Hawaiian Rollercoaster Ride

Dont even mention how far behind I am in blogging - trust me I am aware. But like Ive said before, being a little behind in blogging just means life must be extra busy and awesome. And in this case its a fact... a week in hawaii is a blog worth waiting for so shall we... We were originally going to go to hawaii in 2020, but rona hit so we finally made it this year and in time to celebrate seth's graduation. The downer about this trip is drew was MIA. He was given the opportunity to lead a group of teenagers in a service trip in guatemala for the next month so it was a family trip minus drewby. My trip started with a 3:45 am alarm on saturday morning. OH also after not going to bed till after midnight (a terrible idea on my part). 

I survived my flights... did lots of sleeping and listening to music. Met up with the family in honolulu. After waiting for hours for our rental car our first stop was zippy's aka MALASADAS

how beautiful. So the rest of the blog is gonna be a bunch of pictures (like a ton of pictures), enjoy!

As soon as we got to our rental house we all changed into our suits and headed to Waimea. Did some rock running, and swam with a couple turtles - a dream to finally be back at our favorite beach. 

Sunday we went to a local ward and walked around the temple grounds. 

The rest of sunday was hanging out on the back deck playing cards, watching the waves and sunset, and the boys were constantly watching some meat cook off show on netflix. 

The boys also played with my hair and had a braiding contest - jack definitely won. 

Monday was beach hopping day between waimea and three tables. Lots of digging holes (jack getting smacked by a wave in the picture above) , snorkeling and snacks and sun. 

Seven brothers for dinner - always a hit.

trips to foodland

Fam pic with the sunset

Other random sunset pictures

Tuesday morning started out in a pretty epic way...

Swimming with these bad boys... in a cage don't worry. 

So dang cool to be so close to these creatures. I just wanted to reach out and pet them. 

Sadly my go pro didnt work while taking pictures of the rest of us, but thats ok. And on another not so good note... seth, jack and mom all got pretty sea sick. Im sure the sharks were not interested in whatever those three were throwing over the boat. We even all took dramamine! The waves were smooth, but huge! So we were rockin' pretty good. Between the upset stomach and the drowsiness from the dramamine - seth and mom were kind of down and out for the day. Seth joked how the dramamine just about killed him haha. He took a four hour afternoon nap and was still so out of it when he woke up. 

while they recovered Dad, jack and I walked to the sunrise shack and got some smoothie bowls... I could go for one of those right about now. 

Pretty sure we all took naps that afternoon and then treated ourselves to some matsumotos!

A must while on the north shore.

More pretty sunsets

The next morning Dad and I set out on a pretty rad hike. Moanalua Valley trail aka the legal way to the stairway to heaven hike. 

This was definitely one of the highlights to this trip. A super difficult, steep, muddy, long hike... what could be better?! We ran while we could the first couple of flat miles. Once this trail started going up though, it meant business. At some points you are literally pulling your way up the mountain with a muddy rope. Thank goodness we brought our crampons, so slipping wasnt too much of a problem.

We forgot our sunscreen which didnt end up to be a problem because we hiked in the clouds most of the time. Look at how narrow that trail is! it was insane. it was literally one foot right in front of the other through these narrow muddy passages. 

Told ya - literally climbing up the mountain. 

This was one of my favorite parts - how muddy we were. We got to 5 miles out reaching yet another peak and all we saw was clouds so we decided to call that the turn around point. We found some rocks/logs and sat for a second to eat our sandwiches with our very dirty hands. 

We didnt sit for too long before it started getting chilly so we started the trek down all those steep cliffs. 

We popped up over one of the many peaks we climbed and saw THIS! Kind of unbelievable. 

We actually made super good timing. 10 miles in 4.5 hours with I believe a little over 3000 ft of elevation gain. We were pooped once we got to the car, but its the best type of exhaustion. Pretty awesome morning - thanks dad for helping me check off bucket list hikes even though sometimes it sucks hah. 

Trying to act like tourists

That afternoon was more beach time...

and more digging holes for the boys. 

Thursday morning, at the request of the boys, we hit up wet'n wild. It was a fun little morning of water slides and burning your feet on the hot cement while running from slide to slide. 

On the way home we had to make one last pit stop in haleiwa 

For more snow cones. duh. 

Even more swimming and hole digging. Haha

The other beach goers were pretty impressed with massive holes dug by these boys. 

and thats a wrap... I left friday morning. The family left saturday afternoon. We all made it home safe and still trying to get back on our normal sleep schedules. What a trip. I sure do love my family and doing fun things with them. Thanks mom and dad for giving us cool opportunities and letting us make memories like these ones. I love that dang island and already want to go back.