Finally the rest of the trip.

We some stand up paddle boarding, of course you are thinking that's not standing... but you have to kneel till you get to the place to stand.
Our instructor (her name was turtle) took us down a little stream, which also had many turtles swimming around. It was beautiful and fun!
Oh look! Standing! We did it and were pretty good at it, if I do say so myself.
Sunday we went to church with the Evansons, some friends who have a house in our neighborhood but are working in Oahu for a few years. Then we went to check out the Temple. It was breathtaking.
This is the view from the front of the temple looking to the ocean.
I love these giant trees!
Andrew working our rental car.

From one temple to another. We drove around the east side of the island to check it out and found the valley of the temples. It was a cemetery and a buddhist temple.
Also very beautiful.

Then we checked out the point, a place where you can do some cliff jumping. We did not.
We randomly ran into Shauna Evanson, for the second time.
Finished off our trip with a day of snorkeling before it was time to get to the airport and back to real life.
It was wonderful to be away and free from responsibilities, but we were ready to see the children and get back to our comfortable bed.

shark encounter.

Andrew and I braved a shark tank on Friday in Hawaii. I have to say I was more nervous about the scuba than the sharks. Strange, I know.

They used to throw stuff in to draw the sharks but have since stopped. THey said that the sharks are naturally drawn to the boat motors. they just turn on the motor and the sharks come because most boats are fishing and it's an easy meal for them.

Had I had this knowledge before we did the dolphin encounter I would have been nervous about jumping into the ocean to check out the dolphins or snorkel. Obviously that boat had a motor and we were just dropped off...

It was a little eerie to be the one in the cage while the sharks swam around and checked us out. There were three 6 foot long sand sharks circling.
I have been trying to load the video onto here but blogger doesn't seem to be cooperating. I tried facebook and it loaded right up. I'll keep working on it. It's so much more cool than just the still pictures.

By the way there is a big open window along one side of the cage that is plenty big enough for a shark to swim right in. Is that really safe?

Polynesian Cultural Center

The day we chose to go to the Polynesian Cultural Center was probably the hottest most sunny day we were there. It was still awesome even though there was sweat running down my back. The hair quickly went into a clip.


Rainbows of Paradise Pageant of the long canoes. All of the Islands perform for you. It was pretty amazing.






Learning the hula.
Andrew in front of the traveler tree. They always grow North and South helping out travelers. Although some rebels have planted them to grow east and west.
The Ha Breath of Life show that night was amazing! It is incredible what they do there.

Samoa and New Zealand were our favorite shows.

Dolphins, turtles and dessert.

Wa already know we love tropical plants, but we just couldn't get over how cool the trees were. They all looked like giant umbrellas.

We went out on a boat for a dolphin excursion. Our captain was very cool. They first dropped us off at a place where the turtles like to hang out. Our turtle picture is not the best, but we did see many on our trip.

We found the dolphins! The captain has to try to predict which way they are going and drops you off in the ocean. Then you watch as they swim by. It was pretty cool. Sometimes they stay and check out the people, too bad they didn't that day. They do love to surf off the wake from the boat.

Then they take you out to a pretty coral reef to snorkel with tons of fish. It was pretty cool.



After that we drove over to Honolulu, It took us forever to find a place to park and after paying to park, we walked for about 10 minutes before deciding it just wasn't our scene. We ate at Ruths Chris Steak house before heading back to the north shore. they did have the most yummy dessert. We ate these beautiful cup cakes and had the creme brulee. It was divine!
I wasn't planning to go out to a nice dinner or I might have brought something to fix myself up with. Oh well.

That never happened before...

The Hawaii vacation.

Andrew and I were blessed enough to take a trip to hawaii, and even better leave the children in the capable hands of Emilee and my Mom. So why is there a picture of a broken car?

Well we decided to upgrade the rental car to the convertable camero. A pretty sweet ride. We got in this very pretty silver one and took a few minutes to figure out how to put the top down... Next was reverse, We moved about an inch and it sounded like there was something like a soda bottle under the front. We stopped and looked at each other wondering what it could possibly be? Andrew decided to inch back a little more. There was a worker standing a little ways away as we stopped, he was frantically waving his hands at us.

Andrew hopped out and BAM! What a way to start the vacation! Whoever had parked the car previously had parked a little too far up on the curb. Thus when we tried to back out off came the front bumper.

We had to fill out an accident report. Andrew said he would, but it was not his fault it was parked where it was and we would not be paying to fix it.

Then we were off in the red one I am standing next to in the back of the picture. Police magnet for sure. Andrew was a very careful driver. We did arrive at the speed limit of 35mph in the blink of an eye.
We stayed at the Turtle Bay resort. After checking in we went down to the pool and ordered hamburgers. Pretty yummy.
Wednesday brought the scuba dive at Sharks Cove. I was nervous about it to say the least.

Andrew signing his life away. We got all of our gear on after our lesson on flooding and clearing our masks and the dreaded taking the regulator out under the water and putting it back in. Both of these things terrify me! Why would I willingly flood my mask?! Take my air out!!! Are you kidding me?!

I know, I know these are nessessary skills. I listened and understood the concept. I just didn't know if I could bring myself to do it.

So we loaded up the 50 pounds of gear onto out backs and headed down the steep trail to the beach. It was tricky sitting on the slippery rocks trying to get my flippers on. We managed, and a bit out of breath we swam to the middle of the cove.

As it got closer to the time to demonstrate the skills I was completely panicking. I felt like I couldn't get enough air, the bubbles were too close to my mask... I told Andrew I would just wait on the beach. I would be perfectly happy. I just couldn't voluntarily take my air out of my mouth.

Our very nice instructor Chase tried to calm me down and said we would go down a little ways and if I still didn't want to go I didn't have to. Fine. But still panicking. He held onto my shoulders and I held his and we sank down the 10 feet to the bottom.

Once there he had Andrew do the technics and then we started to swim(with my arm linked with his) Ah the relief! He didn't make me take out my source of life!

We dove for about 35 minutes and saw many beautiful fish and coral canyons. Then went back up the beach and got another tank and down we went again.
I made it! Of course Andrew was as cool as a cucumber the whole time. I even swam through the canyon and a little overhanging of coral. I am a little scared of small places. It was fun and amazing. My most terrifying experience is also one of my favorites.