Hawaii - Tenth Anniversary Trip - Part 3

This is one of my favorite sites on the island. 

We had a great day planned on the East side of the island but it just happened to be New Year's Day and EVERYTHING but Mc D's was closed!!! Kind of awful. 

We hiked Maunawili falls--- 

It started to look sketchy...

This photo does NOT do any justice for the 3 inches of mud on the trail

It was an incredible hike being in the rain forest. I never want to get lost in there. I was so waiting for human sized spiders to come down and grab us. 

Just a bit more muddy--- at this point we both started taking bets on who would fall first ---

So stinking grateful for my chacos at this point.

Ugh! More stairs. We were SO sore from the Koko Head hike the day before that these seemed impossible. 

This helped tons... lol. 

I loved all the plants. I was able to name a bunch of them and would tell Dan how I would pay a crud load at the wholesaler here for them. 

We made it!!!!

On our way back down, we took more risks. It was warmer and the mud was deeper... things got crazy!

I slipped and barely caught myself. Dan just laughed and took this photo. 

Our mosquito bite racked up on the hike back to the car... oh that poor rental car :) Surprisingly, neither of us fell so neither of us got ice cream. 

We headed over to Kailua beach - the most gorgeous beach. We got there to this and after we ate lunch (about 10 minutes later), it was pouring rain and COLD. So SAD!!! I still hadn't gotten my tan.

While we here at this beach another group came up to beach next to us and the man said to his son, "Oh we can park here because he's got a BYU hat so he's good." It made us smile to overhear that. 

On our way to our next adventure, we saw another Leonard's truck. Malasadas on a rainy day? YES!!!

We went to the Byodo-In temple. This was iconic for us to revisit from our original time on the island. 

My hair looked like these chickens....

Rainbows for EVERYONE!!!

Surfing Santa at the city building

We were so tired after this day that we got a Red Box and L&L BBQ takeout. It was nice to relax. 

This was our last morning in this condo. I sure loved all the rowing teams that would be there early... We packed up and headed out - 

Hawaii - Tenth Anniverary Trip - Part 2

We woke up early and headed off to do Koko Head Hike. Little did we know... over 100 flights of stairs later... it was an amazing hike. So much fun!

There wasn't another person on this volcano that wasn't dripping in sweat! This is the view of Haunama Bay that we snorkeled the day before. 

View of Diamond Head and Waikiki

The back side and view into the volcano's creater

And this is where Dan and I got separated and he didn't have his phone!!! I panicked and hiked all around for 40 minutes praying on what to do. I was quite concerned that he fell off a cliff...

These Portuguese Prayer boxes were so neat - We definitely needed prayers.

I decided to go down the mountain. It actually was extremely harder going down than up. It was so steep that it was like climbing down a ladder forwards. Then at the 15 foot gulch... ugh! I crossed without holding hands since I was by myself. At one point I grabbed a random stranger because I was falling... it was crazy! Dan had gone down the mountain and when I wasn't at the car, he turned around and came back up. He met me about 3/4 down and it was a relieving reunion. 

After resting from our hike we headed out to Waikiki for lunch. 

We ate at Duke's for lunch and window shopped the "pay to breathe" stores on our way back to our condo. Of course we stopped at an ABC store and loaded up on goodies for our girls. 

This chandelier is one I would love to recreate...

Fur coats at Fendi

We hopped in our car and headed to Sandy's beach. An iconic boogie boarding beach - suicide is more like it!!!

My Baywatch Babe

We stopped and got bubble drinks - our favorite!!! Tapioca balls AND Mochi balls Yum!

It was New Year's Eve that night and after eating dinner and watching the BYU basketball game, we headed out to the beach to ring in the New Year. 

It was a good thing to say we've done, but we definitely won't do it again. Between all the drinking, smoking, and swearing... just too much. I am grateful for the standards that we have. It truly is a blessing to live a healthy life. IT was like all I could see were consequences of people's choices and all the pain from it. 

We are much happier following what God has set out for us. And this is probably my favorite picture of all all time. 

We were out on the boardwalk and this was the crowd on shore...

The fireworks were out on the ocean which was neat!!!

Happy New Year to you and yours---- it was a great New Beginning for us!

Sayings

Just a couple of things that have happened around here -

Brookie was watching a show with me while we cooked the other night and a Macy's ad came on. She watched intently and then exclaimed, "Mom, they live in all whiteness. I'd like that so I wouldn't have to clean up!" - The background of all their products was white. I think I'd like that too.

Last week the girls were complaining at what seemed everything. Abi didn't like dinner and just kept saying, "It's too cold. It's too hot. It's too spicy. It doesn't have enough corn. I don't have the right spoon." So Dan piped in and said, "If only I had three ears, then I could eat it." With that Abi replied, "Nope, I would need four ears." I turned to Dan and said, "See even that wasn't good enough." WE both burst out laughing. It definitely didn't keep our girls from complaining, but it helped Dan and I not feel so complained at.