Hawaii is my FAVE place!!!

Brian and I just got back from a FABULOUS Hawaii trip. We left on March 22nd and got back March 28th. Brian's mom was SO WONDERFUL and flew out here to watch Kylie so Brian and I could have a trip just for the two of us. It was SO GREAT, although we missed Kylie LIKE CRAZY and couldn't stop talking/thinking about her. I earned this trip from Stampin' Up! so it was a FREE trip for us! Can't get much better than that. This was my first time to Hawaii, and I have to say....I found my PERFECT place to live!!! OH MY GOODNESS! The weather was PERFECT! I would say 80's ish the whole week, sunny, and so not humid. It was PERFECT. Such a wonderful trip. Here are LOTS of pictures to give you a glimpse into our vacation...

Right when we got off the plane in Kona, there were people there to guide us to our bus to take us to our hotel. Before we got on the bus, we all got "leid" of course! :)

This is where we stayed. I HIGHLY HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend it to everyone! WOW! is all I have to say. It was SO BIG and SO MUCH to see just being there. It was so big they had trams and boats to take you all around if you didn't want to walk. We mostly walked so we could see everything, but it was fun if we were feeling lazy. :)

There was a big ocean fed lagoon in the hotel. You could go snorkeling there and all sorts of stuff. The big waterfall is where a lot of the fish were, as well as sea turtles and eels and stuff. I was INCHES from the turtles...we were totally swimming together! It was amazing!!

Here is another view of the lagoon. You can see there is a beach right there on the lagoon as well. This was not as busy as I thought it would be. Seemed most of the people hung out by the pools.

And yes...this hotel even had DOLPHINS! They were SO CUTE! :) You could swim with them and stuff, but we never got around to doing that. Next time. :) (Because we WILL come back here! It's amazing!)

This was the view from our HOTEL ROOM! It was SO WONDERFUL waking up to this!!! Absolutely incredible!

Here is our try at a self portrait of us on our hotel room balcony.

This was taken our first day there walking around. We are in the corner because who wants to look at us when there is that beautiful ocean back there! :) (I guess that's what the photographer was thinking anyway! :) ) But right behind us is where you could see whales jumping out into the ocean. We were lounging on some lounge chairs one day and I looked out and saw a few whales just jumping and all sorts of stuff out there! It was amazing!!!! And I have to say...this first day walking around I just thought....oh my goodness. I totally feel at home here. I need to live here. Brian was on board as well. So maybe one day....we'll be islanders! :) Seriously...I think I was born for island life. :) This is MY PERFECT place and now my absolute FAVE place that I have ever been to! It's amazing! A girl can dream, right?!?!? :)

There were quite a few waterfalls at this resort. One of them had a walkway behind it. Of course I had to take a picture looking out at the resort. Amazing!

Cutie Brian as we were lounging by the pool. (I was a bit sunburned at this point so we were taking it easy while the sun was at it's hottest. :) )

One of the days we went to downtown Kona and did some shopping. We stopped to eat at "Bubba Gump's" while we were there. We ate out on the patio and this was our view to the side. Right in front of us was the BEAUTIFUL ocean! It was amazing. I looked out at the ocean that was just below us and saw HUNDREDS of bright yellow fish. Seriously, I couldn't believe how many I saw! I tried to get a good picture, but just couldn't.

While we were in town we picked up a few real estate magazines. (Seriously....we are sold on this place! One day! :) ) Brian took a few mins during our fabulous lunch to look at a few. There are some good deals out there! Hehe.

So on Tuesday, we took a Circle Island Volcano Tour. It was great! It was a bit long on a bus, but we got to stop a LOT of places and see SO MANY things! It was amazing to me how different the climate can be. We went from hot to rainy to rain forest to volcano to perfect. It was crazy. And I was amazed at how GREEN it was on one side of the island. The picture above doesn't do it justice, but it was almost neon green. I grew up in Tennessee, where it is quite green. It did not even come close to this. It was gorgeous!

One of our stops was a Kona Coffee place. This is just a shot I got when we were high up on a hill. I don't drink coffee, but I hear this is the best coffee ever. The pure Kona coffee sells for like $40.00 a pound or something like that. It was fun to see.

We also went to a black sand beach. I thought that was pretty cool. It was SO WINDY here! Seriously....the wind was so bad it would totally push you the way it was blowing. The sand was much more coarse than a regular beach too.

Here are my feet in the black sand. See how much more coarse it is? You don't sink in it like normal sand either.

We even had a friend greet us! :) I guess these turtles hang out here a lot. It's illegal to get closer than like 5 feet from them or something. However...my friend Sherri wasn't looking and just walking along the beach and didn't see him. She almost stepped on him! Kinda funny because apparently there are people watching them that you can't see that will arrest you if you get close. Luckily we didn't have to bail her out of jail! :) But he is SO CUTE! And HUGE!

Here is a shot of the rain forest we visited. SO BEAUTIFUL!!!!

Bri and I in the middle of the rain forest! :)
We also got to walk through the Thurston lava tube. Lava tubes form when lava flows for so long the top lava hardens while lava is still flowing through it. So these tubes form. When the eruption is over, and the lava has all flowed out....this is what was left. It was really cool to walk through it and imagine the lava flowing through there.
Brian and I causing a traffic jam behind us so we can get a picture in the tube. :)
Here's a picture I got to show how huge it is. We are all so small compared to this. And just FYI...these tubes are all over the island. This is just one of the bigger ones or something.

We ate lunch at the Volcano House where you are actually looking out on the volcano's. Then we got to go even closer. I guess there used to be a better viewing point than where we were. But just a few months ago there was an eruption and it took out that viewing point. Luckily, it was at night or there would have been a lot of casualties. Crazy, really. How amazing and quite humbling these volcanoes are!

We also stopped at Rainbow Falls. I am just amazed at all the beautiful sights we saw in just one day. Every turn and every mile you could see a million amazing views. It was incredible and something I won't ever forget. I need to get back into photography and go back here to capture some more of these sights. It was amazing!

One of the days we went to a local beach. LOOK HOW GORGEOUS! You pull into a parking lot that is quite a bit above the actual beach. So you get to walk down this path until this comes in to view! And yes...the water is REALLY that beautiful! It was so fabulous! Brian wanted more waves though...it was quite a calm beach. And having crystal clear ocean water is a bit of a scary thing too. You see all these shadows coming at your under the water by your feet. Kinda freaks you out at times. :) Then you realize it's just your shadow or Brian's shadow and you're ok. :)

One night most of the gals in our group that earned their cruise and their hubby's went out to dinner. It was a lot of fun to all get together and laugh and talk and hang for a yummy meal. We then went to an ice cream place afterwards for some ice cream. :)

Our last night together Stampin' Up! did a HUGE luau for us all. It was SO AMAZING! We ate all sorts of yummy Hawaiian food, saw these SUPER CUTE hula girls, saw all sorts of amazing shows on stage, fire dancers and everything. It was SO AWESOME!!! Definitely a highlight of the trip!

At one point in the show, the "host" of the evening called up the Stampin' Up! leaders to show them respect. It was really a neat experience.

We got these handmade lei's when we first got there. So cool. Then behind us you can see that hotel building. When the shows started and the music got loud, everyone that wasn't in our group (so there weren't there) came out on their balcony's to watch.

At one point...these guys on stilts came out and let us get pictures with them.

After the luau, some of our group got together to play some card games. It was a lot of fun to have one last night of laughs together before we all left the next day. SO SAD!!!

Mark and Wendy came a bit late, so they had to wait for a break in the games so they could join in. Why not start a game by yourself while you are waiting?! :)

Now I just have to say....Stampin' Up! TOTALLY spoils us on this trip! We got lots of pillow gifts delivered to us while we were there. The first gift were these bags. Brian got one and I got one. The one I got matches the travel pouch they sent us before we went with all our travel documents in it.

This one is filled with a new stamp set, ink pads, accessories, etc. SO FUN! :) This was what we needed to make our projects there that they had for us. This was my fave thing to get, of course! :)

HOW COOL IS THIS?! Such cool packaging, and inside were yummy Hawaiian treats for us. SO MUCH FUN!

Then this is a sarong from a local guy there that makes them. I LOVED this!

Then our last gift was this aloha necklace. I love this and I'm going to wear it to remind me of my dream to live in Hawaii some day! :)

So there was our trip in a nutshell. It was SO MUCH FUN and I'm SO GLAD I had that opportunity to go. Too bad I had to come home to AWFUL weather in Utah! No wonder I want to move there so bad! :) I HATE WINTERS! :) But aloha and mahalo (thank you) for reading! And BIG THANKS again to Grandma for doing SUCH A GOOD JOB with Kylie! :) THANK YOU!!!!