hAwAii!!!

so here is our trip to Oahu in pictures...sorry for the long post. :) this may be overkill for anyone who has been there, but since this was our first visit, i'm putting a lot up...


(i have loads of pictures of plants and flowers so i'll spare you most of them...)

on the way to waimea falls...
'toad'ally thought these were plastic. nope. they're lily-pads. the size of kiddie pools!

awesome...


sunset on sunset beach... with NO people!!!

USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor.


visiting Sitani's grave in the valley of the temples
the dole plantation. yeah, maybe we're just dumb, but we were both under the impression that pineapples grew underground. don't ask why. haha. but this was a shock for us. made a LOT more sense. random, but did you know that one pineapple takes 2 years to grow! and then the second one on the same plant can take up to 2 MORE years! and the plant only produces twice! crazy!

dave with his favorite plant... (that's cocoa, btw.)pineapple DELICIOUSNESS!

and these little guys are everywhere! they were on the walls at the house even. they eat the bugs and are super harmless...but can get noisy sometimes...

nu'uanu pali lookout. AMAZING!

Halona Blow-Hole

chinaman's hateast-side coast line...right before i got SOAKED! much of hhe highway on the east side is RIGHT against the water and when the tide was high it splashed up onto the road. SUPER freaky to drive but GORGEOUS!the Laie LDS temple. SO pretty!

manoa fallsphew! that should do on the pictures. so many things that pictures just don't do justice. we had such a great time. :) and for any inquiring minds that made it this far on this forever long post... we have to contest on the matsumotos shaved ice. there is a little place that chip told us about in honolulu called shimazu...and their shaved ice is better. matsumoto's definitely has points for location and environment on the north shore, but shimazu has better ice, better flavors, and friendler service. at least that's our vote...and we ate shaved ice multiple times a day the entire week. :)
one final goodbye to such a wonderful vacation. don't worry, hawaii. we'll be back. soon, i hope!

look what we saw...

it's against the law to 'harrass' the sea turtles...so this is as
close as we could get. seeing this guy totally made me tear up. they
are such cool creatures and we've almost destroyed them! we loved just
watching him chill on the beach and slowly dig around in the sand...

holy smokes!

so many treasures in this place! this is a blowhole created by a lava
tube. today we drove the south end of the island and I LOVED it... I
kept pulling over for more pictures...but they're all on my camera so
I'll have to transfer them to my phone... I just love how magical this
place is! we went to this lookout yesterday in the mountains and I
swear it looked like a scene from LOTR. just amazing beauty around
every corner...

let me sum up...

what an adventurous day! an overnight flight landed us at 4:30 am in
Oahu. a stroll across the beach at sunrise, breakfast in Waikiki, a
hike to waimea falls, and plenty of time snorkeling and basking on a
few beaches on north shore. finished up with sunset and swimming on
sunset beach. wow, we have had a great day!
(disregard the lack of makeup...we're on vacation! these are thebest
shaved ice on the island ...so we hear...we'll let you know once we hit
a few more...)

so apparently...

so apparently you can blog via email...? this is my test of this
rumor...