A Taste of Paradise

I regret to announce we are home from our trip to paradise, aka Hawaii. I was seriously tempted to just stay on the island, but then I remembered that my girls are back on the m.l. (main land). So we may have to just ship out as a family sometime and see what we can do. The island of Kauaii is beautiful; scenic and breathtaking. We could have spent days admiring each site, though we usually only had a few hours. We came home refreshed and a little rejuvenated. I feel I can brave the several inches of snow that promptly welcomed us on our porch.
The girls did great with their grandparents. I am told it took a team of six helpful family members to get through sacrament meeting...(No fair! We only have the two of us, and Maddie's temper alone outnumbers us!) My favorite story so far was hearing about how the girls took cans of tuna fish and transported them inside Atticus's "house." This proved to us that obviously, the girls were surrounded by all of their favorite things: Atticus, tuna fish, and grandparents! There may be other stories, probably under the radar....but we were provided with other statistics: most tantrums Maddie has had in one day--three! That's it? I don't think she showed her true personality on her vacation. In any case, we missed the girls a bunch and were glad to see them again. Thanks a million, Brent and Syl!
So here is a little taste of our week. I don't think it's a good idea to do a play by play, as we filled up our entire memory card on our camera. However, this is much more than my journal gets, so enjoy! I am mostly trying to document this for our Elder Davis in Bulgaria; he didn't even know we were going back to Hawaii until a couple of weeks ago! We just didn't know how to tell him, so when we all dropped little hints about the next vacation to Hawaii, apparently, he thought we were joking! So this one's for you, Elder. I hope you can live it vicariously through this lovely post.




This is the house we stayed in. It was huge! It had a small backyard and then--nothing but ocean, pictured below. It was a beautiful, private beach with black sand and a dock in the distance.


The first day on the island was a Sunday. After church, we found a little beach to take a stroll. Apparently, this is a WAY dangerous beach with a high surf and signs all over. Regardless, we saw a whole bunch of people surfing there.



Ryan and Heather practicing capoeira (a Brazilian marshall art) on the beach. To the naked eye, it just looked like cartwheels, but take a trip to Brazil and you will spend the rest of your life trying to imitate it.

This was the sunset from the beach outside the house.



Jocelyn and I took a romantic walk down the dock. We thought it would be funny if she fell in...


This Blue Dolphin Charter was one of my all-time favorites of the trip. Somehow, Ryan, Jocelyn and I ended up on the front of the boat where we were told we would get "a little wet." A few waves later and, as you can see, we were soaking! How did my white shirt like that? The rest of the family, and the rest of the boat, were sitting only a few feet away and stayed quite dry. As Jocelyn said, "They may be laughing at us, but really they want to BE us!" I must have looked like a drowned rat because some random lady offered me a towel an hour after this picture was taken!


On this cruise, we saw dolphins swimming in the waves, sea turtles, and a Humpback Whale breaching. I took many pictures of it, but unfortunately, they all turned out like this, as these sea animals are much quicker than my camera. Actually, in this picture you can see the turtle's head coming out of the water. I still don't know how my dad saw the whale spouting in the distance, but we did not put it past the person who spots bald eagles while driving down the freeway at 60 mph.





This was a site called the spouting horn. It was amazing the way the water came up and shot up into the air. It was just like Old Faithful!


Come to find out, the island of Kauai has "the Grand Canyon of Hawaii." Who knew? It was amazing!


Jocelyn and Heather pretend to like each other....


Jocelyn has been trying to be a member of the Polynesian Club at her school for the entire school year. Unfortunately, she has not yet made it in; she thinks it's because she's a white girl. So here we are, having started our own bench, rocking out to Usher's "Yeah, yeah yeah!"




My dad's all-time high of the trip and/or his whole life: the bird sanctuary. We had about a hundred little birds follow us all over the place, including peacocks, roosters, and doves. They even ate out of our hands.






A lot of the island is inaccessable by highway. The only way to enjoy the full effect is via hiking or helicopter. We chose the less-active route and helicoptered through what is called 'the wettest spot on earth'! They weren't kidding! It was so fun to learn about the history of the island from the pilot as he gave us a tour of the island. We drove through a rainstorm, and that was scary, but in the end it was totally worth it!


I got to sit next to the captain! I guess that made me the co-pilot! A funny thing about this guy was that he's the only helicopter pilot on the island that drives barefoot. It was crazy!



View from the sky. We got to see a few of the spots where 'Jurassic Park' was filmed. Remember the part with the waterfall? We totally saw that. I loved the helicopter ride and wished we had brought the video camera. We have tons more pictures from this, but I am getting tired of uploading pictures.

The very last day on our vacation, we went snorkeling and then to this lighthouse. I can't wait to get the pictures up we took from our water camera. We literally swam with the sea turtles! They were so friendly! I can't believe how close one got to me; I thought it was Ryan or my dad at first. That has got to be my favorite memory of this vacation. That and not realizing that slowly the tide was carrying us farther and farther from the shore....and having to swim full force to get back!

From the lighthouse we saw about 30 dolphins swimming! We, well my dad, saw another whale. He was the only one who saw it, and funny, the only one NOT looking through binnoculars. I loved the view from the lighthouse and the waves crashing up against the rocks. I could have stayed there all day. What a fabulous trip. I wish I were there right now.