January 2019 - Hawaii Vacation, Part 2

On Thursday we started the day early and went on a Lighthouse hike while the sun came up. The views were so pretty, and it was a nice paved path that you followed up the mountain to get to the top; but the kids did not think it was all that special after the crazy, exciting mud hike they had taken the day before. So there was a lot more whining during this hike, but we tried to keep them entertained by taking cute pictures and enjoying the scenery.

I love taking picture of the four girls close up. As we wound around the mountain on the hiking path, the sun rose and made beautiful picture spots at each of the lookouts.

The other complaint by the kids was that we were doing a Lighthouse hike so they thought we'd actually be able to visit or tour the lighthouse, but it was just in the distance. There was a lookout at the very top of the hike, but you couldn't actually go right up to the lighthouse. You can see it behind Audrey and Tessa in the first picture as we made our way along the path. It was also getting windy as we walked, but we still made sure to stop for pictures and to look at all the islands in the distance that we could see in the ocean.

I thought it was funny that we had multiple pictures of the adults being carried by the kids. Part of the walk back down, the older kids started giving the younger kids shoulder rides. AJ and Logan even gave Tyler a ride. I love this picture of Logan and Audrey because it seriously looks like they have a fake backdrop behind them. The clouds and lighting for the picture was so pretty.

At one point all the little kids were on the shoulders of someone. All the kids got along so well. It really was a fun vacation.

It didn't rain on us until we got in our cars after the hike, but we were able to take these pretty pictures with a rainbow as the storm headed our way.

Our next stop for the day was Sea Life Park, which is kind of like a zoo for ocean animals. It rained quite a bit while we waited for the park to open and to get our bracelets to enter, but it was enough waiting time for me to grab some pictures.

Tessa's favorite part was of course the sea turtles. We got to see the trainers feed them and watch as they swam around eating the food. We also saw another sea lion and learned the difference between sea lions and seals. (one of the differences is their ears)

They had an aviary section that was awesome. You walked into the aviary and picked up the stick with bird feed and just waited for the birds to come eat it out of your hand. We loved it and the birds were so pretty.

As we got more comfortable, the birds did too. Tyler had one land on his shoulder. The Kasallis boys were even putting the sticks on their head and the birds would land right on their heads and hang out there. I think Tony had four birds on his head and shoulders at the same time at one point.

The birds were so pretty and colorful. I loved them. We stayed in the aviary for a long time and kept going back because the kids thought it was so fun.

They had a touch pool area as well where you could feed the fish and touch the sea life. This is where we saw the baby sea turtles and got to touch them. They were so cute and tiny compared to their full-sized parents.

The big adventure of the day was getting to interact with dolphins. The Kasallis's did it first, but once it was our turn, the girls were super excited. We got outfitted in our life vests and then headed into the water with our trainer and the dolphin, Maui.

The trainer had Maui do all kinds of tricks right in front of us (like splash us) and then he swam back and forth right by us so we could feel his skin as the trainer told us all about dolphins and about Maui specifically.

 

Then we each got to take a turn holding Maui's face in our hands and giving him a kiss on the nose and letting him kiss our cheek. It was pretty cool. Here's me and Tessa taking our turns.

Here's Abby and Tyler. You had to step forward and put out your hands and wait for Maui to swim up to you like Tyler's doing in his picture. We each got to feed him a fish at one point too.

Here's Aubrey and Taryn with Maui. It worked out that we were able to take pictures while the Kasallis's had their turn, so they took all of our pictures for us.

We took a few more pictures before leaving the Sea Life Park. I liked these ones because that mountain in the background is where the lighthouse is and the mountain that we had hiked that morning to see the lighthouse.

We rushed from the Sea Life park to the north side of the island for our next adventure for the day. We went fishing in the ocean. Ken was our guide and he had all the poles ready for us and showed us the best places to try fishing off the beach.

The kids had fun casting out and waiting to see if they caught anything. Taryn and Teagan were the few who didn't catch anything, but they played in the sand whenever they got tired of trying to fish.

Abby caught a fish, a Humu fish, which is their state fish and a nickname for the really long actual name of the fish. It was a good sized fish that she caught.

Aubrey caught one of the state fish too, but a tinier one. She was very excited to reel it in and hold it in her hands for a picture before sending it back to the ocean.

Tessa had the catch of the day, but I like to claim partial credit since I had cast the line out, but she did the rest of the work herself.

And she caught this amazing butterfly fish. Ken said he'd never even caught one of these before. He was just as excited about this fish as Tessa was. It was a really good sized fish as well.

 

Tyler caught one and was so happy to say that he fished in Hawaii. Logan caught a couple fish and was very happy that fishing in Hawaii was on our itinerary.

 

We got a picture of all of us including Ken's helper, Kyle, who helped us with fishing. We only had about an hour before the sun was down and it was too dark to continue fishing, but it was time well spent.

On Friday, we had another free day with nothing scheduled. We spent the day at the beach. We ended up staying at the Hukilau Beach right across from where we were staying. It was a little windy (actually really windy) but that made the waves great for body surfing and boogie boarding.

The kids loved playing in the water and building sand castles. We made fancy castles until the waves crashed them down, and then they became thrones for the tired, water-logged kids.

Here are the two sand castles that Sam and Tessa made. The one on the right we all made together and then they wanted to have a competition so they made the one on the left while Taryn and Teagan helped me make the one you just saw above. It was fun playing in the sand. That's my favorite part of beach days.

We also had to bring back our mermaid and merman sand sculptures. We did this with the girls once when we visited California a couple of years ago. Sam was the Mer-king and these were his Mer-people. 

After the beach, we cleaned up and went to visit the BYU-Hawaii campus. We wanted to be able to visit their book store so we went on a weekday when it was open. After shopping, we played Ultimate Frisbee on their lawn and took lots of pictures. We loved the sunset.

The palm trees made for a really pretty background too. The campus was right behind our hotel, so it was walking distance from us.

Audrey took this picture of the kids and it looks like it should be in a frame advertisement; it's so good!

Tony's parents, who the kids call Popeye and Day, flew out to be with us and had made it the night before, so they joined us on the rest of our adventures. Here are a couple of pictures that we had taken of all of us together.

For dinner, we wanted to try the food trucks that you always see on the road. But by the time we made it, most of them were closing (another reminder that nothing's open after dark), but we were able to grab some food and ice cream while we visited about our day and about our trip so far.

January 2019 - Hawaii Vacation, Part 1

We started out the year 2019 in Hawaii. It was a surprise trip for our girls. We had been talking about a "big trip" for a couple of months, but the girls didn't know where we were going. Once we got home from our Christmas trip to Utah, we repacked our bags and headed out of town again. As we left town, the girls kept trying to guess our final destination. They were using their phones to try and map where we going based on the direction we were headed and the 10-hour distance we had mentioned. The Kasallis family found out they were going to Hawaii at Christmas and were flying out of Denver. The girls thought we were headed to Denver too until they realized we were driving west and not north. We drove to Southern California and ended up flying out of San Diego. Once we got to the airport the next morning, we were flying Hawaiian Airlines, so the girls finally figured out where we were headed. 

Even pulling into the airport parking lot got our girls excited because only Abby remembers ever flying before. Tessa has flown but not since before she was two; and the other two girls have never flown on an airplane before. They were very excited and nervous. However, once we were on the 5-hour flight, the excitement wore off pretty quickly and they just got bored. Luckily, we watched movies, slept, and played games on our phones to keep us entertained.

We got into Hawaii the afternoon of December 31st. We met up with the Kasallis family in the airport and surprised their kids because they had no idea that we were going to be in Hawaii too.  

After getting our rental cars, we drove an hour to the other side of the island to where we were staying for the week. We were on Oahu, and we stayed in Laie. We were three minutes away from each other and right along the beach. The Hukilau Beach was right across the street from where the Kasallis's were staying so we walked on the beach and the kids jumped a little in the waves before it got too dark. It was New Year's Eve; although with the time change, we were exhausted by 9pm and didn't even make it to midnight Hawaii time. We did toast with our sparkling cider together when it was midnight on the mainland.

We woke up on January 1st to a free day and decided to go for a hike. The weather was great, however it had been raining before we got to Hawaii because the hike that we went on was so muddy. Here's a picture of where we parked leading to the entrance of the hiking path.

The hike led to a waterfall, so we had an end in sight, but we quickly realized that it was not going to be an easy hike. We tried to say clear of the mud puddles, but that only lasted about 5 minutes before we realized that everything was a mud puddle. Every time we crossed the stream, we stopped to rinse off the mud splatters.

The trees were so cool and there were long vines everywhere. I think every kid (and probably adults too) tried to Tarzan at least once during the hike. The kids didn't care that the mud got on everything. We all just tried to not fall down too many times, but by the end of the day, I'm pretty sure everyone had fallen at least once.

We sometimes tried to walk only on the roots that were spread all over the ground, but they were pretty slippery. Abby was showing me how muddy she was on the back of her legs, but Logan had to photo bomb the picture and show us his muscles.

Almost to the waterfall, we came to a peak where you could see out over the island. It was so pretty, and the perfect place to stop for a picture.

The waterfall was where we were headed and it was so cool. People were climbing the rocks and jumping from the top of the waterfall. My girls wanted to try, but the rocks were slippery and the signs said not to jump, so Tyler made them stay down in the water. The girls waded in the water, we took pictures, ate some snacks and cleaned off our muddy limbs.

But once we were done at the waterfall, we had to take the same trek back so it was muddy all over again. But the kids did not complain once about how long we hiked or hard we climbed. Having friends to hike with and the fact that they thought "the messier the better," made it an enjoyable day spent together. The kids thought it was the most fun hike they'd ever been on.

By the time we made it back to our cars, and rinsed off our legs and shoes again, (by using a friendly neighbor's hose) we drove back to our side of the island and it was too late to do any other activities. We learned pretty quickly that everything closes in Hawaii once the sun goes down, so most of our days we were done and back to our hotels by 7pm. And with the long adventures every day, we were exhausted and in bed and asleep by 9:00 or 9:30 at night. We did start each morning before the sunrise so we were definitely get our day's worth of activities in. It was a great first day in Hawaii.

On our second day, Wednesday, we started the day at Pearl Harbor. As we were walking into the museums, we saw this huge snail on the grass. Aubrey put her hand down by it so you could see how big it was. It was amazing!

We only had a few hours to spend at Pearl Harbor, but there were so many things to do, we could have spent all day there. We took some pictures out front before taking a tour of a submarine.

We had a lady in the submarine take a picture of all of us together while inside the sub. It was so interesting to see all the gadgets, levers, and knobs; and all of it crammed together in such a tiny space.

After walking through the submarine, we walked along the top and had this picture taken of all of us at the front end. You can see on the far left some white which was the monument for the Arizona that sunk and the Missouri battleship that we were headed to tour next.

We took a quick bus ride over a bridge through the naval base to the next tour spot. The kids had fun even on the bus deciding who to sit by and smiling for our pictures.

The Missouri battleship was very cool to walk around and tour. We toured it on our own versus having a tour guide, but the kids got to see the captain's room, the cannons, and where they signed the treaty. Everything just seemed so large to me. The battleship was huge!

Aubrey loved the big, bright flowers that we saw everywhere on the island. She wanted her picture by this bright pink one which was near the waiting spot for our shuttle bus.

We didn't get to spend the entire day at Pearl Harbor because we had reservations to snorkel on that same day. So we spent some time at the swap meet buying souvenirs, and then we headed over to Hanauma Bay after picking up our snorkeling equipment.

We had a hard time getting to the bay because their parking is very limited, but once we got there, the view was beautiful. This is the bay from up top, and once you watch a video on snorkeling safety, you walk down a long ramp to get to the beach and bay.

Snorkeling was hard for the little ones, especially with it being salt water, but by the end of the time we spent there, everyone had gone in the water at least once and seen some cool fish. There was also a sea lion basking on the beach that we kept watching too. Swimming over the reefs was hard because you're not supposed to touch anything, but there were a ton of schools of fish everywhere to swim around. The kids thought it was cool, even if they thought the actual snorkeling part was hard.

I mentioned the early mornings and early nights. The girls definitely slept well every night after spending every day on the go. I woke up one morning to this and thought it was so cute. Aubrey had almost pushed Tessa off the bed, but she was practically sleeping on top of her.

Our Hawaii vacation, dubbed the Kasibbons Trip, was off to a great start!