hawai'i

as a graduation gift to spencer, my parents gave us one of their timeshare weeks to exchange. my mom really thought we needed one last hurrah before medical school so we had some fun memories to look back on. we went online and found a week available on oahu at marriott's ko olina resort. we grabbed it and about two weeks ago we took our first trip to hawaii together. it was a great trip. my sister bethany was awesome and agreed to watch the boys for us. we felt really bad when we realized we were leaving them with her on mother's day - and both bethany and nate were speaking in sacrament meeting that day. she tells us that everything went really well. after a couple of days benny started calling bethany "mommy" and by saturday he was calling nate "daddy." i'm glad he felt so comfortable there. it was also a great chance for him to kind-of get to know more of his cousins on my side. andy was, of course, oblivious to everything.

we flew into honolulu sunday afternoon. we were able to go to a sacrament meeting there and then made our way to the resort. we were there sunday to sunday (may 11-18) - mother's day to our anniversary.

our trip:

here's what most of our pictures are like: self portraits with different backgrounds.
this was at the mai tai party at the resort monday evening. (we, of course, got the fruit juice-the line for that was much shorter). they had a guy who was a samoan chief as the entertainment. he was really funny and did a sweet fire knife dance. he was fire knife world champion at one point.


on the garden tour at the dole plantation
(still not sure if the tour was worth it...)

spencer in front of some red pineapple at dole.

the two of us in the maze (world's biggest in 2001).

we did have a fun time at the dole plantation. we got some fresh pineapple that was absolutely delicious. spencer enjoyed some pineapple soft-serve and i loved my pineapple float (pineapple soft-serve in pineapple juice - delicious!).


on our way back to the resort from dole, we swung by and found dog the bounty hunter's bail bond place. unfortunately we don't have a picture of the two of us in front (there wasn't anybody walking past that we trusted with our camera...).
we went into the gift shop, but we didn't ever see dog. on our flight home we did hear a girl talking about how they met dog when they were in the gift shop. too bad we missed out.

not having the kids with us, we were able to do a session at the hawai'i temple.

popular view of the temple.
we took our own walk toward the beach.

on our walk from the temple.


after the temple we went to the polynesian cultural center. that is a must see if you are ever in hawaii. it's a wonderful opportunity to learn more of the different cultures. there are different "villages" to go to where they talk about the different islands. there are also some with interactions.

spencer dancing at tahiti.

me dancing at tahiti.

we got tattoos from fiji.
it's a pretty neat system they have of rolling ink onto the rubber stamps and then just wrapping them around wherever you wanted it (we saw one grown man in his 40s or 50s with one on his forehead). unfortunately, they wash right off in water. but that might be a good thing because nothing screams "tourist" like two white people in hawai'i with such obviously fake "native" tattoos. we still liked them anyway.

unfortunately you can't really tell that i'm flexing...

just after the luau.
(one of our two pictures of both of us not a self-portrait)

before the show started (after the luau) we walked around for a little bit and spencer saw some palm fronds. he started braiding some of the leaves into a headband (i did some braiding on one, but spencer was better at that than i was).
these are currently drying in our kitchen.


after snorkeling at hanauma bay. it was beautiful! we saw a guy holding a squid he had caught, an octopus (i didn't realize they blend into their surroundings), an eel (they are so ugly), spencer saw a puffer fish (he chased it trying to get it to puff up), and so many other beautiful fish. it was definitely worth swimming out pretty far to see some more fun things. it was amazing seeing fish among the coral in shallow water, but there was a lot more fun stuff to see when you got in the deeper water.
that was a great time!


our rental car.
i suggested getting the orange one so we would always be able to see where we parked.


this was part of kyoto gardens of honolulu memorial park. unfortunately, wikipedia was a little dated as the park was under construction and not exactly a tourist attraction.


our lagoon.
the resort was on one of a series of four lagoons. very nice to swim in. the only thing was that you don't get to swim in the crashing waves. that is on our list for next time.

the view from our balcony.

our favorite tree to be under for the shade. we only got it one day. but it was a great place to fall asleep reading without fear of spencer getting fried.

a fun area between lagoons. we liked to come over here and watch the waves. it's not a swimming area so we couldn't go in, but it was fun to get splashed in.
we also found a tide pool that had lots of fish in it. right next to that we saw a bunch of crabs on a few different rocks. that was really neat.


our flight home sunday left at 8:45p so we went to pearl harbor after church that day.

the arizona memorial.

spencer pointing to the captain of the battleship West Virgina - his grandma spendlove's second cousin.


outside pearl harbor.

it was a wonderful trip and we're grateful to have been able to take it. i think it's given us some great memories to look back on over the next four years. thank you, mom and dad!