Kona - Hawaii con't...

We left Honolulu and island hopped over to Kona. Arriving in Kona was awesome the entire airport was open, you could smell the ocean almost instantly!

We went on a whale watching excursion..it was so cool to see the whales just in their natural habitat playing around in the warm waters.

This is called a whale footprint..can you see the area in the water where it's all smooth the whale just had came up for air and descended.

Ahh kinda caught his tail..so cool

Here you can see him arch his body as he's going back down

Playing at the beach, Nay-Nay and Sissy made friends-its a black sand beach soo cool

This beach had a natural cove..where the waves would crash against some big rocks then the water would come trickling in filling in this area. Little bit loved this because she could play in the water and not get knocked down from the waves.

One day we took a day and drove around the entire island.  There were some things we wanted to checkout and the volcano was one of them.  This is the volcano at The Volcano National Park in Hilo
Here you can see the lava glowing at night..it was so awesome

The volcano during the day..the lava was flowing but at the different altitude it was difficult to see it. Here you can just see the steam and smoke from the lava

A rainbow at the volcano..awesome

As we drove around the island we saw some pretty awesome water falls..here is Rainbow Falls

This particular waterfall is well known... it is used in many movies..one of the most popular is Jurassic Park

We had quite a hike to get down there to see it but it was so worth it!

This is just another waterfall that was really cool.  You can see the ocean

We did do some tourist..sight seeing stuff but our most favorite thing to do was just to be beach bums!

Sis eating a snack...that keeps being washed away by the waves but she didn't care

Enjoying the waves as they crashed on the shore...this is one of my favorite pics









After being in the hot sun and playing in the waves we were thirsty so we enjoyed a jumbo snowcone!

Here you can really get a feel for how big it really was!











We went on a snorkeling cruise and Sissy was a little apprenhensive to get in the water, she so was much more content sunbathing on the boat with Grandma...don't blame her ;)

Snookling...it was AMAZING to see all the beautiful color underneath us, the fish, the coral and even sea turtles!



This is getting suited up to go into the water.  The guy helping Nay-Nay is actually the owner of the Body Glove (Robbi) when we boarded the boat for the excursion we learned they were having a photo shoot for a video on their webpage so the owner was onboard.  He was awesome! He was so glad to have a young family on board that day he really pampered us! He gave nay-Nay, Sissy and Little bit endless smoothies they were in heaven or so they thought :)

Watch this video and see if you can spot Nay-nay he's in there
http://www.bodyglovehawaii.com/video.html



This beach was soo cool I don't remember the name of it but it wasn't very far from our condo and it was one of our favorites!  It had a huge sand bar that the kids could walk way out on which they thought was cool, but also it was loaded I mean loaded with sea turtles! You had to shuffle your feet so you wouldn't step on one, this one liked Nay-Nay I think

HAWAII

For our 10 year wedding anniversary we took a family vacation to Hawaii. It was AMAZING!! Although the flight was looong and traveling with a 12 mos old had its challenges, the vacation was awesome.

We stayed three nights in Honolulu at the Ilikai Hotel on Waikki Beach. Truly a beautiful resort. Our second night there, we sat on the beach and watched a great fireworks display, it was so cool!

However we woke up Saturday morning (Feb. 27th) to the sounds of sirens going off in the hotel warning us we were under a Tsunami alert. Chile had been struct by one of the strongest earthquakes ever; it was an 8.8 quake! Thankfully this proved to be minor for us in Oahu but it was amazing to see the effect the quake had made on the ocean and the rips and tides that we were able to see. It was just awesome to be able to witness God's creation and see the cause and effect knowing Chile is thousands of miles away.

After we got the all clear we wondered if we could see any effects of the Tsunami so we headed to the North Shore. We passed some surfers who were daring to risk the freak squals.

The kids so desperately wanted to get in the water and play at the North Shore but because we were still uncertain of any after shocks that might cause strange rip currents we didn't let them get their suits on and jump in but despite all that.. we still played in the sand and had fun..afterall we were in Hawaii and MI had snow back home :)

...even Little Bit couldn't resist the sand!

Even though many people said the tsunami upset a lot of the marine life,

this whale was showing off his tail.

We went to the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Habor and I was just truly in awe!!

Seeing the ship lying in the water, still having oil leaking out just took my breath away. So many men and women gave their lives there for our freedom...it just gave me goosebumbs.

Nay-nay on the zip...

sorry we tried to post this with Sissy's zipline video too but the file was too big..but here goes big brother

Fall Fun!!

We had a Youth Event to Porter's Orchard. Our kids tagged along and had lots of fun too!


We went through their corn maze


picking out pumpkins with one of the teens



cuddling on the hayride to stay warm....

Eruption

Volcano experiments-

These videos show how the magma rises inside a volcano and erupts...