Last December at Brady's work Christmas party Brady donated to a raffle. The grand prize for the raffle was two airline tickets to anywhere in the continental U.S.. Well to our surprise, Brady's name was drawn and we won tickets! Wahoo!!! As a side note, the president of the company owns a condo in Hawaii. So he came over to us as the party was coming to an end and asked if we would like to fly to Hawaii(not included in the continental U.S.) and stay in his condo free of charge. He didn't have to ask us twice!!! We were in!Come to find out this lovely condo sleeps very comfortably 8 people so Brady and I decided it would be alot of fun to take both of our parents along for the trip.So we did.We went the first part of October. Oh and our little guy James came along for the fun as well. I couldnt come to grips with leaving him for 10 whole days and his birthday was while we were in Hawaii so there was no other choice but to bring him along and im so glad we did. He was so much fun!
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| Here we are taking off to Hawaii at 6:00 a.m. We were pretty nervous to fly with James but he turned out to be a pretty great passenger on both flights. We kept him busy with an electric toothbrush and a tape measure(thanks Jenn) and a few snacks here and there. Oh and he did end up napping for a few hours which was nice. |
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| Here we are!!! Brady's parents were on a separate and a little later flight than the rest of us so they were not present yet. My parents rented a Jeep which was fun until dads head started to sunburn. |
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| The condo we stayed in was amazing!! Here is the view from our bedroom window. |
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| Dave and Lori made it!!! I believe its really only like 6 or 6:30 in this picture but sunset was always around 5:30 so it got dark pretty quickly. Here we are at the Beach Tree restaurant. It was a beautiful place literally right on the beach. Best $20 hamburger you will ever eat. |
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| On Sunday we listened to General Conference and then went to see the Kona temple. So beautiful! It was a bummer that it was closed for cleaning the week we were there. |
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| Monday we went to the condos private beach. OH MY GOODNESS! Snorkeling is a blast!!! We found that James is quite fond of eating sand so luckily this beach has a nice grassy area with chairs. We all took turns snorkeling and watching James here. |
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| Later in the day we went into town and went shopping. We went to a flea market where James found that he really likes star fruit. Poor kid, it was so humid that day so he is sweating like a dog. |
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| We bought alot of fresh pineapple. I LOVE PINEAPPLE NOW!! Its so sweet over in Hawaii, it was like eating candy. |
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| Here are our cute parents eating at the Kona Inn. This restaurant was right by the beach as well, so pretty! We got to see the sunset while eating dinner. We all ordered some amazing Mahi Mahi covered in crushed up macadamia nuts. It was DELICIOUS, probably the best fish I ate all week! |
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| Eating some Shaved Ice, they know how to make a snow cone!!! its as big as James' head and oh so tasty!!! |
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| Here is our little family eating at the Kona Inn. |
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| On Tuesday we all rode over to Hilo which is on the other side of the island. Kona(where we stayed) is the desert side and Hilo is the rainforest side. We went on a botanical hike where we saw tons and tons of plants you didn't even know existed. |
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| This tree was crazy cool! |
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| Do you see the Gecko? |
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| Geckos in the leaf. |
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| Did you know pineapple grows up from the ground and is pink at first? hmmm... I sure did not! So cool to see pineapples growing! |
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| So here is a funny little story. We were on this little hike and Brady caught a little black lizard. He was showing James the lizard and James was just playing with it in Brady's hands. Well to our surprise, James caught the lizard and immediately put it to his mouth. We were all shocked! I screamed and knocked it out of his hands.James was devastated to say the least. He was not happy with us that we had taken away his lizard and also scared him half to death. Well, about ten minutes later James was trying to spit something out of his mouth. I pulled a skinny black thing off of his tongue. It was the lizards tail. James got him! Gross!! We all still laugh about how James ate a lizard tail. |
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| swinging from the banyan trees!!! |
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| This is us in front of Akaka Falls! So pretty. Fish swim up this waterfall. That night we had a pretty unusual experience. You see James was still on formula at the time and he only likes a hot bottle. So when I packed our things for the adventure that day I "thought" I packed more than enough formula. Well, since James boy only likes hot bottles and we couldnt always find warm water and would experiment to see if he would take a cool one we ended up wasting alot of formula. By the time six o clock rolled around there was no where to get warm water and he was STARVING1 So we desperately attmepted using cool water with our last bit of formula. Didnt work and James was screaming. We finally made it to a small town with a gas station. They had all baby item except for formula. Bummer. A police officer was there and overheard us talking of our situation. He then offered to lead us to the nearest grocery store. We ended up with a police escort, he turned on his lights and everything for our very hungry baby. Thank you kind police officer, what a nice man. We were able to buy formula and find warm water there and continue with our drive. |
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| Wednesday was James' birthday. Us and my mom and dad(Dave and Lori went ziplining this day) went on a snorkel boat tour out at Capt Cook's Monument.Amazing snorkeling! The water was so clear. One of the coolest things I have ever done! |
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| James' favorite part of the boat tour was the buckets full of water on the boat. Aren't water buckets the funnest?? |
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| One of my favorite parts was the dolphins swimming along side our boat. 8 dolphins!! They are beautiful animals! I didn't even know I liked dolphins until this trip and I saw them in real life. |
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James was pretty tuckered out by the end of this whole thing. |
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| That night we met up with Lori and Dave and went to the Hilton Hotel to eat dinner. This hotel is HUGE!!! They have there a pool of like 8 dolphins that you can pay $250 to swim with or there is a little restaurant right by it and you can eat there and watch the dolphins too. We ate at that restaurant that night. James loved GiGi our waitress and she loved him |
.JPG)
