Hawaii 2015

This page might take a while to load. I embedded the pictures from our One Drive, and it's loading kind of slowly on my computer, just fyi. And if you click on it, it should let you see it bigger. Sorry, this is the easiest way to get lots of pictures from phone to blog.


Heard a really cool story about why this is popular in Hawaii... From Wikipedia, "According to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,^[4] prevailing local lore credited the gesture to Hamana Kalili of Laie, who lost the three middle fingers of his right hand while working at the Kahuku Sugar Mill. Kalili was then shifted to guarding the sugar train, and his all-clear wave of thumb and pinkie is said to have evolved into the shaka as children imitated the gesture."  So basically this guy lost his three fingers, and he waved at people as they passed on the train, and people thought he was doing this with his hand, and did it back, not knowing he was really missing those fingers. And now it's a widely used symbol used to convey the Aloha spirit. 



Buddhist temple... this place was one of the most beautiful I've ever seen.





Hawaiian palace. Learned a lot of cool history here. Like, did you know this was the first palace to have electricity? Even beat the White House!



Doing a moonlight hike of Waimea Falls.



Yummy fruit from a little overpriced, rip off the tourists fruit stand... but still worth it.


Had to get in a game of disc golf. Which is not very popular in Hawaii, they only had one course, and we had it all to ourselves. And I think we learned why... the wind was killer! But who am I kidding, I don't think I would have done much better without it!


Dole Plantation was another highlight... mainly for these whips! TOPPINGS! So heavenly.











Shark's Cove... we saw lots of beautiful cool fish here. And also cut up my fingers, toes and back on the sharp rocks!


Best fish and chips ever.







The view from the top of Diamond Head. It was a way harder hike than I was prepared for. But the views at the top were beautiful, and were debatablely worth it.





This was the closest we got the Arizona, at the Pearl Harbor memorial, due to lightning. It was still a very beautiful, solemn place.


Polynesian Cultural Center luau. It was delicious! And such a wonderful beautiful place.













One of my favorite things I learned here was during a video about Hawaii. There was just this one quote that kept ringing through my mind for the rest of the trip "We already have everything we need." And it seems the culture of Hawaii is that the Earth takes care of us, as we take care of it. I loved that.


Did an awesome temple session. The people here were amazing, and I just loved how they didn't seem to take themselves as seriously as a lot of temple workers. It was just a different feeling, and so fun.


I love this picture Aaron took. These pools look like they're flowing out to the ocean, and that light beam coming down... just heavenly.


And that's the gist of our trip! Not pictured is our sunset Stand Up Paddle Board Tour, lots more yummy food, fun shopping, laying on the beach, reading books, watching the surfers, and probably some more that I can't think of because I'm exhausted! So grateful for everyone who helped take care of my babies while I was gone. And it's amazing what a solid week just being husband and wife can do for a 10 year old marriage. It was wonderful.