Hawaii Day 3

The next day Jonathan was up at the crack of dawn. I found him downstairs looking out at the ocean.

Which you can't see from this picture that he sent when I asked where he was at 4 o'clock in the morning.

 We decided to eat at McDonald's that morning. We almost got the spam plate but just couldn't do it.

 

We wanted to go on a hike of some kind. I wanted to go on this easy paved walk up to a light house. Jonathan had different plans.

We walked up this mountain on stairs. 1048 stairs to be exact. It was crazy. Really hard, but pretty awesome.

 

At the top.

The view was pretty amazing.

Jonathan ran down the stairs in a few minutes. I was such a baby and it took me forever to get down the stairs. It was seriously terrifying I thought for sure I was going to roll down the stairs. For anyone who's been around me and stairs they know why.

We went back to the beach. This beach was amazing. I don't know what it was but the water was amazing. This was the day we fell asleep on the beach and got pretty sunburned. Not good!

 

After the beach we headed to the airport to fly to our real vacation destination, the Big Island. The Kona airport was completely outside. When you land in Kona it looks like you've landed on the moon because it's on an old Lava Field and is just black rock. The farther you drive the more beautiful it gets. It was so calm and relaxed compared to Oahu. We went and had some fish. I discovered my new favorite fish, Ono. Then we walked around Kona and checked out one of the beaches.

Hawaii Day 2

The next day we woke up pretty early and found a restaurant that some people we met at the PCC told us about. We had some delicious macadamia nut pancakes and waffles. We also walked around Honolulu for a while. We walked along the beach and past about 4 coach stores. It's a pretty nice city and so big.

Jonathan flying paper airplanes off the balcony of our hotel. I wish I would've taken a picture of the ocean view. It was so amazing to see the beautiful  ocean out the window.

 

The next day we went to Pearl Harbor. This was such a neat place. Jonathan's grandpa was there the day of the attack and should've been killed. It was a really special experience to be there. 

We walked through the museum and watched a really neat video. Then we took a boat ride over to this monument.

These are pictures of the boats underwater.

 

We were taking this picture of ourselves on the boatride back when this guy comes up to us and is like "give me your phone". I looked at him like "what is going on??" he was like "I just want to take your picture for you." So he took the next picture. I thought he was trying to steal my phone.

 

  

After Pearl Harbor we decided to head up to the North Shore. We went through the middle of the island so we could check out the Dole Plantation. It was pretty cool to see how the pineapple grow.

The beach was beautiful. The weather was amazing. It was hot and then it would rain for a few minutes and cool us off. There was a huge turtle in the water that Jonathan was loving.

We swam around for a while and then went to Ted's to eat pie and hamburgers. Everyone told us to go there and it was pretty good.

We drove back on the East side of the island which was amazing. We had to stop and check out some of the views.

Hawaii Day 1

We went to Hawaii for an amazing 10 year anniversary trip. As soon as we landed in Oahu we drove to the Polynesian Cultural Center. We watched all the dancers from the different countries on the river boats first.

The we visited all the villages. Samoa was our favorite because this guy was hilarious.

 Jonathan trying his hand at some native games. We also did spear throwing and were not very good.

 

 We did some dancing which was a lot of fun. Even more fun was watching Jonathan dance. All I have of that is a video I took which is really pretty awesome. Jonathan has forbid me from ever posting it though.

We went on a little river boat through all of the villages.

 

Then it was off to the Luau for dinner and a show. The show was great and it was fun to get to know the people we sat by. The Pina Coladas were awesome too.

 

We took the tour over to the Temple. It was so much more beautiful in person than in the pictures we've seen. We watched a movie on the history of the Church in Hawaii which was really great. It was neat to be there with so many non members and to really feel the Spirit.

 

Then we went back for the show. The show was awesome. The singing, the dancing, and especially the fire dancing. It freaked me out a bit that the guy was going to accidentally throw the flaming ball of fire into the audience. We were worried about how we would do here because by the time we left it was like 3 in the morning for us, but we had such a great time we didn't even notice.

We went to Kansas City a long time ago...I am so behind on blogging. Anyway, we went to Kansas City a few weeks ago mainly for the Temple open house. We decided to stay for a few nights and see more of the sights. 

The morning before we were planning on leaving, Kirsten had her annual Land Run and she did not want to miss it. So we dressed her up in her pioneer outfit and sent her to school. She had a really good time with her little "family" finding their land underneath the slide.

 We had to go straight to the Temple, which was not the best idea. The kids were not too happy to have to sit and watch a movie after sitting in the car for a few hours. The kids enjoyed the Temple. Kirsten and Colton were both in awe of the chandeliers. Colton kept (very loudly) saying "oooh sparkly".

 The next day we headed over to the mall and saw the fountains.
 

 We wanted to go to Legoland but it didn't open for a couple more weeks so we went to the aquarium, which was crazy packed. Kirsten loved looking for these questions that she had to answer to get a prize at the end. Colton loved looking at the fish.
 
 
 
 
 After that we went to the mall to go to Fritz's. We saw this Lego man on the way
  

My parents told me about this restaurant after they went a year ago and we have been excited to go ever since. It's a total train themed restaurant. The food is even delivered by trains. Needless to say, Colton was in heaven. The rest of the kids loved it too.

 

 

 They had this exhibit in the mall with all these fun activities like swinging like a monkey, jumping like a kangaroo, sitting in a huge nest...the kids loved it. They could've played in there all day.
 

We found a park that afternoon and played.

Jonathan wanted to go to a Royal's baseball game while we were there. After some convincing, Kirsten decided she wanted to go too. So her and Jonathan got some tickets and went to the game that night. Kirsten cheered for the Blue Jay's and despite what this picture says had a lot of fun. Since she's the Cardinal's at her school she decided she liked the Blue Jay's. Jonathan said she cheered for them even amid all the Royal's fans. The boys and I stayed at the hotel that night and relaxed.

 
 
The next morning was Sunday so we found a ward close to our hotel and went to church. Our hotel was close to downtown so we went to the downtown ward. It was a really neat ward and we met some really great people. After Church we went to Independence. The visitor's center has changed a lot since I was there. We watched a really neat video presentation on families, which most of us really enjoyed. They had little rooms set up to look like a house and Max tried desperately to get into them. Going places with an 18 month old is fun:) They had this little play area set up for kids to act like pioneers. All of the kids had so much fun pretending to be pioneers. Well, Kirsten pretended and Colton played with the well the whole time. Max just loved running around and checking everything out. We went to Liberty Jail after that. The boys and I checked out the jail and then left because they were a little distracting. Kirsten and Jonathan really enjoyed it.
 
 

That night we went to this Dinosaur Cafe. They were all a little crabby at this point and didn't appreciate the big, cool, real looking dinosaurs.
  
We also went to the Crayola cafe at some point. Here's Kirsten enjoying her dirt and worms.

The next day we swam all morning at the hotel. And then had to check out one of the famous BBQ places. So we went with Oklahoma Joe's. It was this little place inside of a gas station and the line was all the way out the door. We took our food to the park to eat before heading back home. We ate one of the most delicious things I think I've ever eaten. And I guess there's one here now!

 Then we headed back home. We had such a great time. Kirsten kept saying the few days after that she wished she lived in a hotel. I would tell her that sometimes I do too.