Hawaii

For Christmas last year Jared's parents told us they were taking us to Hawaii for Thanksgiving.  We have long anticipated this vacation, and then suddenly it was here and we were thrilled.  With Wyn and Dee Ann affording our lodging for ten nights and our credit card miles taking care of our flight, we felt we could and should take advantage and go for five extra days.  We left on Saturday the tenth and spent the evening getting settled into our bungalow.  Our bungalow was AWESOME!!!!!  I loved the key pad entry, which allowed us to just walk right into our room without checking in.  Our room was a studio suite beautifully decorated, with wonderful luxuries.  We were however surprised however that as soon as we pulled up to the bungalow, we heard roosters crowing.  Our for the week had several roosters, weird, turns out roosters and hens are all over Hawaii, everywhere, it was both funny, weird and very annoying.

 Our bungalow was right on the beach, just a short walk across the lawn, and this was our view. 

 I was so grateful for a good friend who told us that because of the time difference we would be waking up before sunrise, and rather than trying to force ourselves to keep sleeping (which I would have done) we should embrace the early wake up time and go see the sunrise.  So we did.  Sunday morning we woke up, walked down to the beach and watched the sunrise, it was beautiful!

 Then we enjoyed a leisurely walk up our beach.  Yes, those are our footprints. :)

 After our walk we ate breakfast on our lanai, then we went to church.  I loved going to a church meeting in Hawaii.

 Our church meeting house was right next to the temple so we decided to stroll around the Laie temple.  It is a beautiful temple and when you stand near the front doors and look out you can see the ocean.  The Laie is such a unique temple in its design and in that it does not have an Angle Moroni, however it is similar to all the other temples in that the landscaping is amazing!  I love to see the temple!!!

Our brother-in-law, Dave was already in Oahu for business and had been for two weeks so we met up with him that night for dinner on Waikiki.  On our way there we enjoyed stopping over to a few pretty beaches.

 Just before we met up with Dave for dinner we watched the sunset on Waikiki beach.  First time in my life I was able to watch the sunrise and the sunset on the beach on the same day.  It was wonderful.

Our first full day in Hawaii was delightful, peaceful and very relaxing.  In many ways it was a perfect Sunday.

Meanwhile in Utah my boys were having a wonderful time enjoying this years (and what feels like the only) first snow.    They played in a large snow fort that my sister and some of her friends had built, they even watched a bit of a movie inside of it. :)

 On a side note: on Saturday morning we drove to my parents house to drop off the boys; this was the morning after a large snow storm that dumped nearly a foot of snow, none of which had been plowed.  We tried the first hill to my parents house and it was clear we were not going to make it up, so we tried the other hill, Jared was swerving all over the road doing his best to keep the car with very bald tires on the road and Brandon kept saying "I think I can" over and over again.  When Jared finally made it to the top of the hill and we could both breath a sigh of relief Brandon said "Yeah, I did it!"  Thanks for the help Brandon :)