{Hawaii Days 6,7,&8}

My sister Melissa and her husband Sam were spending a month in Hawaii, and we were so excited to find out that our trips overlapped a few days! They rented an apartment from a married couple at BYU-H so they were really close to our hotel.

We went to a few beaches with them, first we went back to Shark's Cove for some more snorkeling. We swam with more sea turtles, and saw so many more fish and even an eel *yikes*! I can not even describe how many fish and the amazing colors and kinds of fish we saw there, it was indescribable and my favorite part of Hawaii!!

We had a yummy lunch at a Tai place and then went to Sunset Beach to see Sam surf and play in the waves. He had just bought a new board and was excited to use it :o)

Now let me introduce you to *the seal shirt* as I called it. Before our trip Cody was so excited to come home from Ross and show me his SPF 50 shirt he bought for Hawaii. It was nice not having to put sunscreen on him all over, and he didn't get burned at all (amazing for how much we were in the sun!) but I had to tease him that he looked like a seal with his grey shirt and shorts.

We went back to Sunset another day and the waves were pretty rough. We had fun body surfing on them, boogie boarding, and getting slammed into the sand over and over. I am glad I don't work for a hotel in Hawaii because every day we filled the tub and bathroom floors with so much sand!!

We went to Waikiki one of the nights, it was fun to be there at night. There were a lot of street performers, and fun shops to go through. Of course we had to have dinner Melissa and my favorite place, Cheesecake Factory. We even order the same dinner and dessert, we are alike in so many ways it's funny.

This is a statue that's a tribute to the first surfer.... I think??

Our last day we decided to hike Diamond Head with Cody's parents. When we got to the part with 175 steep steps it reminded me of a picture I had seen of my parents hiking it years ago in one of our photo albums.



The view was amazing, you could see the West side of the island. It was really windy at the top.



Our last day we were there was Gene's Birthday. We went to a really yummy seafood restaurant, Halieva Joe's. Sam recommended it to us since he used to work there. It was built on the side of a lake, and the atmosphere was so fun.

We had a red-eye flight home, so we dropped off the rental cars at arrived at the airport around 9pm. Our flight left at 11pm, and about an hour into the flight the pilot came on the intercom and said there was a problem with the plane and we needed to turn around and fly back to Oahu. Then a little while later he came on and told us we'd need to circle the islands for am hour to burn fuel before we could land. He kept coming on and changing the amount of time we'd be circling, we ended up burning fuel for an extra 3 hours, so by the time we landed we could have been almost home. I was just glad to land safe though!! We then waited in a long line to get our bags and figure out what was going on. They ended up getting everyone new flights, and hotel rooms with food and taxi vouchers. We didn't get to the hotel until almost 6am, we were so tired. We had to make the sad phone call to our boys who were expecting us any minute and let them know it would be one more day! We are so lucky that my Mom and Dad were so kind to keep them one more day, and understand!!

Our hotel was really nice, it was right by the beach at Waikiki. We got about 3 hours of sleep and then we decided to make the most of our extra day. Sam and Melissa were in Waikiki so we met up with them and had lunch...and I'm sure you can guess where we went again ;o)

At lunch we decided to go on a hike called Haiku Stairs, or Stairway to Heaven. It's forbidden, so you have to sneak up it and climb over several fences. Sam and Melissa had gone on it before so we were excited that they could take us on it. You hike for awhile, then come to 4,000 stairs that go straight up the mountain, the stairs were built for a radio station during WWII.

Here we are, starting the hike after climbing over two fences so far...The hike goes up the mountain in the background.




More fences.... As we were climbing over one of them a local boy warned us that there was a guard. This freaked me out because there were a lot of signs that said you would be prosecuted if you trespassed, but Sam assured us that the boy was just saying that to prevent us from going.

After we had hiked aways, and had just gotten to the stairs we heard a noise. It started to get louder and louder, it sounded like a dirtbike. Melissa and I panicked and dropped down to hide in the bushes. Cody and Sam stood there and a security guy pulled up on his three-wheeler. Melissa and I stood up sheepishly and we were all (at least the girls) nervous about what was going to happen.

He turned out to be really nice, and told us his hours so that next time we would know how to sneak up it without being caught. We tried to bribe him but he wouldn't let us go up since the stairs are visible from the highway close by and locals will call and report if they see anyone going up it. The locals are very protective over that hike, it's crazy. They don't like it because the start of the hike is by a neighborhood and they were tired of all the tourists coming to do it.

We were sad to have to turn around, but next time we will know better and we'll do it early in the morning! We went back to Waikiki and swam for awhile, seeing a huge sea turtle swim right by us. We were so glad that we hadn't booked a hotel over on that side of the island because there were so many people and the oceans on the North Shore were so much nicer.

We got onto another red-eye flight and this time made it all the way back home! We were so excited to see our boys!! Cody found some shark-tooth necklaces for them at the swap meet and they loved those. They are convinced that their Dad swam into the ocean, found a shark, then punched 3 teeth out for them. We had such a great time and hope to go back again soon!!