Are you ready? I took a lot of pictures.
We had a great time in Hawaii last week. I have to admit, I had a lot of anxiety about this trip. I was excited about it, but also really nervous about traveling with 3 kids ages 5 and under. Thankfully, it went much better than I expected. It really was a great trip.
On the way there, we had a layover in San Fransisco. I'm now a big fan of that airport because they had a cool little play area for the kids. It helped pass the time. This mist + fan exhibit would create a little tornado. It was cool.
See?
On our first day, we went to Kahalu'u Beach, which was right by our condo. The sand was not the nice white sand, so that's not my favorite, but it's a pretty cool snorkel spot.
Paige and I took some pics outside of our condo.
I loved the place we stayed at. It's called Na Hale 'O Keauhou. I wanted to move in there.
Thanksgiving was the day after we arrived, and Bev made a delicious dinner for us.
Thank you, Bev!!!!
Swimming at the condo pool
Paige tried starfruit for the first time.
After church on Sunday, we drove to the Kona Temple.
While we were at the temple, a girl pulled up and offered to take a picture with our whole family. Nate recognized her from BYU-Hawaii, so he asked and sure enough, she was a student there while we were. That was kind of fun.
We all went to an awesome lu'au at the Marriott Hotel. We learned how to do the hula.
The food was delicious and it was a good show.
The girls really tried hard to follow the instructor. It was cute.
Kate and Grandpa Court dancing. :)
After the lu'au it started to pour. We don't mind some rain.
We went to this beautiful beach called Hapuna Beach. It was about 45 minutes north of Kona. White sand beaches aren't as plentiful on the Big Island. This one was nice.
Happy little Halle
On Tuesday we did a dinner cruise. It was a little stressful keeping the girls from the edge of the boat. OK, a lot stressful. But it was still a good experience because the food was really good, we saw some dolphins and a manta ray, and there was a really cool musician named LT Smooth on the boat who played Hawaiian music. He was so good. I guess he's won a couple Grammy Awards.
dolphins!
They had a snack bar before dinner. Lots of yummy fruit and stuff.
On our last day we went to Magic Sands Beach.
I don't have any pictures to document the flight home, but that's probably a good thing. It was really rough because it was an overnight flight. I will never do that with kids again. We were all so exhausted and uncomfortable and it was just really hard. I kind of wanted to die.
It was a little hard coming back home, seeing as it's in the 50's and raining, but the day after we got back we started decorating for Christmas and picked out a tree, and suddenly I was happy to be back on the mainland.
