family tattooed on her back. I've been thinking about this tattoo for several months and since it's tradition to get my tattoos on the Islands then I thought this trip would be perfect for it. I lived my life long dream of swimming with wild dolphins on this vacation. So how perfect is a dolphin tattoo as a souvenir!? Not that I'll ever forget that day, but now I have a constant reminder :)

As I said before, the dolphin adventure deserves its own blog post. So look for it coming soon!
Hawaii, we miss you but we'll be back!