{Hawaii Day 1 and 2}

We have been waiting to go on a trip for a long time, and when we decided on Hawaii Cody was worried we wouldn't have enough to do there. My family loves Hawaii, they go about every year and I have a couple sisters who have or currently live there. They gave us a list of what beaches are good for what (snorkeling, bodyboarding, swimming, etc) and what the best places to eat are. This made Cody feel better :o)

After lots of packing and getting ready Friday morning we dropped the boys off at my parents' house in Peoria and we were off! Off to Cody's office that is, my work-a-holic husband had a couple things he had to do real quick. Of course a client walks in but he was in and out quick and then we were off to the airport. We had only gone a little ways when I realized we still had the kid's carseats, so back to Grandma's we went. Luckily it didn't take long and we arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare.

Cody's parents met us in the terminal, they had just arrived from Utah. We were excited to share this trip with them since they had never been to Hawaii. We ate lunch, and then off we were on the flight to Hawaii. The flight seemed to take a long time, but it already felt like a vacation because no one was asking for a drink or help with this or that :o). I started and finished a book and it felt so nice!

We arrived and went and picked up our rental cars - then drove part way to the hotel until we stopped at a little place to eat dinner. We drove the rest of the way over to the North Shore in Laie where our hotel was. The drive was breathtaking, wow those mountains are just as amazing as the beautiful beaches!! I forgot how amazing Hawaii is, it's just like the postcards you see. We arrived at the hotel and......EW it was gross! The outside was grosser than the inside (just look at this picture!) but the inside left much to be desired as well! Positives were (1) the towels and bedding were very clean (2) The room was clean (3) it was part of our package deal and was so cheap, we could have paid more to stay somewhere else but we really wanted to stay in Laie since it was close to all the beaches we wanted to do stuff at.

This cat had a thing for Cody, and would follow him wherever he went. It really freaked Cody out, it was quite funny :o).

We slept horribly the first night our mattress felt like a taco and I was freaked out there would be roaches after hearing all the bug stories my sisters who lived in Laie had told me. After a long restless night at 5am we got up and decided to go for a walk on the beach. It was so beautiful and made us feel so much better. There were tons of holes in the sand, and we sat and watched the sand crabs go in and out of their hiding spots. As we were walking on the sand super early in the morning we happened to see my cousin Jordan walking with his surfboard. That was so funny since there was almost no one else up. He living in Laie with his cute wife Meagan while he finishes school at BYU-H.

After breakfast we headed off to Shark's Cove, an amazing place to snorkel. I can't believe how many different fish we saw, and how huge some of them were! It wasn't very crowded and we spend a long time exploring the cove and checking out all the different fish.

We had a yummy lunch at Ted's Bakery (the chocolate coconut pie was so good) and then headed back to Shark's Cove to snorkel some more. Then we went back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. We went into Halieva and had some YUMMY shaved ice at the famous Matsumotos.

That evening we went to Turtle Beach where we were able to watch the Sea Turtles in the waves close to the shore.