Aloha dear friends...

Today is the second day home from our 13 day trip to the Big Island in Hawaii! It feels surreal to be home again...just as it did to actually be there. I caught myself constantly thinking...I'm really here! We're in Hawaii!! I've wanted to go there my whole life and it seemed like everyone I knew had been there but me. Even my 6 year old sister had been 3 times before I made it over. :) We arrived on December 18th after a great and uneventful flight from LAX. Reese was antsy (what 21 month old isn't!?!) but overall did an amazing job on the 6 hour flight to Honolulu. After a quick 20 minute flight from Oahu to Kona we were met by my parents and 3 youngest siblings who had shell leis to put around our necks along with big hugs!!

Because 13 days is a lot to cram into one post, I'll just be putting up pictures and dialoging a little about each one. To put our trip in a little nutshell: It was wonderful to be with my family, incredible to experience the Island and two beaches we visited and there were some definite hard challenges too!

The first Challenge: These nasty HUGE roaches! And this is the smaller of the two we saw! :( :( Yuck! He also happened to be our first visitor the first morning we were in our condo and it took everything within me to stop gasping and get out words to tell Mat to kill it. I had to take a picture just so you all could share in my horror. You're welcome.

The second challenge...WAAAY cuter than that nasty bug is this little chunky love in the next picture! Kona is known for it's Kona Coffee and Hawaii is known for their macadamia nuts. Oh and it happened to be Christmas too so Costco had these great dark chocolate covered cookies. As soon as we got to my parent's condo I started chowing down...chocolate, coffee, chocolate covered nuts, coffee covered nuts, chocolate cookies...you get the picture. LOTS and LOTS of caffeine! Well this poor little girl had EnOuGh from her mama and simply refused to sleep...or at least sleep for any length of time. So we were up: 11pm, 1am, 4am, 6am! Yes, I felt like I had a newborn all over again. A few nights like that and I was a walking zombie with a wired baby. I'm so grateful to the Lord for my dad who finally figured out what was going on. I simply stopped eating and within 24 hours she was back to sleeping and sleeping hard to make up for all she lost. Poor poor sweetheart! It's definitely humbling to be the reason your baby is struggling.

The next set of pictures is from our mini field trip to Kona Joe's coffee. We had a great time learning about how Kona coffee is made and specifically how this place has used the technique of trellising (the way vineyards grow their grapes on a trellis) to grow their coffee trees.

I never knew there were so many different kinds of coffee beans!

Our first beach we visited was the beautiful Mauna Kea beach really close to our condo (about 15 min away). Such a gorgeous day...I think probably the warmest (87 degrees) and least windy day we had! Reese loved the sand...she could have played in it forever!

Our second beach, through the recommendation of our friends Aaron and Jen Tresham who just happened to be in Kona at the same time we were, was Kukio beach which proved to be GREAT for little ones! Matt, Tom and Joe wish there could have been more waves to ride boogie boards but it turned out to be a good spot for Reese and Elise as the rocks broke the waves and created a big wading pool. Again, a wonderful day in the warm sunshine!

To celebrate 5 amazing years together we bought tickets back in October for a Lu'au in downtown Kona. This was our one big splurge and we did it without kiddos! My parents graciously (or maybe the word is more "happily") watched Reese and Allie and from what we were told had a great time together. Matt and I felt like kids ourselves with the opportunity to get away AND to be on a tropical island in paradise together. The Lu'au's show after dinner was a hit for both of us! The dancers were incredible...I never knew you could move your hips like they did. :) We were pleasantly surprised at how modest, wholesome and family-friendly the entire evening was. A highlight for sure!

The view from our condo! Incredible to wake up to this every morning!

Matt bought me a real lei for the evening. :)

Yum! Shaved ice with ice cream on the bottom! It was so good, it was even hard to share with my almost 2 year old.

Love this picture of Nana, Allie, Elise and Poppy!

Chrstimas Day we opened stockings, went to the pool, grilled steaks and had a great day together! Little did I know that challenge number 3 was about to hit. This was my last healthy day on the island.

Our Condo: I did a lame-o job of capturing how wonderful this place was! So spacious, two bedrooms, 3 toilets (the third one I discovered a day before we left...who does that!?! Haha!) an amazing kitchen I wanted to pack in my bags and bring home with me and a washer and dryer! I literally was in paradise just by getting to do our laundry 20 feet away from the bedroom. Another wonderful perk...the lanai we got to read, hang out on, take naps and let Reese play "outside" in! I pretty much wish I could bottle that whole place up and move it to Castaic.

Our view I took through the screen while the sun was setting...forgive the blurriness of these two pictures.

And that sums up Hawaii! Mom and Dad...there really aren't enough words nor ways to express how thankful we are for you in making this trip a reality for us! We never could have done it without you...thank you for an amazing 7 days spent with you and even coming to our aid when I got sick and had to stay 3 extra days. We feel so blessed to have been able to do this and we'll have memories to last a lifetime!