Aloha!

We're back! So there is good news and bad news. Good news: We had the BEST time in Hawaii! We felt like it was a second honeymoon! Bad news: its over. But I admit, it actually felt longer than a week, which never seems to happen with vacations, so we were so thankful. Everything on the trip went perfect and was so fun. [Our first clue this was going to be a good trip: when we got to the O.C. Airport on Friday morning, the line to the airline counter was ridiculously long---like almost out the door long. We walked up to the end of the line, starting to wait. A few seconds later, an airline worker picked us out of the line and said "Going to Hawaii?" .We said yes, and she said "follow me". She took us to the outside baggage check (that I guess usually costs money to do), checked us in and our baggage, and in 2 minutes we were done! We bypassed a huge line of waiting. A pretty good start to our great week!]
Our condo was great, (our resort was right on the ocean with our own beach) and Kauai was perfect! The weather was great, the water was warm, and we just love the Poipu area. Ok, enough of that. Here is what we did:

Us at the beach the first day. Looking at the view behind us, you can see that we pretty much decided at this point that is was going to be a great week. This beach was right in front of our condo resort.(Notice our white faces..they get progressively less white in the pictures!) :)

This is one of the many beautiful sunsets we saw. This picture was taken our second night where we went to have drinks at a place called the Point, right on the water with the view of the beach and the sunset.

Stopping for a rest on a walk along the beach. After this walk, we stopped at a restaurant in one of the hotels that had Karaoke later that night so we ended up coming back later when it started. We haven't laughed that hard in a long time. There were some people that took it pretty seriously. There's nothing quite like seeing a man in his 50's sing the song "Discovery Channel". (you know you've heard it--"You and me baby ain't nothin' but mammals so let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel..." I just can't believe I just actually wrote out those lyrics.). I had Jon like 2 drinks away from getting up there himself. Ok maybe not, but its now my lifetime goal to get him up on a Karaoke stage.


Monday, we went on a boat ride up the Napali Coast, which is the whole West side of the island that isn't accessible by car. We saw waterfalls, untouched beaches, turtles, dolphins, seals, and snorkeled at a spot we stopped at off shore. The boat ride was really fun. We talked with some people from different parts of the country, and the boat staff was so fun plus they had breakfast for us, served you beverages, got you snacks, then served us lunch and drinks on the way back. It was a great day to go , weather wise, and we saw so much beautiful land. Jon's highlight was the free mai tai's on the way back. :)

There is so much "green" and nature on the island--we took some hikes and walks down trails.
One of the waterfalls we saw up close. We thought about hiking too it until we saw a couple who had just come up from the hike--soaked from head to toe and covered in mud. We thought, ya know, the waterfall probably just looks bigger from the bottom...this view is just fine.


Another beach day...ok so EVERY day was a beach day. Don't hate us.

We had fun surfing in Kauai. I was excited to be able to surf in just a bathing suit and a rash guard instead of shivering in our California water in a wet suit. Kauai had what we called perfect "Jen size waves". Not too big and not too tiring to keep paddling out to catch them. The two of us had a lot of fun out in the water: Jon was such the surf cheerleader. Every time I am would ride a wave in, as soon as I start paddling back out to where he was he'd be pumping his fist and cheering for me.


We had some amazing meals while we were there. This night, Jon took me out to a really nice dinner on the water. Very romantic! We had the most amazing fish and steak. Needless to say, we came back a couple pounds heavier from this trip.

All in all, Kauai was just as perfect as we had hoped and it was such a dream to finally be there together, like we have talked about for years. We found ourselves planning what we'd do on our next trip there! Who knows if we will, but I do know it was the perfect week, and we are so thankful we went.